On his new album, High Drama, pop star Adam Lambert covers hit by other artists, including Culture Club’s 1982 smash “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” The American Idol alum’s next project also finds the LGBTQ icon delving into the past while breaking new creative ground. He stars in this year’s Fairyland, an AIDS drama set mostly in 1970s and ’80s San Francisco.

As the first major festival of the year, Sundance has the honor of giving a first glimpse of what cinema has to offer in the forthcoming months. Making its return to Park City, Utah, after two years of virtual editions, Sundance’s expansive lineup features a blend of high-profile titles and low-key indies equally worthy of attention.

This year’s festival had much to offer in terms of literary adaptations, with source materials ranging from a graphic novel to a viral short story to a coming-of-age memoir.

The thing about shooting a movie set in 1970s San Francisco in 2023 is that those two time periods are actually not the same. The world changes! So when Fairyland, a movie based on a memoir of the same name by Alysia Abbott about growing up with a gay dad during the height of the AIDS epidemic in San Fran, decided to shoot on location, the team had their work cut out for them. “San Francisco in the ’70s was the coolest thing to see in a movie,” said director Andrew Durham at the film’s Sundance premiere. “The production team did an incredible job at finding those places,” added Scoot McNairy, who plays Steve Abbott in the film.

When Andrew Durham was searching for financing for “Fairyland,” his film adaptation of Alysia Abbott’s memoir about growing up in San Francisco with her gay single father and the impact that the AIDS crisis had on the community of LGBTQ Bohemians who populated her world, he received a shocking rejection.

Avec Fairyland, Sofia Coppola s’apprête à nous offrir un nouveau film sur le passage à l’âge adulte, plus connu sous le nom de coming-of-age movie en anglais. Surdouée du genre, elle l’a notamment exploré pour The Virgin Suicides en 1999 et The Bling Ring avec Emma Watson en 2013. C’est bien simple, Sofia Coppola est bel et bien la spécialiste incontestée pour donner vie à la mélancolie de cet âge, qui plus est lorsqu'elle est teintée d’une certaine détresse. En adaptant les mémoires d’Alysia Abbott publiés en 2013 (qui ont d'ailleurs été nommés choix de la rédaction du New York Times), la cinéaste mise sur une histoire aussi émouvante qu’importante.

Few filmmakers pin down the coming-of-age experience quite like Sofia Coppola. From The Virgin Suicides to The Bling Ring, she understands its melancholy and madness. It makes sense then, that the next project she’s opted to get involved with sees her return to familiar ground. Fairyland, which Sofia Coppola is producing, is an adaptation of the 2013 memoir of the same name. It tells the story of Alysia Abbott, a woman recalling her youth spent in San Francisco with her father, a bisexual man, in the 70s and 80s. Of course, the story intersects with the AIDS crisis, and how it affected her family.

EXCLUSIVE: Maria Bakalova (Bodies Bodies Bodies) has joined the casts of Andrew Durham’s feature directorial debut Fairyland for American Zoetrope, and Jerry Seinfeld’s first film Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story for Netflix. Details as to the roles she’ll be playing in the features have not been disclosed, though we hear she’ll only be making a cameo in the latter.