Potsy Ponciroli’s ’70s-set action feature might just be the best dialogue-less film you’ve ever seen.
“It’s a story that we’ve seen before, those beats of revenge — but to do it just in action, emotion and music was a really fun challenge,” the American filmmaker tells The Hollywood Reporter about his “quiet, not silent” movie.
His Tim Blake Nelson-starring debut Old Henry was the talk of the lido at 2021’s Venice Film Festival (and in the Obama household — the former president included it on his list of favorite films that year), catapulting Ponciroli to the big time. But, admittedly, he’s headed into Venice and TIFF a little more confident with Motor City.
Reacher star Alan Ritchson leads Motor City, written by Chad St. John and produced by Black Bear Pictures and Stampede Ventures. He stars as a beefed-up ex-con, John Miller, who falls in love with the girlfriend (Shailene Woodley) of a local gangster (Ben Foster). When Foster’s character orchestrates a frame job to put Miller in prison and keep him and Sophia apart, Miller returns with a vengeance to win her back. Brimming with slick, slow-mo action sequences set to head-bopping faves like The Moody Blues’ “Nights In White Satin” and Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” it’s a feast for the eyes and ears that, without any speech, necessitates your attention.
“I called Shailene at 8.30 in the morning on a Saturday,” Ponciroli recalls, “I was like, ‘I have a script. We’re going really soon, but I want you to read it.’ She called me back before 10: ‘I have to do this movie. Please let me do this.’ It’s such a challenge for actors to get through those scenes. I knew the beats we had to hit emotionally,” he continues, “but it was so much easier not also listening to dialogue. It was a fun kind of experiment — one of those movies where 5, 10 days in, people start going: ‘Oh, man, we’re really getting some good stuff.’”
Ponciroli and his team managed to pull the film together in just 28 days of shooting — a number that kept dwindling, he explains, on orders from above. “It was one of those movies where even though the world was against us, it really worked out. There was such a momentum and a rallying behind it in every department across the board.”
And with an opportunity to showcase his growth as a filmmaker as well as Ritchson’s departure from his usual comedy-skewing roles — “he’s not just a pile of muscles, the dude is really talented” — Ponciroli is overjoyed to return to Venice, where he was first asked to sign an autograph back in 2021: “I was like, ‘I don’t have a signature!’”
He’s even more excited to hit the TIFF carpet for the first time, which also comes with its pros: “I’ve heard you don’t have to dress up as much,” Ponciroli laughs. Motor City is the “greatest experience” he’s had on a film set and, the director thinks, the best of his features so far. Getting to take it to two festivals is just icing on the top of the cake: “[Motor City] really does bring you back to when you go to the theater and put your phone away and just get engrossed in the world and in a movie,” Ponciroli adds. And don’t worry — he’s practiced his signature.