LOADING
Ten year old Maxine Kuftinec (known as Max by one and all) lives in Greenwich Village, with her overworked parents and her little sister. Max is happily ensconced at her local public school, but when the opportunity arises for her to switch to the Blackstone Academy, a prestigious uptown all-girls private school, she feels obliged to do so.
Max doesn't fit in immediately at the Blackstone Academy, amidst the privileged girls who get picked up in giant black SUV's every day. She stops by the chess club one day, thinking that someone there can teach her how to play - but she is humiliated by Isabella, the alpha girl among her new classmates (and Max's nemesis), who quickly ascertains Max's ignorance, and publicly ridicules her for it.
Eventually, at the Washington Square chess boards, she meets a grizzled codger named Norman who may be able to help her, in learning both how to play chess and how to deal with her new life. But Norman's way of teaching her is very... unusual.
A Little Game is the fifth film written and directed by Evan Oppenheimer. He is a graduate of Yale University and NYU Film School. His other films are The Speed of Thought, Alchemy, Justice, and The Auteur Theory.
Evan lives in New York with his wife and three young daughters. His next film, the Italian-set movie The Tourist, will be released in 2015.
Michael Mailer has worked extensively in the independent film business since graduating from Harvard University in 1987. His films include Two Girls and a Guy, Black and White, Empire, and Loverboy.
Michael Mailer Films was established in 2004, and has now produced numerous films, including Kettle of Fish, The Golden Boys, The Ledge, and Blood and Bone. Its most recent film, Seduced and Abandoned, starring Alec Baldwin, premiered last year at the Cannes Film Festival.
In addition to his role as Executive Producer of A Little Game, Edward was also the Still Photographer and Second Unit Director of Photography (as well as an extra in Washington Square Park). Future projects include the Italy-set The Tourist, and a currently in-development feature that revolves around that most dramatic of disciplines, mathematics.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Edward currently supervises R&D at a leading quantitative hedge fund, and has been a foundational supporter of the recently launched Museum of Mathematics in New York.