#brian crano

I Don't Understand You (dirs. David Joseph Craig & Brian Crano) x SXSW 2024.

Comedian Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells star as a wealthy L.A. gay couple vacationing in Italy, while awaiting word about a potential adoption, when violence strikes their special anniversary dinner at a remote farmhouse restaurant. Its mixture of genres, from broad comedy to foreign bloody horror, mines material about being lost in translation and ugly Americans, tries to balance heartfelt emotions about starting a family and the crushing disappointment of anything threatening it. There's a fun mishmash of movie genres, but the finale feels hollow.

Permission (2018)

Anna (Rebecca Hall) and Will (Dan Stevens), were each other's first every-things: first kiss, first love, first and only relationship. Now, 10 years in, at Anna’s 30th birthday party, as Will is about to propose, the couple’s best friend makes a drunken toast, suggesting that they should sleep around before their inevitable marriage. The joke lands like a lead balloon, but the thought lingers until Anna proposes that they try opening their relationship -- as a sexual experiment. Together, they venture out of the purely monogamous boundaries of their relationship and, along the way, evolve.

Directed by:   Brian Crano

Starring:   Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Francois Arnaud, Gina Gershon, Jason Sudeikis, Morgan Spector, David Joseph Craig