Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus to close 17th Hamptons International Film Festival

The 2009 Hamptons International Film Festival takes place from October 8th to 12th. Opening this year’s festival is the directorial debut by Shana Feste, The Greatest, starring Susan Sarandon, Pierce Brosnan, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kravitz.

The Greatest is the story of a family that’s disintegrating as they deal with the death of their child and their surviving son’s drug use. The Greatest explores the ways in which love can persist and life can re-assert itself in the face of seemingly all-consuming tragedy.

The Centerpiece film the fest will be Solitary Man, which was directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, and stars Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, Susan Sarandon, Mary-Louise Parker, Jesse Eisenberg and Jenna Fisher. Solitary Man features Douglas as a New York businessman experiencing a mid-life slump so severe that it is more catastrophe than crisis.

Closing the festival is the U.S. premiere of Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, starring the late Heath Ledger, as well as Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell, who stepped in to assume Ledger’s role after his tragic passing during the film’s production. “Parnassus” also stars Andrew Garfield, Christopher Plummer and Lily Cole. Doctor Parnassus is the proprietor of a traveling “Imaginarium” in which paying customers are invited to cross into a hallucinatory otherworld to uncover their true selves. Gilliam gives free rein to his signature whimsicality in the Imaginarium’s rich, cartoonish, constantly shifting landscape, and the adventurous film brims with affectionate nods to its late star, Heath Ledger.