Chicago Director, Tre Manchester announces that his indie feature, Bleed American has been picked up by Cow Lamp Films in Chicago for national distribution, with a release date in three weeks on Tubi and Amazon.
The coming-of-age story was inspired by Manchester’s memories of growing up in Northwest Indiana.
“In my hometown, upper class kids would throw parties in their parents’ houses that had pool tables in the basement,” says the filmmaker. “Ten minutes south, people were driving pickups and lighting bonfires to hang out and drink beer.”
It tells the story of a family that is fractured by the illness and hospitalization of single mother Lisa Granger (Kathryn Haynes). In her absence, older brother Larson (Jarrett Maier) struggles to assume parental responsibility while younger brother LJ (Austin Holloway) battles with his attraction towards a local troublemaker who shows him compassion.
Filming took place in the fall of 2018, in what Manchester refers to as “a master class in speed and how to make a film fast” with a forty person crew on location in Chicago, Lowell, Indiana and Schererville, Indiana.
“The Midwest is a character in itself,” Manchester explains. “That’s kind of the way we wanted to treat it. Most people see cornfields, but there’s a lot to it. It’s diverse within a ten-mile radius and distinct to situations and people.”
Bleed American premiered in 2019 at the Classic Cinemas Lake Theatre in Oak Park. It was well received in the festival rounds winning the George Lindsey UNA Film Festival Best Narrative Feature in 2019.
Manchester is a Chicago-based writer, producer, director. In late 2013, he founded production company Atlas Pictures with colleagues from The Illinois Institute of Art – Chicago. Their 2014 short dramatic film, Melancholic, took the team to the Top 200 Finals in HBO’s Project Greenlight, premiering on HBO as part of the final public-voting round before the series’ start.
In September 2014, after numerous festival appearances around the globe, Manchester penned The Things We’ve Seen, his debut feature which has since gone on to screen at over ten festivals around the globe, winning nine awards and four nominations. It was also awarded the coveted Gold Remi award at the 50th Worldfest Houston, joining the ranks of George Lucas’s THX1138 and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin.
Cow Lamp, who will be distributing Bleed American, provides the full-service distribution opportunities to independent filmmakers that are difficult to access without the support of large studios, reaching audiences through platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes.
Bleed American will be released in three weeks on Tubi and Amazon to start.
