Joint Venture has released the first trailer for André Is an Idiot, the Sundance and Mill Valley award-winning documentary that has quietly become one of the most talked about nonfiction films on the festival circuit. The film opens in theaters beginning March 6.

André Is an Idiot Refuses to Behave

Directed around the singular personality of André Riccardi. The documentary blends raw vérité footage with surreal stop motion sequences to tell the story of a man confronting the consequences of a diagnosis he admits could have been prevented. The result is not a pity party. It is funny, blunt, chaotic, and unexpectedly life-affirming.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Audience Award for U.S. Documentary and the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award. It went on to take the Audience Favorite Documentary prize at the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Special Documentary Jury Prize for Impactful Storytelling at the Hamptons Film Festival.

Big Wins on the Festival Circuit

Since then, it has toured an aggressive festival run. Screening at Sarasota, Dallas International, Berkshire International, Docutime, Nantucket, NewportFILM, Middlebury New Filmmakers, Aspen, Yellow Springs, New Next, Bend, Montclair, Globe Docs, Denver, and Coast Film and Music Festival.

The hook is simple and brutal. Riccardi decides to document what comes next. Refusing sentimentality and leaning hard into dark humor, honesty, and moments of absurd imagination. The stop motion segments should not work on paper. They do on-screen.

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