Jim Vendiola

FILMMAKER : KINOSAUR FILMS

current projects

 

FINANCING / SCRIPT & NOVELLA AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Family was chosen. The rest could go to hell.

WAIF*
Feature / Body Horror, LGBTQ+, Adaptation
(Co-written with Shelley Gustavson and Samantha Kolesnik)

An adaptation of Samantha Kolesnik's acclaimed horror novella.

When Angela’s superficially lavish yet deeply unhappy marriage is upended by a chance encounter with the supposed man of her dreams, her obsession with him brings both revelatory awakenings, and dangerous, terrifying transformations.

Concept: The biological aberrations from Ducournau’s Titane, Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder, and the work of David and Brandon Cronenberg collide with the underground world of fetish film, and a rough-and-tumble found family of queer femmes like a modern-day The Outsiders.

*A Sundance Labs second-rounder.

 
FINANCING / SCRIPT AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

FINANCING / SCRIPT AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

Home is where the hurt is

HOMESICK*
Feature / Supernatural Thriller
(Co-written with Shelley Gustavson)

Following a traumatic breakdown, a bratty young art student is forced to recover in the isolation of her father’s mid-construction home. But as she works to rebuild her world, she stumbles across a dark, decades-old mystery.

Concept: The youthful, sun-dappled abandon of Badlands swallowed by the lurking, psychotic dread of Personal Shopper. Peppered with the strange, obsessive air of Vertigo and the poetically haunting pulse of Sharp Objects.

*Partially supported by an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

FINANCING / PROOF OF CONCEPT & SCRIPT AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

A monster with one hundred eyes

ARGUS*
Limited Series / Crime Thriller
(In collaboration with LeLe Park)

A disaffected private eye pursues a murderous cyberstalker, whose nightmarish maze of digital and real-life deceptions point to the forgotten cold case of a missing teen.

Concept: A neo-noir that weaves an unnerving tapestry of You Were Never Really Here, The Vanishing, and Euphoria amidst modern technoparanoia and surveillance capitalism.

View our project page + creator profiles at WarnerMedia OneFifty!

*Partially supported by the NewNarratives Program and development grant from NewFilmmakers LA and WarnerMedia OneFifty.

 

NOW AVAILABLE

A modern love turned sour

PRETTY PICKLE*
Short / Horror-Comedy

As he spends more time with his new girlfriend, a young man begins to privately dwell upon one of her quirks, leading him to a troubling discovery.

Concept: Frances Ha dates Psycho.

*Partially supported by a 3Arts “Make a Wave” grant, and an Individual Artist Support grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, as well as in-kind assistance from Keslow Camera Chicago and Canon, USA.

Watch now via Directors Notes or view festival news and reviews here.

 
FESTIVAL TOUR / STREAMING ONLINE

NOW AVAILABLE

A love story about books and bondage

LIBRARY HOURS
Short / Erotic Arthouse

“The material in the hands of a lesser writer or director could have been exploitative, sexually gratuitous and even insensitive, but under Jim Vendiola [it] is anything but.” (StarryMag)

A recent widow named Camille falls into a strange, long-distance courtship with a librarian named Delphine, her dead husband's first wife. Fifty Shades smarter than...that other movie.

Co-starring Melissa Vento in her debut performance, and the acclaimed "feral child" of alternative + fetish modeling, Cam Damage (NSFW).

Watch now via Film Shortage or Filmography.

 
SEEKING FINANCING / SCRIPT AVAILABLE ON THE BLACKLIST OR UPON REQUEST

FINANCING / SCRIPT AVAILABLE ON THE BLACKLIST OR UPON REQUEST

A Summer Gothic

SUNNY DAYS
Feature / Period Drama, Coming of Age

During the summer of 1972, two step-siblings—Rosemary (sixteen) and Dick (nineteen)—inhabit their affluent uncle's isolated beach home while he's away, encountering and harboring an enigmatic drifter named Daisy, with whom they form a strange, perhaps troubling bond. Together they will experience moments of youthful freedom in a bygone era, poignant self-discovery, and ultimately a horrific and unforgettable event.

Concept: The Virgin Suicides drops acid with Badlands.

Script Praise: 
"Raw and unsettling"
"A beautifully written, complex character study with a bewitching atmosphere...evaluated purely on depth, artfulness, and insight of its writing, Sunny Days is better than the vast majority of scripts"
"Quite different from the mainstream"
-The Black List

"Subtle and nuanced...a beautiful script (with a great soundtrack."
-Electric City Entertainment (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines)

"Dark and heavy"
"Extraordinarily powerful"
-OddLot Entertainment (Drive, Ender's Game)

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