Ask E. Jean by Ivy Meeropol is holding over for second week at IFC Center in New York after a full-house opening weekend and adding the NuArt in LA before expanding. Over 40 theaters are booked for the next month as the distributors build a network to support the documentary about the writer and former TV host who was awarded close to $90 million in two civil lawsuits against Donald Trump.
In other indie action, A24’s wide release Backrooms, shaping up to be the distributor’s best domestic opening ever, leads new releases. Pressure from Focus Features hits 1,600 screens and Black Bear’s Tuner expands to 452. Lionsgate opens Power Ballad at ten locations. Limited releases include Hasan In Gaza, Time And Water, Renoir, The Currents, Forastera and more.
The Ask E. Jean rollout follows multiple news reports this week that the Justice Department had launched an investigation of Carroll. Initial stories speculated the DOJ was going after Carroll for perjury related to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman’s funding of her legal fees but later reports said the alleged probe was looking solely into activity by Hoffman’s nonprofit.
The contribution to Carroll’s defense by the billionaire Trump critic was revealed during Trump’s the appeal. Carroll had said she received no outside funding. The court dismissed the discrepancy, ruling that Carroll wasn’t involved in who was or was not funding her litigation.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois on Friday denied Carroll is the target of a probe. In a statement, Andrew Boutros, the top federal prosecutor in Chicago, said his office “can confirm that it has not opened – and has never opened – a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll.”
Hoffman wrote on X earlier today that the president “is investigating me because I supported E Jean’s lawsuit –– where a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting her, and a court of appeals upheld the decision.”
Abramorama is distributing Ask E. Jean, working with nonprofit Theorem Media which built a large partner network and assembled an Influential Women Collective that includes Amber Tamblyn, Aurora James, Cecily Strong and Ann Shoket. Theorem’s organic social campaign reached half a million views in the lead-up to and through the doc’s opening. Organizational partners on the campaign include the National Organization for Women, TCB, Feminist, Women of Color Unite and The List.
Carroll won two separate civil trials against Trump, in 2023 and 2024. She was awarded a $5 million judgement after a jury determined that the former and current president sexually abused her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. An $83.3 million award for defamation followed. Trump’s appeals have so far been unsuccessful, although no money has been paid out yet.
The doc follows her early days as Miss Cheerleader USA to her rise as a trailblazing journalist, author, and beloved advice columnist who broke barriers as the first female editor at Esquire, Playboy and Outside magazines. Her television talk show Ask E. Jean aired on NBC’s America’s Talking network from 1994 to 1996. She said in the film she was inspired by the #MeToo movement to come forward with her claims against Trump but never considered suing him until “he called me a liar.” Trump also said, “She’s not my type” to deny the allegations.
Written by Ivy Meeropol, Leah Goudsmit and Ferne Pearlstein. Executive Producers include Graydon Carter, Ruth Ann Harnisch – The Harnisch Foundation, Geralyn White Dreyfous, MKR Sternlicht, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Sheila Nevins, Jenny Warburg, Alexia Blaze, Jenny Raskin, Mitch Solomon and Emily Lansbury.
Anthony Maras’ Pressure from Focus Features, Deadline review here, stars Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina and Damian Lewis. It’s set in the tense 72 hours before D-Day as General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Group Captain and chief meteorologist James Stagg face an impossible choice — launch the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history or risk losing the war altogether. Written by Maras and David Haig based on Haig’s 2014 play of the same name.
Lionsgate opens John Carney’s musical comedy drama Power Ballad starring Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas at 10 theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin and Phoenix in a platform release before opening wide next weekend. Premiered at SXSW, see Deadline review. A wedding singer meets a washed-up former boy band singer, who steals one of his songs.
Limited: Cinema Guild debuts Kamal Aljafari With Hasan in Gaza at the Metrograph in NYC. In 2001, the director, who had been imprisoned during the first Intifada, set out on a north-to-south journey through Gaza in search of a man he had met while incarcerated. Accompanied by a local guide, Hasan, and a MiniDV camera, he documented the trip as it unfolded. Two decades later, he revisited this footage, shaping it into a travelogue of cities, neighborhoods, and gathering places, many of which have since been reduced to rubble, and of people whose present fates remain unknown.
National Geographic, partnering with 1-2 Special and Dogwoof, is releasing Time and Water, the Sundance-premiering documentary from Oscar-nominated Sara Dosa (Fire of Love), at Angelika Film Center in NYC. Los Angeles, San Francisco and other markets open on 6/5. Inspired by the book On Time and Water by celebrated Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, who serves as narrator of the film. In 2019, Magnason wrote an obituary for Okjökull, the first glacier in Iceland to be declared moribund after losing much of its surface area.
Film Movement presents Cannes-premiering Renoir by Chie Hayakawa starring newcomer Yui Suzuki at the IFC Center in NYC, the Nuart in LA next weekend and additional market to follow.
Kino Lorber is out with TIFF-premiering The Currents by Milagros Mumenthaler at Film at Lincoln Center in NYC. Opens June 5 at Laemmle Royal in LA, expanding after to select theaters nationwide.
Grasshopper Film opens Forastera, the debut feature from LA-based Spanish filmmaker Lucía Aleñar Iglesias, at Film Forum in NYC and Palm Spring’ SBIFF’s Film Center, heading to LA in June. Premiered at TIFF, where it won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize.
More to come
