FEATURE FILM SHOWCASE:

THE RUNNER, 102 minutes, USA, Thriller
Directed by Michelle Danner

After Miranda (Elisabeth Rohm) calls the cops on her son Aiden (Edouard Philipponnat) and he gets arrested for drug possession, he is given a terrible choice by Detective Wall (played by Cameron Douglas): either go to jail or become an informant and bring down a dangerous Drug King Pin, Local Legend (Eric Balfour).

Aiden falls into a downward spiral, mourning his love Layla (Kerri Medders) and dragging down his best friend Blake (Nadji Jeter) and his girlfriend Liz (Jessica Amlee).

Wealthy but compassionate, hopeful but damaged, drug-addicted but still somehow able to run a four-minute mile on the high school track team, Aiden Albers is about to discover what it means to have to choose from a set of impossible outcomes. He wakes one morning to find his mother has brought the cops to scare some sense into him, to finally force him into a rehab that sticks. But hard-assed veteran Detective Wall doesn’t take to Aiden’s rich kid antics and busts him for cocaine instead. After hours left strung out and sweating in holding, Wall paints Aiden a bleak picture, gives him a choice: cooperate or do ten years in prison.

Three months later, Aiden’s a reluctant confidential informant, blackmailed into wearing a wire and helping Wall hit possession quotas, spiraling even deeper into his addictions. But when his best friend Blake finally agrees to connect Aiden with the local drug kingpin, Aiden’s uneasy truce with Wall cracks, and escape, prison, or death become the only options. The turning point hits with the power of a car crash, at the last mansion party Aiden will ever throw.

Over a nightmare twenty-four hours, Aiden must either confront his predicament, his addictions, and his haunted past, die in the process, or execute his plan and run. But there may not be a future to run towards.

Director Statement

Late at night, I saw a news report on Police enforcement forcing kids to go undercover wearing wires and using them as sacrificial lambs. Lives were at stake and no one was reigning anyone in. I started to cry, then I wrote a treatment about a kid falling through the cracks, needing someone to step in and recognize the signs before it was too late. The Runner is a movie about how kids can get trapped into doing the unthinkable. I was inspired to tell a story about a kid that could be saved.