‘Lovers Of Hate’ Making Noise At Sundance Film Festival

By alcalde in Blog on January 29, 2010 at 9:06 am | No Comments

UT grad Bryan Poyser, BS ’96, is turning heads at the Sundance Film Festival with his film Lovers of Hate about two adult brothers caught in a “tragicomic” love triangle.

Shot in Park City, Utah, where Sundance is held, Lovers of Hate is billed as “a delicious tale of resentment, deceit, and sibling rivalry.”

Younger brother Paul makes big money writing kids books based on stories his older brother, Rudy, used to tell him. The problem is Rudy, also an aspiring writer, feels cheated.

Things get weird when Paul heads to a Park City ski mansion for a romantic weekend getaway with, of all people, Rudy’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, and Rudy ends up getting to the house before them. Thus ensues a bizarre cat-and-mouse game as Rudy plays pranks on the two, who don’t know he is there.

“Writer-director Bryan Poyser has admirably attempted a difficult feat,” writes James Greenberg for The Hollywood Reporter, “walking the line between a situation that is funny and dangerously disturbed. At times the film hits the mark, and at others it’s too creepy to be funny.”

The film is part of Sundance’s NEXT project, featuring innovative and creative works done on low budgets.

LA Weekly film editor Karina Longworth praised Lovers of Hate as beautifully embodying NEXT’s stated mission, “a star-free, bare-bones comedy in which three actors talk and walk around a house for 90 minutes.” The film, Longworth adds, “is the most exciting American indie I’ve seen in a while.”

Poyser lives in Austin and works for the Austin Film Society.