FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kelly Hargraves
Phone: 1-323-662-1930
kelly.hargraves@firstrunfeatures.com

First Run Features to Release

Opening January 29, 2010 at New York’s IFC Center

With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers - one mixed-race and one Korean - Brooklyn teen Avery grew up in a unique and loving household. When her curiosity about her African-American roots grows, Avery decides to contact her birth mother, which thrusts her into a complicated exploration of race, identity, and family that threatens to distance her from the parents she’s always known. But when it seems like her life is unraveling, Avery decides to pick up the pieces and make sense of her identity, with inspiring results.

At its world premiere in Tribeca, the festival described Off and Running as “a unique and very American coming-of-age story that delves into the psyche of race through a fresh and careful dissection of a family's struggle.” Tribeca audiences voted the film a Top Ten Audience Favorite. Subsequent festivals nods include the Jury Award for Outstanding Documentary Feature at Outfest, the Jury Award for Best Documentary at Philadelphia QFest, and the WGA Documentary Screenplay Award at Silverdocs.

Recently named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Off and Running director/producer Nicole Opper also produced the five-part television documentary series LSS for Here! Networks (Fall 2008), Macky Alston's Emmy-nominated The Killer Within, (Toronto Int'l Film Festival 2006, Discovery Channel 2007) and Peter Miller's Sacco and Vanzetti (First Run Features 2007 release, Winner 'Best Historical Film,' American Historical Association). Opper's documentary short, Song of Hannah, is distributed by The National Center for Jewish Film. She has a degree in Film Production from NYU.

Off and Running will open theatrically in New York in January and air nationally on the PBS series P.O.V. later in 2010.

OFF AND RUNNING
76 minutes, color, digital/video, 2009
Nicole Opper, Director/Producer
Sharese Bullock, Producer
Macky Alston, Executive Producer
Sandra Itkoff, Executive Producer
Jacob Okada, Director of Photography, Co-Producer
Cheree Dillon, Editor
Daniel Bernard Roumain, Composer
Richard Hankin, Creative Consultant
Judith Helfand, Consulting Producer

“Fascinating…Opper allows Avery’s story to unfold with the sort of naturalistic drama usually associated with scripted features…a startlingly sharp portrait.” - Eric Kohn, indieWIRE

“Stirring and accomplished... An engrossing portrait of a highly blended modern family.”
- Dennis Harvey, Variety

“Probing deep into the nature of constructed identity. this film is an alternately wistful, touching and challenging portrait of [Avery's] rocky coming-of-age.” - Brandon Harris, Filmmaker Magazine

“One of the most poignant films in this year's festival... a unique and very American coming-of-age story that delves into the psyche of race through a fresh and careful dissection of a family's struggle.”
- Tribeca Film Festival

More information, including the press kit, photos, and additional playdates, is available at www.firstrunfeatures.com or www.offandrunningthefilm.com