Sally Potter’s Pioneering ‘Rage’ Will Be Posted Entirely on Instagram to Celebrate Its 15th Anniversary

Samantha Bergeson
·4-min read

Sally Potter is taking her “Rage” to Instagram. IndieWire can exclusively reveal that the lauded British filmmaker will release her iconic 2009 film in a series of Instagram posts beginning on February 23.

“Rage” was the first full-length feature film specifically designed to be watched on mobile phones. Shot in a vertical format as a series of to-camera monologues, the Instagram release will feature a new shot being posted daily, leading up to the March 8 theatrical release from Abramorama to mark the 15th anniversary of the film’s Berlinale debut. “Rage” will screen with anniversary theatrical and non-theatrical engagements across North America and land on a Direct-to-Consumer digital and VOD placements later.

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The film first premiered at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, and follows an unseen student named Michelangelo who goes behind the scenes at a New York fashion show. However, over the course of a week, Michelangelo is thrust into the center of a murder investigation as he interviews possible witnesses to the crime.

The Instagram rollout mimics the movie’s protagonist Michelangelo’s own voyage onscreen. The film was originally released on mobile applications via Babelgum in 2009 before having a theatrical run.

“Rage” stars Jude Law as a female model named Minx, Judi Dench as a fashion critic, and real-life model Lily Cole as a fictional catwalker named Lettuce Leaf. The ensemble cast is rounded out by Riz Ahmed, Eddie Izzard, John Leguizamo, Steve Buscemi, Bob Balaban, David Oyelowo, Dianne Wiest, Patrick J. Adams, Simon Abkarian, Adriana Barraza, and Jakob Cedergren.

“‘Rage’ is an exploration of the burgeoning power of social media and the generational divide between those born into a digital world and fluent with its rapidly evolving forms, and those for whom it remains a dark, opaque art,” Potter said in an official statement. “The setting — the competitive, narcissistic, and economically unstable world of fashion with its hangers on, critics, models, dressers, seamstresses, and publicists — is an atmosphere made chaotic by the feeding frenzy of celebrity. But it is also a world in which, despite appearances to the contrary, each individual grapples with insecurity and private terror. When this world of glittering surfaces becomes enmeshed with violence and death, it is Michelangelo who sees, hears, and records the unfolding events for posterity posting his images into a hungry world.”

Producers Christopher Sheppard and Andrew Fierberg added, “Instagram since its launch in 2010 has become an inventory of mass self-portraiture. ‘Rage’ takes this a step further, exploring with each portrait-like post how storytelling itself has shifted in the age of social media. We are all excited to see it presented to audiences exactly as Sally first imagined it, short form social media posts directly from Michelangelo to the world.”

On February 29, after the Instagram release is completed, Potter and the cast will livestream a Q&A panel from the Rio Cinema in Hackney, London. Letterboxd‘s Ella Kemp will moderate the discussion, which will exclusively debut on Instagram.

The 2024 multi-modal release strategy for “Rage” was created in association with Theorem Media, a U.S.-based non-profit organization “that empowers all forms of storytelling aimed at inspiring critical thinking, media literacy, and a more educated and civically engaged society.” Adventure Pictures, Studio Fierberg, and Abramorama co-shared the announcement.

Abramorama CEO Karol Martesko-Fenster and Theorem Media CEO Douglas Dicconson added, “We are so grateful to coordinate this innovative release team including all of us across both Theorem Media and Abramorama, as well as everyone at Adventure Pictures, Tarbert Digital, and GATHR, coming together to bring Sally’s visionary form of storytelling forward as it was intended. It has been so fascinating to see the entire media landscape take form around a story, as predicted by that story, over a 15-year period. It seems that technology has finally caught up to Sally.”

As Oscar-nominated “Orlando” and “Rage” writer-director Potter told The New York Times in 2009 in a prophetic statement, “We are culturally saturated with fashion. We are visually inundated with it. It’s so visible now, so dense in our imagination. … Whatever one shows, by the time the film comes out, is out of date.” Potter also helmed eight other features across her career thus far.

The Instagram premiere of “Rage” follows the marketing trend that Paramount and Warner Bros. recently used with the respective releases of “Mean Girls” and “The Sopranos” on TikTok to celebrate anniversaries.

Check out the anniversary trailer for “Rage” below, plus an IndieWire-exclusive clip.

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