PROVIDENCE – Saturday, August 8th, will see the world premiere of Handle With Care, a new feature film written and directed by Matthew James Thompson, a Rhode Island native, as part of the Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival. The film follows Cole (Justin H. Min, After Yang, Umbrella Academy), a copywriter who finds himself responsible for selling off his unopened wedding gifts after his brief marriage to Reese (Nicole Brydon Bloom, The Gilded Age) ends in divorce before either had the chance to open any of them.
“Ashim [Ahuja] will attest that we’ve been trying to make a movie for like five years before we made Handle With Care,” says Thompson, who was born and spent his early life in Providence, of his efforts with Ashim Ahuja, who produced the film alongside Barret Hacia. “Since I didn’t travel a traditional path of going to film school, [the film industry] was a total mystery to me.” Thompson, who’s been living in New York City the past 15 years, developed an impressive resume of commercials before making the leap to feature film with Handle With Care. Originally envisioned as a miniseries, Ahuja helped narrow down what started as a loose 220 page treatment into a 95 page script that could take advantage of New York’s photogenic backdrop while keeping the budget modest.
Thompson and his crew, whom he praises frequently, from first assistant director Emily Cohn to casting director SJ Allocco, were able to complete principal photography in just fifteen days (and without working weekends) with a crew that topped out at 25 people, but could be as few as just seven, such as when filming a scene where Cole takes a phone call on the ferry…