Henry-Alex Rubin’s Disconnect, a drama starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Skarsgard and Max Thieriot, has been selected to open the 28th Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which kicks off Jan. 24 at the Arlington Theatre in Santa Barbara.
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The festival also announced Wednesday that it will honor Leonardo DiCaprio with its American Riviera Award on Feb. 1.
The Riviera Award recognizes “an artist who had a strong influence on American cinema.”
“We are thrilled to be honoring Leonardo DiCaprio with the American Riviera Award, in a year where he has shown us another layer of his immeasurable talent,” the fest’s executive director, Roger Durling, said. “His performance in Django Unchained reaffirms that he is the most relevant actor of this generation.”
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Disconnect, which looks at a group of characters obsessed with all things technical, is the first fiction film from Rubin, who directed the Oscar-nominated documentary Muderball. Produced by Mickey Liddell and Jennifer Monroe of LD Entertainment and William Horberg of Wonderful Films from a screenplay by Andrew Stern, it played the Venice and Toronto film festivals and will be released theatrically April 19.
