Projection Room: a welcome return to the Renata... five years later

“If Lost Highway, Lost In Translation and Exterminating Angel were to procreate, this would be their bastard offspring”.

Director Ed Greenberg on The Renata Road

At the start of 2017, TheJackSmit.com (as we were known back then, well before the days of radio, podcasts or YouTube) partnered with local production company Beyond the Bar to do a feature on their crowdfunded thriller The Renata Road, a movie which has some serious promise with a lot of great homegrown talent, as well as the feature film debut of former TV quizzer turned actor CJ de Mooi - it earned a 5 star review from us, as well as becoming the honorary Film of the Year alongside Dunkirk, namely because of what it did as a 2 hour film made independently of any studio in the UK.

Since that review though, we haven’t had much in the way of updates, or even screenings (IMDB have falsely put the film down as a January 2017, then a January 2021 release, and I am putting this fact in print as my way of of getting them to correct it and verify it)- it truly has been a long road to getting the film out to a wider audience than just the invited press, Kickstarter backers, and those who have learned about the film over the years through this blog. But all that changed on Monday, and to quote D:REAM, things can only get better. Following a long awaited reunion over Odeon’s Screen Unseen showing that evening, the film’s director (and someone who has become a firm friend and collaborator over the last few years in and out of the industry) Ed Greenberg texted me with some big news, which was backed up with a tweet from CJ. And this is something I have been dying to report since that first showing to the film’s backers on that cold Monday night in Lytham.

The Renata Road is on the festival circuit at last.

As it stands, the NewBorn festival in Berlin has selected it as a semi-finalist, and the next 12 months are looking incredibly promising with a submission list in double figures. I obviously have to be very careful about what I can reveal, as I’ve seen the production of a film like this first hand: this is the difficult bit. Making a film is all good, but getting it out there is easier said than done as the festival circuit can be brutal. But it’s off to a delayed, yet very encouraging start. As ever, we will update you all on the latest across our content - including The Journal, Talking Smit About Film and here on the blog - but it will be sooner rather than later before this film is finally unleashed. Believe me, it will be worth the wait. So on behalf of myself and the entire TheJackSmit Ventures team, congratulations Roadies. Now the real fun begins.