One Of 2025’s Best Films Is An Adaptation Of A Short Film From 2007

Structurally, the short movie, “The One and Herb McGWYER PLAYS PLAYS GOLLIS”, is significantly similar to the feature version. It is only 20 minutes in length, but many story excels and even jokes and dialogue lines are completely the same, so it is exciting to expand the story and a new personality vision (Carey Muligan’s Nel) has been added to the narration.

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I recently sat about enlargement with Tim Ki and Tom Bassen, who wrote and shown in both versions of this story, and asked them about the journey to bring this project to life throughout these years after the short. Tom Basn explained how the story expanded in the decisive years:

“When we achieved palaces, perhaps the text program was only about 10 or 12 pages, then the short one went out to half an hour. […] For us, the seeds were planted, such as, “Well, we really got something of those characters and got a completely special dynamic with this short, so we must definitely come back to that.” And then, very smart [sarcastically]We did not return to it to the best part of about 15 years.

Then in 2020, during insurance – but I think we were talking about it anyway – we reviewed the observations that we made when we finished the palaces and thought about it as an advantage, and we started writing the script and set this idea that Herb enjoyed with a former colleague who was in a relationship with Charles also calling for an attempt to try to do something that is just preventing mere organization. Suddenly, he opened the movie to us, I think. We suddenly realized that it was an opportunity not only to tell the story of an artist and a fan that does not really happen, but about the lost love and nostalgia for the past and longing for things from the past and moving forward. I think once we discovered all of this, we were really excited about the scale we felt that the movie could suddenly be. “

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The result is beautiful, funny, charming, sweet and sad, all hovering together to form one of my favorite films for 2025 so far. You can listen to my full interview with Basden and Key in today’s episode of The /Film Daily PodCast:

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“The Ballad of Wallis Island” is currently in selected theaters and opens widely on April 18, 2025.