Meta-fiction with your favorite indie rock stars, St. Vincent and Carrie Brownstein from Sleater Kinney and “Portlandia,” that sounds pretty different, no? That’s what you’ll get in IFC Films‘ “The Nowhere Inn,” a film that had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last year.
This one is hard to pigeonhole, it’s sort of a mock rock doc, but it’s also a meta-story about what happened when Carrie Brownstein teamed up with musician St. Vincent to make a documentary about the latter’s life and career. Of course, things “fall apart,” but is that part of the gag or the joke and the meta-ness of it all? Here’s the official synopsis:
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From real-life friends, Annie Clark (a.k.a. GRAMMY award-winning recording and touring artist St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Sleater-Kinney, the best-selling Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl) comes the metafictional account of two creative forces banding together to make a documentary about St. Vincent’s music, touring life, and on-stage persona. But they quickly discover unpredictable forces lurking within the subject and filmmaker that threaten to derail the friendship, the project, and the duo’s creative lives. From first-time filmmaker Bill Benz (Portlandia, At Home With Amy Sedaris) comes a densely woven, laugh-out-loud funny and increasingly fractured commentary on reality, identity, and authenticity. A story of two close friends who attempt to wrestle the truth out of a complex subject before the hall of mirrors that is their artistic lives devours them.
“The Nowhere Inn” is set to arrive in theaters and on VOD on September 17. You can watch the first full-blown trailer below.