Exclusive: Director Tom McCarthy talks Stillwater and working with Matt Damon
Coming out this week in theaters from Focus Features is the dramatic thriller Stillwater, directed by Academy Award winner Tom McCarthy and starring Matt Damon.
Stillwater follows an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma who travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.
Co-starring Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin, Deanna Dunagan, and Lilou Siauvaud, Stillwater was written by McCarthy, Marcus Hinchey, Thomas Bidegain, and Noé Debré.
For McCarthy, this is his first theatrical release since Spotlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and won McCarthy the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. His previous directorial work were the independent films The Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win. He also wrote the film Million Dollar Arm and served as a director and executive producer for the Netflix television series 13 Reasons Why. BlackFilmandTV.com’s Wilson Morales spoke with McCarthy about working with Matt Damon and shifting the story from the true-life story of Amanda Know.