Skateland

Directed by: Anthony Burns
Written by: Anthony Burns, Brandon Freeman, Heath Freeman
Full credits at IMDb

Skateland, a pretty—and pretty conventional!—coming-of-age story, takes place when the 70s became the 80s, a nationally transformative era that director and co-writer Burns reduces to a time of personal upheaval: Ritchie (Shiloh Fernandez), the manager of the titular roller rink and "a writer," watches his parents split up and Skateland shut down. He lives in a suburb—you know, one of those places where all the girls look like movie stars—and so part of growing up involves deciding to leave his hometown; you can't make anything of yourself in the sticks. As such, he joins a long line of movie Palookavillians, from those in 1977's Saturday Night Fever to this March's White Irish Drinkers. "I gotta get outta here," Ritchie's sister says, quoting Tony Manero almost verbatim.


Watch the trailer: