THE SEAGULL

One summer at a lakeside Russian estate, friends and family gather for a weekend in the countryside. While everyone is caught up in passionately loving someone who loves somebody else, a tragicomedy unfolds about art, fame, human folly and the eternal desire to live a purposeful life. The film explores, with comedy and melancholy, the obsessive nature of love, the tangled relationships between parents and children, and the transcendent value and psychic toll of art.

Michael Mayer (1960) is an American theatre, film and television director and a playwright. He studied acting at New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. After directing on- and off-Broadway for more than 15 years, devoting himself to musicals and opera directing as well, Mayer made his feature film directorial debut with A Home at the End of the World in 2004. Mayer directed a film adaptation of Anton Chekhov's classic play The Seagull, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018.

Best known as a director of musicals that started on the margins and reached Broadway (…), Mayer avoids conventions of the stage in his third feature by keeping his actors in motion or in shadowy interior close-ups. The play’s condensed fourth act may feel like a shadow to Chekhov devotees, but the playwright’s view of these Russian dark ages comes through clearly.

David d'Arcy, Screen Daily