To Dust
Logline
Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor in Upstate New York, distraught by the untimely death of his wife, struggles to find religious solace, while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a local community college biology professor, the two embark on a darkly comic and increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.
TO DUST will be released in select theaters by Good Deed Entertainment beginning February 2019. The film stars Hungarian actor Geza Rohrig, from Son of Saul, and Matthew Broderick. It was produced by Ron Perlman and Josh Crook’s Wing and a Prayer, Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola’s King Bee Productions and Scott Floyd Lochmus. And made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2019, where it won the Audience and Best New Narrative Director Awards.
Shawn Snyder
CO-SCREENWRITER, DIRECTOR
Shawn Snyder grew up in South Florida. After receiving a BA in Religion from Harvard, he spent most of his twenties on the road as a singer/songwriter. The last seven years have seen a return to Shawn's long-standing passion for filmmaking, during which he completed studies at NYU's Graduate Film Program. His short film, FESTUS, won the 2014 CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Student Drama and later premiered on KQED’s Film School Shorts. His follow-up, LULU, premiered at the Palm Springs International ShortFest in 2015. And his first feature, TO DUST, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the “Narrative Audience Award” and Shawn received the award for “Best New Narrative Director.” TO DUST was a part of IFP's 2015 Emerging Storytellers, the recipient of the NYU/Alfred P. Sloan’s $100K First Feature Award, the winner of TFI's 2016 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize, and a part of the NYU Production Lab's inaugural slate. Shawn is also a former IFP/Marcie Bloom Fellow and Sundance Institute Feature Film Fellow, and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2016.
Jason Begue
CO-SCREENWRITER
Born in LA, Jason Begue’s passion for filmmaking began at an early age when he won the 1999 CineVegas Youth in Film competition. Jason graduated from NYC’s School of Visual Art’s Directing Program and is currently continuing his studies in the Graduate Film Program at NYU Tisch. His undergraduate thesis, “Contrition,” won VisionFest’s 2010 “Most Promising Filmmaker” award. From 2009 to 2011, Jason produced for “En Pantalla,” a weekly television program about cinema for V-Me Media, one of the country’s largest Spanish television networks. His television credits also include writing for Estrella TV’s late night talk show, “Noches Con Platanito” (2014).