Wunderkind: Carson McCullers

Online ticket sales end at 5:00pm on October 23. Additional tickets will be available at the door starting at 7:30.

Wunderkind, Carson McCullers, a film by Claudia Müller and co-produced by the Carson McCullers Center, will have its premier in New York City the day before we screen it in McCuller’s adopted home town, Nyack. 2024, Germany/USA, 55 minutes

With her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers became a star of the New York literary scene and a celebrated child prodigy in the spring of 1940. At just 23 years of age, the author, who was born in Georgia, published a novel that gave outsiders in her society a voice and became a global success. The writer, who only lived to the age of 50 and suffered from serious illnesses throughout her life, left behind a relatively small but powerful oeuvre. A few of her other books included Reflections in a Golden Eye, A Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Café. Often referred to as the “author of loneliness”, she deals with topics in her works that are more relevant today than ever: racism, the search for identity, homosexuality, feminism and much more. It is above all the epic power of her language, but also her doubts about the expressive possibilities of language itself, which she expresses in all her stories, that make her work so special. Her gaze draws attention to things, situations and connections, but above all to characters who only appear as peripheral figures in other works. Her heroines and heroes are those who are otherwise overlooked and whose inner conflict she was able to put into words. This film aims to bring to light the work of the most famous unknown in American literature.

Carson McCullers lived in Nyack from 1945 to her death in 1967. She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

There will be a discussion after the film with director Claudia Müller and producer Nick Norwood, who is also the executive director of the McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians.

 Presented by Rivertown Film and the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University.

About the filmmaker, Claudia Müller

Claudia Müller is based in Berlin. Her most recent film, Elfriede Jelinek: Language Unleashed, a documentary about the Austrian Nobel Laureate in Literature, won last year’s equivalent of both the German and Austrian Oscars for best documentary. This gave her the opportunity to make a new film of her choosing, and she chose Carson McCullers. Her work focuses exclusively on documentary films about women artists.

About the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians

The Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, is dedicated to preserving the legacy of Carson McCullers; nurturing writers and musicians, educating young people; and fostering literary, musical, artistic, and intellectual culture in the United States and abroad. It also owns Carson McCullers’ childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, as well as the home in Nyack where Carson McCullers lived from 1945 to 1967, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

“A film that could have settled for being a masterclass in technique, but instead goes deeper, exploring questions of artistry, authorship, legacy.” NPR

“Had The Christophers just been a cross-generational punch-up, the sort of flinty showdown designed to throw off pleasurable sparks, you’d still walk away content. It remains a conduit for two of the best performances you’ll see all year.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

“The Christophers is largely a comedy, but it’s also about all that we gain and lose with age, and about how we sometimes need young people to bring us back to ourselves.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“Having lost the inspiration that guided him to greatness, Julian is an artist who can no longer paint, and Lori is an artist who has lost all confidence in there being a place for her work in the larger world. For all the undercurrents about fame, commodification, and reputation that flow through The Christophers, at its core is a more plaintive lament about what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back.” – Alison Willmore, Vulture

“Go see The Christophers. Show up, and support a tiny, talky experiment that has no relationship to IP or sequels or box-office projection. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s also never, as Lori grudgingly notes about Julian’s work, uninteresting. And in this cultural moment, that’s an authentic win.” – Elizabeth Weitzman, Time Out

“The Christophers is a work of criticism that deftly distinguishes different approaches to criticism.” ­– Justin Chang, The New Yorker 

“Brims with hilarious dialogue, lightly satirical observations of a culture that treats art as a commodity, and satisfying payoffs to a number of story elements planted early on.” – Seth Katz, Slant Magazine

“In the end, this film about artists becomes a work of art in its own right. The more you look at it, the more its many components reveal themselves to you.” – Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap

“Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a sardonic art legend who meets his intellectual match in frank preservationist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). In a test of wits and wills held mostly in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes both characters to return to their former passions through philosophical conversations that reflect his own career.” – Robert Daniels, Screen International

“It bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“The Christophers is a talky, at times incredibly funny, comedy drama with plot reversals that make it feel like it’s on the verge of a thriller. It doesn’t end up there, at least not strictly, but it’s unpredictable enough to never make us entirely sure just where it’s heading.” – Benjamin Lee, Guardian

“There’s no room for anything shy of genius in The Christophers, a crackling original drama about artistic legacy in all its facets, directed by Steven Soderbergh , from a script by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move) and starring two top-notch English actors of wildly different backgrounds and styles, Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, at the top of their respective games.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

“With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American Cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs. – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast