(Los Angeles, CA) – February 6th, 2018. FilmFestivals.com is pleased to announce a Special Advance Screening of one of the year’s most anticipated indie features, the sci-fi thriller Chimera, at the 2018 edition of the Fantasporto International Film Festival. This sophisticated film is helmed by first-time writer-director Maurice Haeems and is produced by Jay Sitaram. The movie stars Emmy-nominee Henry Ian Cusick (Lost), Oscar-nominee Kathleen Quinlan (Apollo 13), and LGBT-rights advocate Erika Ervin a.k.a. Amazon Eve(American Horror Story).
SCREENING DETAILS:
Fantasporto: Panorama Section
Date: Saturday, February 24th, 2018
Time: 9:15 PM
Location: Rivoli Theatre, Porto, Portugal
In Attendance: Maurice Haeems (writer-director) and Jay Sitaram (producer) will be present at the festival.
In Chimera, a brilliant but disturbed scientist freezes his children alive, to arrest the progression of their deadly genetic disease, while he races against time to unlock the secrets of immortality encoded within the DNA of the Turritopsis jellyfish. Chimera adds a new voice to the debate on human stem cells, animal testing, and genetics, and raises important philosophical questions about humanity, mortality and morality.
TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vfuSV5P-LY
The film that Cryptic Rock Magazine rated “5 stars” and that Horror Societydescribed as “a stunning work of art” was inspired by the director’s real-life experiences as loved ones struggled with severe life-threatening illnesses, organ failure, and genetic diseases. Chimera asks the existential questions “can humans live forever?” and if you could, “would you want to live forever?”
“My belief is that humans will prevail, and ultimately a world without suffering will be attainable, and from that utopian dream, that ethereal chimera, came the ideas for this story,” says director Maurice Haeems.
Chimera’s intimate yet high-profile cast includes Henry Ian Cusick (Quint), Kathleen Quinlan (Masterson), Karishma Ahluwalia (Jessie), Jenna Harrison(Charlie), and Erika Ervin (Gruze). The children at the center of the plot, Miles and Flora, were very close to the project, as Raviv Haeems (Miles) is the director’s son, and Kaavya Jayaram (Flora) is the producer’s daughter.
Chimera is a Praxis Media Ventures production. Written and directed by Maurice Haeems; Producers Jay Sitaram and Eric B. Fleischman; Consulting Producers Eric M. Klein and Franco Sama; Line Producer Ken Golden; Casting Director Mark Tillman; Cinematographer David Kruta; Editors Brian Scofieldand Fritz Feick; Composer Aled Roberts; Production Designer Lawrence Sampson.
“My appreciation for the genre dates back to my work as a distributor in the nineties, releasing two of Wes Craven’s films, as well as Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners, Chuck Russel’s The Blog, Mike Nicholl’s Wolf, Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein and the acclaimed Independence Day. Now I am proud to add Chimera to this brilliant lineage of horror/sci-fi masterpieces,” says Festival Advisor and Film Curator, Bruno Chatelin of FilmFestivals.com who included Chimera in his Best for Fests section.
About the Director:
Over the last two decades, Mumbai-born and Los Angeles-based Maurice Haeems has enjoyed successful careers in mechanical/fluid engineering, investment banking, and software entrepreneurship. In 2014, Maurice decided to pursue his fourth career (and first love) – storytelling and filmmaking. He returned to school to study screenwriting and directing, and wrote his first screenplay, Chimera. He collaborated with former investors and business partners to raise the capital for the project. Chimera was shot in Fitchburg, MA and will be released in 2018.
Maurice continues to be enthralled by advancements in biotechnology, the extension of human lifespans, and the science/fiction of immortality and transhumanism. He has completed the screenplay and begun development on his second feature (The Archetype) which further explores these themes and their impact on the human experience.
For more information about Chimera, please visit the following links:
FILM’S WEBSITE: www.ChimeraTheMovie.com
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/ChimeraTheMovie
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/Chimera2018
TWITTER: www.twitter.com/ChimeraTheMovie
HASHTAGS: #ChimeraTheMovie
