Like Crazy

The actors were never given a script. Drake Doremus and Ben York Jones handed them a fifty-page outline of emotional beats and objectives, which Doremus called not a screenplay but a long short story with the occasional line of dialogue in it. Almost all the dialogue was improvised on set. The actors were also given a compilation of songs and told to find the character's state of mind there. The budget was $250,000 and it was shot on a Canon 7D, a stills camera. At Sundance it triggered an all-night bidding war and Paramount bought it for $4m. At the same festival it took the Grand Jury Prize and an acting award for Felicity Jones. The story follows a British student who knowingly overstays her visa and the American boyfriend she then spends years apart from. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones star. Who it is for: viewers drawn to silences rather than declarations, to people who only half finish their sentences. Who it is not for: anyone wanting incident. The engine of conflict here is an immigration rule, and the rest is repeated separation.