Vicky Krieps & ‘Stranger Things’ Actor Dacre Montgomery Lead Samuel Van Grinsven’s TIFF Ghost Story ‘Went Up The Hill’ — First Look Clip

Zac Ntim
·2-min read

EXCLUSIVE: Kiwi filmmaker Samuel Van Grinsven heads to TIFF this year with Went Up The Hill, a psychological ghost story starring Vicky Krieps and Stranger Things actor Dacre Montgomery. Check out a first look clip from the flick above.

Directed by Van Grinsven from a screenplay he co-wrote with Jory Anast, the film follows Jack, an orphan, who travels to remote New Zealand to attend the funeral of his estranged mother Elizabeth. There he meets her widow, Jill, who has questions of her own. Over the nights that follow, Elizabeth returns and possesses Jack and Jill, using each of their bodies to speak to the other. Jill faces Elizabeth’s suicide, while Jack confronts his abandonment. As they learn she is trapped in limbo, Jack begins to doubt Elizabeth’s reason for returning. Caught in a life-threatening nocturnal dance, Jack and Jill must find a way to let go of Elizabeth’s hold before she pushes them to the edge.

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“Went Up The Hill is a hypnotic ghost story. From the outset, I was drawn to the stasis of grief and the limbo of questions for those left behind,” Van Grinsven says of the pic. “This is embodied by our protagonists Jack and Jill, who despite being strangers to one another, surrender their bodies as vessels to the dead in the pursuit of answers.“

Went Up The Hill is Van Grinsven’s second feature. His first was Sequin in A Blue Room. It world premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 2019, where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature Film. Van Grinsven is represented by RGM Artists Australia and Grandview in the U.S.

Bankside Films (The Quiet Girl, Talk to Me) is handling worldwide sales at TIFF with North America co-repped with CAA. The film was shot on location in New Zealand and is the latest collaboration between London-based Bankside and Causeway Films following their partnership on Danny & Michael Philippou’s Talk to Me.

Van Grinsven added: “It’s fantastic to be world premiering at TIFF; I’ve been lucky enough to have their support behind both of my first two features now, and it will be a special moment to introduce the film for the first time alongside our Jack and Jill, Vicky and Dacre.”

Check out the clip above.

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