Plot Synopsis
After a series of unfortunate events, ARNIE MILLER is forced to attend The Old Saybrook Academy, a specialty boarding school in coastal Connecticut. As his first few weeks go by, Arnie struggles to take the semester in stride as his classmates drag him on weekend trips into New York City that thows Arnie into a world of sex, drugs and opulence he didn’t know existed. Amidst lavish hotel parties, drugs and girls, Arnie starts to see the struggles his new friends have, despite their affluence. After tragedy strikes the community, and with the students now on lockdown, Arnie and his friends are forced to address their own issues head on.
Directors Note
I lost my father suddenly at the age of 15. The year after, on a seemingly normal day, my mother suffered a hemorrhage in her brain and collapsed on the kitchen floor one night around dinner time. I ran up stairs after hearing the thud and moments later I was riding in an ambulance to the hospital. By some sort of miracle she survived but lacked the ability to lead a normal life at home for almost the next decade. I found myself, at 16 years old living, at home alone, struggling to get myself to and from school with any sense of regularity. My sophomore year of high school quickly became a wash, and I was doomed to repeat it.
I’ll never forget the feeling of my first night at The Princeton School, and I knew I wanted to make a film about my experiences there ever since. “The Princeton School” was a very small specialty boarding school in a tiny coastal New England town. Total enrollment 42 students, all boys. At the time it had the highest annual tuition of any private school in the world. Within a 2 hour drive of at least a dozen of the most prestigious college preparatory schools on the planet, it might as well have been a different universe. I never in a million years thought for one second I’d end up there, but when I was 17 I did.
Some of the craziest and most emotional, joyful and hurtful moments of my life happened at that school. Life long relationships gained and lost. I wonder sometimes how I’ve lived to tell the story. As we navigate a rapidly changing society today, I’ve often thought more about my time there and how it’s shaped me into the person I am today. This film is a journey through those first few months at The Princeton School. The son of an auto mechanic and a substitute teacher going to school with the children of royalty, fortune 500 C.E.O.'s and celebrities.
Previous Work
And After All
Written and Directed by Julian Ungano
Produced by Shooting Films and La Lutte Continue
Up and coming artist Charlotte is struggling to keep up with the complications of her new found success in New York City when she suddenly loses her mother. Confused and alone she ventures home to her small town to deal with the aftermath.
State of the State
Directed By Julian Ungano
Written by Julian Ungano and Jordan Blumetti
Produced by U+A Films and Rooster Films
Set in the dreary, slow thaw of late winter in Vermont, State of the State chronicles the early stages of a naïve, hapless young couple's tragic descent into opioid addiction. The film follows John and Cassie as they attempt to satisfy their newly formed dependence and-with panic and desperation rapidly compounding-the need to score drugs begins to erode their judgment and corrupt their will.
About the Filmmaker
Award-winning filmmaker, photographer, creative director, and visual storyteller, Julian Ungano, is an iconoclast of his generation, challenging the ways in which audiences interact with and experience art. Ungano most recently debuted an exclusive, first person photo diary with The Hollywood Reporter out of the Cannes Film Festival and was the creative director, video and stills creator behind the internet breaking content out of the World Premiere of DUNE at the Venice Film Festival.
With a cinematic eye for photography, Ungano is artistically seizing the chance to look beyond the traditional nature of editorial by capturing rare, intimate moments for a worldwide audience. His editorial work has been featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Porter, V Magazine, Esquire, The New York Times, T Style Magazine, CR Fashion Book, and Elle and has captured some of today’s most recognizable talent, including Timothee Chalamet, Zendaya, Andrew Garfield, Austin Butler, Nicholas Hoult, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Lily Collins, Oscar Isaac, Kodi Smit-McPhee and more for high end luxury brands such as — Louis Vuitton, Tom Ford, Saint Laurent, Prada, Celine, Cartier, Dior, Chanel, Gucci, and Ferragamo among others.
His career began at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he studied Media Arts with a concentration in Film and Photography. Additionally, Ungano has written and directed two deeply personal shorts, including the award-winning short, And After All, that chronicles the story of a young woman returning from New York to her old hometown in the aftermath of her mothers death, based on his own experience, and State of the State, which unpacks the opioid crisis in Vermont through the lens of a desperately in love couple.
Ungano splits his time between Los Angeles and New York
Press:
Click: The Hollywood Reporter
Click: The New York Times
Click: ID Magazine
CONTACT:
Julian@high-markpictures.com