DISPATCH FROM THE DENVER FILM FESTIVAL • DAY 8

Ben Foster says the reports are true: Boxing champion Christy Martin, perhaps the most badass woman on the planet, avoided the actor who played her husband throughout the filming of the new movie about her life, “Christy.” Which speaks both to the extensiveness of the abuse she endured, and to the transformative power of Foster’s performance.

“It’s probably the greatest backwards compliment I’ve ever been given,” Foster told me Thursday with a thoughtful laugh. He was moments away from receiving the Denver Film Festival’s inaugural Outlaw Award at the MCA Denver’s Holiday Theater. It’s a new honor specifically tailored to fit Foster’s impressive pantheon of intense and at times sociopathic film roles. Like the bank robber in “Hell or High Water,” or the psychopath Charlie Prince in “3:10 to Yuma.”

But he’d never before taken on anything like the animal that Jim Martin was.

Martin, 25 years his wife’s senior, was Christy’s husband, her cocaine supplier, her blackmailer and her confidant. And on a November evening in 2010, he stabbed her three times and shot her in the chest. He died a year ago in prison while serving time on a murder conviction.

One reviewer said of “Christy,” which will be released nationally on Friday: “Foster melts into the role of Jim – and you’ll despise him.”

Christy Martin told AARP Magazine she could not be in the room whenever Foster was on set. “I just couldn’t,” she said. “I stayed away from him the entire film.”

In Denver, Foster described the moment of seeing the real Christy Martin for the first time.

“Christy walked onto the set and saw me in wardrobe, and she started cursing,” Foster said. “She just went ashen. She walked away and told the producer, ‘I’m not going to be in the same room with that man. I’m not going to be in the same room with Jim Martin.’ And the producer said, ‘Well, that’s Ben. He’s an alright guy. You can have a conversation with him.’ But she said,  ‘Absolutely not.’

“That’s just not something I was expecting. Now, she’s my pal – but it just took a minute.”

Foster, who gained 25 pounds to play the horrific role, chose his words carefully while trying to explain what all of that really means.

“It was a profound trauma that she went through,” he said – then repeated himself. “Christie Martin is such an inspiring human. And the triumph of her story is amazing.”

I asked Foster what appealed to him about playing a monster like Jim Martin.

“It is the actor’s job to serve the film in any way we can,” he said. “Jim Martin was complicated. We’re all complicated. The human animal is complicated. There’s a lot of gray.

“It’s not like I wake up in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I really want to think about the worst elements of mankind.’ But somehow that feels like an opportunity to be in service of a greater story. I like asking hard questions, and so, I am glad to be here.”

His Iowa mom? Maybe not so much.

She’s like, ‘When are you going to do a comedy? I raised a good boy,’” he said to laughs.

ALL ABOUT SWEENEY

Foster will be the first to tell you that “Christy” is Sydney’s movie. As in Sydney Sweeney, the actor best known for her roles in the HBO series “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus.” “Christy” is a game-changing role for her.

“She’s confounding,” Foster said. “(Director David Michôd) said the other night, ‘I’m not sure if she’s AI.’ She’s a machine. She’ll work five hours longer than anybody else, and she knows all the crew’s names. She’s just a badass.”

So, too, are Jessica Lange and Ed Harris. The pair, with Foster as Jamie, completed a film adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” way back in 2022. But  a wide theatrical release date still has not been set.

“You’re going to see it next year,”  Foster told me. “It’s coming out. It’s going to happen.”

PARDON MY FRENCH: ZOEY DEUTCH

Charming young actor Zoey Deutch swept into the Sie FilmCenter on Wednesday and smote the hearts of all in her presence. She was here to gratefully accept the Denver Film Festival’s 2025 Rising Star Award, even though she’s been constantly ascending as an actor now for 17 of her 30 years.

Her new film “Nouvelle Vague” is director Richard Linklater’s stylistic homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 French New Wave classic “Breathless.” Deutch plays Jean Seberg, the American pixie icon and political activist who starred in “Breathless.” Seberg was found dead at age 40 in 1979, a probable suicide after a mental decline fueled by an FBI smear campaign.

This new black-and-white film has been described as “a cinephile’s delight, recreating specific scenes from the original film and capturing the spirit of the time while also exploring the paradox of making a tribute film about a movement that broke convention.”

Deutch, who grew up in L.A. and is perhaps best known for her roles in the Netflix rom-com “Set It Up” and the Ryan Murphy series “The Politician,” took it upon herself to learn French over two years in the hope that Linklater, with whom she had first worked on the 2016 film “Everybody Wants Some!!” would offer her the part – which of course, he did.

“It is painful to imagine Jean’s experience, especially after ‘Breathless,’ and what we know happens later,” Deutch said. “If anything, I was accessing that deeply scared, deeply wounded place. But I was also trying to shed light and joy on this extraordinary woman who was brave and beautiful and talented and destroyed by everyone, which is a story that we see a lot. Women aren’t allowed to be beautiful and smart and talented.”

I asked Deutch about the full-circleness of this whole project. Here we have this new film, which pays tribute to the rebellion spirit of artistic freedom by honoring a film from 60 years ago that was, itself, a tribute to the rebellion spirit of artistic freedom back in 1960.

Why, I asked, is revisiting the message of artistic freedom particularly resonant in 2025?

“What’s funny is that artists come in when we need them most,” she said. “Yes, we are in very, very, very troubling times right now, but it’s easy to romanticize that time – and there was a lot of (bleep) going on 60 years ago. But there’s a reason this film was so revolutionary then. And so, I say, let’s be that now for this generation.”  

PROTEST AT LOCAL DOCUMENTARY

A complex and deeply personal dispute between a local filmmaking team and members of a Denver Indigenous family manifested into a brief protest at the Sie Film Center just moments before Wednesday’s screening of this year’s eight selected short documentaries by Colorado filmmakers.

In director Dewi Sungai’s 18-minute “For the People,” Thomas Yellow Horse Davis and his wife, Kimberly Dominguez Davis, reflect on the life experiences that taught them that dance is not performance. To them, it is prayer, it is medicine for generational trauma, and it is a critical part of reclaiming Indigenous sovereignty on stolen land.

Some members of the larger Yellow Horse family, which has been largely Denver-based for more than 60 years, say they were approached about participating in the film but did not sign the rights to the family’s oral family history to the filmmakers. Mary Amber Martinez and Gloria Yellow Horse were among those who appeared at the Sie on Wednesday in protest.

“Mary Amber and the rest of the Yellow Horse family had no part — legally or creatively — in the film since requesting to withdraw from a related but different project in early 2025,” said cinematographer Jason Houston. “This film was funded as a gift to Thomas’s dance troupe, the Rocky Mountain Indigenous Dancers, and Thomas and Kimberly have full and exclusive agency over the film.”

Thomas Yellow Horse Davis and his wife attended and fully participated in support of Wednesday’ s screening, including taking questions from the audience in a panel discussion afterward.

Both sides issued statements Thursday accusing the other of disinformation.

Editor’s note: This item has been updated.

SCREENING OF THE DAY

Well, it’s clearly “Hamnet,” with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in a telling of the real-life tragedy that influenced William Shakespeare’s greatest work. But that was the first screening to sell out. So, instead, let’s call it for “Charliebird.” It’s about a music therapist who forms a life-changing bond with a teenage patient facing terminal illness through humor, patience and music. Written by and starring Samantha Smart, who will be on hand for a post-film Q&A with fellow actor Gabe Fazio. This film won the Tribeca Film Festival’s 2025 top jury prize, calling it “an elegant look at friendship and finality.” 6:45 p.m. Friday (Nov. 7) at the Sie FilmCenter

WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING TODAY?

Creative conversations in the Tattered Cover basement with former Newsweek film critic David Ansen (11 a.m.) and screenwriter Jonathan A. Abrams (“Juror #2”) at 1 p.m. … A centerpiece event is a showing of “I Was Born This Way,” a documentary celebration of Archbishop Carl Bean, the Motown singer-turned-minister whose 1977 hit “I Was Born This Way” became a groundbreaking anthem of queer pride. It’s co-directed by Boulder-based Oscar winner Daniel Junge. 7 p.m. at the Denver Botanic Gardens

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Be ready to be lucky.” – Actor Zoey Deutch

DISCOUNT TICKETS

Each day, Denver Film is designating a few films or events that can be had for $5 when purchased in person. Box offices open 30 minutes before the first screening of the day.

Friday’s $5 films or events:

• ”Backside,” 3:30 p.m. at the Holiday Theater (U.S.; includes a post-film Q&A with director Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana)

• ”The French Connection,” 7 p.m. at the Sie FilmCenter (U.S.)

• ”Reflection in a Dead Diamond,” 9:45 p.m. at the Sie FilmCenter (Belgium and three others)

TICKETS AND INFORMATION

Go to denverfilm.org

MORE OF OUR DENVER FILM FESTIVAL COVERAGE:

• Our interview with Delroy Lindo

• Here are five films you don’t want to miss

• Look who’s coming to Denver 

• Spotlight on Colorado films like ‘Creede U.S.A.’

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Oct. 31

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Nov. 1

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Nov. 2

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Nov. 3

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Nov. 4

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Nov. 5

• Daily Dispatch from the Denver Film Festival: Nov. 6