Mari Sanders' feature debut, premiering at Tribeca, follows a young woman navigating disability as a rite of passage, with characters with all their edges. "Who says people with disabilities are good people?"
Vera is 23, fun-loving and entirely unconcerned with the future — until an accident leaves her in a wheelchair and forces her to figure out who she actually is. Stand Up, the feature debut of Dutch writer-director Mari Sanders, follows Vera as she’s drawn into the world of Zander, a 22-year-old aspiring stand-up comedian who has been a wheelchair user since birth — and who wears that fact like a badge of honor.
The film world premieres in the international narrative competition at the Tribeca Festival on June 6. Starring Lucia Zemene, Daan Buringa, Kendrick Etmon, Hana Hussein, Guy Clemens and Tamar van den Dop, it was shot by Sal Kroonenberg and edited by Yorgos Mavropsaridis. Loco Films is handling sales.
Sanders, who uses a wheelchair himself, spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the film’s autobiographical roots, why disability has been an “artistic goldmine” that cinema keeps getting wrong, and what happened when the Dutch film industry’s casting call for wheelchair-using actors received exactly zero responses.
