Jonathan Caouette’s WALK AWAY RENEE To Have Exclusive Online Premiere on SundanceNOW’s Doc Club

Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects and its digital sister, SundanceNOW and Thom Powers, curator for SundanceNOW’s Doc Club, announced on Thursday that director Jonathan Caouette’s documentary WALK AWAY RENEE will have its North American premiere as part of the website’s new SVOD (Subscriber Video-on-Demand) program Doc Club. The film, which premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and is the follow-up to Caouette’s 2004 groundbreaking hit TARNATION, will be released simultaneous with its North American Premiere on Wednesday, June 27^th at BAMcinemaFest 2012. Doc Club subscribers will be able to download or stream the film as part of the June offerings entitled UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL or the film can be rented on SundanceNOW for $6.99.

In WALK AWAY RENEE, Caouette embarks on a road trip to move his mentally ill motherRenee across the country. As they encounter roadblocks in the present, we begin to flash back to moments from the past, giving us insight into this anything-but-ordinary mother/son relationship. Through musical montage, psychedelic sequences and real and imagined circumstance, the film raises questions about love, sacrifice, and the reality in which we live.

Sehring commented: “This online premiere of Caouette’s WALK AWAY RENEE is a major step forward for SundanceNOW and Doc Club.  Our mission is to bring films to audiences in multiple ways and create exciting, innovative campaigns for each film.   To give fans of TARNATION the ability to watch Jonathan’s new film from any computer in the country is the best way to make it as available as possible.”

Commented Powers: “WALK AWAY RENEE makes a perfect headliner for the June theme of ‘Up Close and Personal.’ Jonathan Caouette directs with such intimacy that viewers feel like a member of his family. I was blown away by this film at Cannes last year and look forward to sharing it with a greater audience.”

Noted Caouette: “WALK AWAY RENEE was developed from equal parts love, sweat, humility and pure happenstance. I am ecstatic that people will now be able to see what I consider the final version of this film.”

Doc Club’s June offering, entitled UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL focuses on films that turn the gaze of the kino-eye on the directors themselves. Other highlights fromJune include Agnes Varda’s THE GLEANERS AND I, which Powers calls “a great essay documentary on the theme of scavenging by virtuoso filmmaker whose work deserves to be more widely known in the US” and Guy Madden’s MY WINNIPEG.