Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory – Film Listing

My New York Year

    • Director

      Philippe Falardeau

    • Credits

      Producers:
      Susan Mullen,
      Ruth Coady,
      Luc Dery,
      Kim McCraw

      Cinematographer:
      Sara Mishara

    • Principal Cast

      Margaret Qualley,
      Sigourney Weaver,
      Brian F. O'Byrne,
      Seána Kerslake,
      Douglas Booth

  • Category

    Feature

New York in the 1990s: after leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a writer, Joanna gets hired as an assistant to Margaret, the stoic and old-fashioned literary agent to J.D. Salinger. Fluctuating between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, wood-panelled office - where dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze off after three-martini lunches - and her nights in a sink-less Brooklyn apartment with her socialist boyfriend.

Joanna's main task is processing Salinger's voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency's impersonal standard letter and impulsively begins personalising the responses. The results are both humorous and moving, as Joanna, while using the great writer's voice, begins to discover her own.

Notes courtesy of Screen Ireland

TBC, Canada, Ireland, 2020, Colour


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