Week 12 Screening - Synecdoche, New York (2008) People's Choice Winner

As promised, for our last screening of this semester, we'll be watching the winner of the people's choice vote: Synecdoche, New York.

Content Warning: Depictions of mental illness, child abuse, medical issues / procedures

Hitting a low point in his life after his wife leaves him, theatre director Caden Cotard begins an ambitious production that he knows will take years of his life. Inside a warehouse in New York City, Cotard begins construction on a replica of the city that his cast are to live their lives in.
Synecdoche, New York was Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, a fact that lead to a meagre budget for the ambitious script. Despite this limitation and its critical failure on release, Synecdoche would go on to be nominated for the Palme d'Or when it debuted at the 2008 Cannes film festival, and would be cited by several critics as among one of the best films of the 2000s - most notably Roger Ebert naming it the best film of the decade.

Watch the trailer here.