Exclusive: Boogie Woogie to Ari Gold’s Musically-Inclined Nostalgic Drama The Song of Sway Lake

A valuable jazz record incites a romantic adventure in the ripples of a nostalgic lakeside community. In the swings and sways of the stunted familial ties and foreign accomplices of The Song of Sway Lake, what could go wrong?

Plenty. Life isn’t always a jim-jam jubilee.

Actor, director and writer Ari Gold (Adventures of Power) debuts his sophomore directorial feature outing with The Song of Sway Lake, co-written with collaborator Elizabeth Bull and featuring original music and songs from his twin brother, Ethan Gold.

“Spending summers in the Adirondacks as a kid, I became fascinated by this giant swath of wilderness that seemed to exist outside of time,” Gold said in his director’s statement.

“In the lakes was the history of the great American royalty, now in decline and often in conflict with year-round residents. My grandparents, while not members of this royalty, aspired to it. But the present was always catching up to them, as it was to all whose nostalgia gave even the sunny days a tinge of melancholy. The real sway was always out of reach.”

Sway Lake features Rory Culkin (Jack Goes Home, Scream 4), Robert Sheehan (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, “Love / Hate”), and Mary Beth Peil (The Stepford Wives, Dawson’s Creek) caught in the midst of a lite heist against the backdrop of summer romance, family drama and charming quirk. Who says physical media is a dying medium?

Sift through your dad’s vinyls and check out the exclusive key art and trailer below.

THE

This is a story of a specific melody: the melody of my grandfather’s generation.

The unmatchable grace of his lost America.

The noble but impossible quest for perfection, and its collateral victims.

 SONG

No medicine awakens memory like a song.

A song promises that we can return to a world we once knew, or only wanted to know.

We dance to the melodies of the dead.

 OF

Three characters crave memories that aren’t theirs. An impossible possession.

Ollie wants to change the past, Nikolai wants to borrow Charlie’s past, Charlie wants to stop time itself.

They believe if they can possess a thing, a moment, another person, they can rewrite their own song.

 SWAY

I also want to control the flow, but when I have the guts to ease up, the sway is graceful, easy, exquisite.

Only in a dance, the sway of a boat, does the present return to life.

Ice to water. Tears to love.

I let go of what’s not mine and the water becomes truth.

 LAKE

The deep is always below our boats.

Longing, passion, death, life. Each word ripples against the other.

This is what I’ll wise up to – every day –

Dance with what is. That’s the real sway. – Ari Gold 

The Song of Sway Lake opens in theaters September 21, 2018 and On Digital and On Demand September 25, 2018. Key art and image courtesy of The Orchard.