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Short synopsis:
Cornelius, an enigmatic lost soul, returns to his family’s Tennessee farm 18 years after disappearing. Although welcomed back at home, he remains distant. In between challenging strangers to one-on-one pick-up games, he huffs and drinks the days away. The family’s demons are finally exhumed one day when a skeezy plumber shows up at the farm, unraveling painful memories of their high-school football team.
Why this comedy matters:
SEPTIEN is mysterious, full of Southern Gothic mysticism, pain and human beings desperately longing for any kind of redemption. The film shows a backwoods world that’s only a few trees away from our own, complete with characters on the edge of sanity that we can actually relate to. A hero tale gone wrong, SEPTIEN is funny when it’s inappropriate to laugh, realistic when it should be psychotic and heart-warming when you expect it the least. We bet that you have never seen a comedy like this before.
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Festivals: Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival
 Director Michael Tully:
"As someone who writes about movies for a living, I watch over 300 features a year. While I personally appreciate movies of all budgets and genres and especially ‘enjoy’ those that fill me with despair – I attend many film festivals, which if you didn’t know is a terrrrrific place to watch documentaries and dramas that will make you want to dive headfirst into the deep end of a waterless pool – I thought it would be a fun challenge to try to make an offbeat independent film that was laden with the sorrow of a full-on drama but that actually had an unexpected current of humor running throughout it. To that end, SEPTIEN certainly won’t be confused for a ‘comedy’ in the traditional sense. But it has been known to make people laugh out loud. The whole point in making this film was to create a strange tonal brew that defied easy categorization, so I myself don’t even know how I would describe the humor in SEPTIEN except to say that it was our hope that people would find it funny."
After his debut, COCAINE ANGEL (2006), Tully was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. His follow-up SILVER JEW (2007) premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. He now is the head editor of HammerToNail.com, a website devoted to ambitious cinema. He played all of his own sports in SEPTIEN and lives on a Tennis Court in Brooklyn, NY.
More on the official website, Facebook and IMDb.
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