Reacting to the Alice, Through the Looking Trailer (POFF 2021 festival trailer)

(Saskia Axten as Alice in Alice, through the Looking. Image from the trailer) 

Down went Alice after the rabbit, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again....

The official trailer for Adam Donen's political AIW for adults, Alice, Through the Looking was released a few weeks ago. This trailer is for the POFF festival in Estonia, where the film will have its World Premiere in mid November (November 25th to be exact!) 

No UK release date has been set, but as always this post will be updated if that changes.

Press synopsis (from POFF Festival):

Alice, Through the Looking: À la recherche d'un lapin perdu Composer-turned-director Adam Donen brings his pleasingly bizarre, Brexit-referencing Alice in Wonderland retelling to Black Nights for its world premiere. Leading us through this new reality is the soothing voice of Vanessa Redgrave as narrator, alongside Slavoj Žižek, among many other surprises, visual and auditory.

 Set in London on the day of the 2016 referendum on EU membership, philosophy student Alice loses her newfound boyfriend Rabbit and has to search for him in an upside down version of London which is part Wonderland, part post Brexit anxiety landscape.

Trailer can be watched here. (TW: trailer contains some strong language and sex, so potentially slightly NSFW)

Official film site (with links to social media) here. 

My thoughts: 

• At first glance this looks very, very different to every AIW character using film or adaptation. Alice is 20 here and in a romantic and sexual relationship with Rabbit (this element reminds me of the 1982 film Alicja, where a grown up Alice was also in love with a man called rabbit, however the relationship looks slightly more explicit here) 

• Wonderland-Brexit-London is also depicted as being a somewhat harsh place (the politicians laughing at the end of the trailer, the bloodstained Queen) than is traditionally seen. Add to this the carrollian voice over of the elderly lady (paraphrasing a line from carroll) and the tonal shift is very deliberately marked. Sections of the film appear to feature characters not from Carroll, signalling that this might be a half adaptation or character using film only (we don't know yet) 

• However this trailer also includes several elements that will be familiar to most carroll fans, namely the function of the mirror, the fun scene with the caterpillar private detective (still in keeping with Carroll's ideas) and the brief shots of Dum and Dee as policemen. Whilst its certain this version will go to darker places than expected (due to the political context) there is also an eccentric, off the wall tone in this trailer too. 

• Despite the Carroll characters looking different from how we might expect, the look and costumes of the Queen and Alice echo their tenniel originals.

• The press notes state that at one point in this film Alice splits into three people. Again this personality split appears to be inspired by Carroll. 

Watch a very early work in progress talk on a new Alice film adaptation: In the land of Wonder

 Embedded above (hopefully) is the talk film producers Martin Persson, Mohamed Hefzy and director Nadine Khan gave about their Alice film adaptation in progress, In the Land of Wonder.

This was recorded as part of this year's Malmo Arab Film Festival. As the film is in very early stages of concept most of the info that is out there comes from this video and IMDB.

I'm extremely excited for this project and hope it becomes a feature length adaptation soon :) 

Get Lost, and the future of Alice based films...

 I'm sure many of you saw the news yesterday about the Alice film project Get Lost, which together with Netflix's Alice musical and In the Land of Wonder, is the third AIW inspired film to be greenlit in the space of three years. 

Get Lost will be set in a night time Wonderland-Budapest, and feature a teenaged Alice (here called Alicia)

Which does beg the question: which of these projects will make it to the end of production? And will Lewis Carroll's novels figure in any of these films, if at all?

Whilst I don't know the answer to these questions, I will most definitely try and follow along these productions as much as I can. 

You can follow Get Lost on instagram, if you're interested :) 

And if Alice adaptations and their future interests you as much as it does me, you might like the talk on this subject hosted by V and A museum which is happening virtually in april... 

Upcoming Film adaptations of Carroll's work...

NOTE: This list does not cover films using Carroll's characters only, so Come Away and Dorothy and Alice are not included.

This list comes with a massive disclaimer, all of these film versions are in production or development, and so some in development stage could still get scrapped!



A list of upcoming film works based on Carroll.

Based on the Alice books:

In the Land of Wonder (في أرض العجائب) 

Director: Nadine Khan (نادين خان) 

Country: Egypt, Sweden

Status: In pre production (as of September 2020) 

Studios: MAD productions, Anagram Sweden, Les Contes Modernes.

Runtime: 80 minutes estimated (via mandy.com) 

A modern adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice, transported to Cairo. When ten year old Alice sees the rabbit belonging to her magician father scramble out of the house carrying a watch, she's drawn into a bizarre city which vaguely resembles her home. 

Get Lost

Director: Daniela Amavia

Country: USA

Status: In pre production (as of March 2021)

Studios: Patriot Pictures, Greca Entertainment

Grieving backpacker Alicia is lead into a strange nocturnal version of Budapest after following a young teenager. Currently unknown how Carroll based the film will be. 

Alice

Director: Ross Evans

Country: USA

Status: Script being written (as of January 2021) 

Studios: Netflix, Alloy Productions

Alice stumbles into a world of wonder at a music festival. Currently unknown how Carroll based the film will be. 

Based on the Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of The Snark 

Director: Simon Davidson

Country: UK

Status: In Post Production (as of December 2020) 

Studios:  Imperious Films

Runtime: 

A crowdfunded adaptation of Lewis Carroll's classic poem about a strange crew who get into an even stranger predicament when they try and hunt the mythical Snark. Includes references to Carroll's other work too. Premiere was set in 2020 but stalled due to coronavirus. 

Based on Sylvie and Bruno

Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded

Director: Michael Kostelnik

Status: Conceptual phase

Studios: ?

Runtime: ?

Very little about these films (currently at conceptual stage) is known. There is only one entry on IMDB:

Sylvie and her younger brother Bruno escape the repressed Victorian era to explore a world of fantasy and wonderment. 

 If they do make it to production, they would be the first ever adaptations of this notoriously tricky source material. Its currently unknown if the plot will include the real world strand as well as the Outland stories.