Blue Ruin

Jeremy Saulnier wrote, directed and shot his second feature himself. The Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, which selected it, calls him a director and cinematographer out of Brooklyn on its own site. He and Macon Blair had made films together since childhood, and after the cool reception of Murder Party they treated this as their last job together. The money came from a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 that asked for $35,000, with Saulnier adding his own savings. The film cost $420,000 and took $993,313 worldwide, $258,384 of it in the United States and Canada. Saulnier, who is camera shy, calls shooting the pitch video facing his worst nightmare. It screened in the Fortnight on 17 May 2013 and took one of that year’s FIPRESCI prizes, which the section records on its own site. It was later nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 30th Independent Spirit Awards, where Land Ho! won. A good fit if you will accept an avenger who walks into a gun shop and out with a postcard, then ruins a stolen pistol prising at its trigger lock with a crowbar. Not for viewers who want revenge staged as competence; here the man cuts a crossbow bolt out of his own thigh and bleeds badly enough to end up in a hospital.