Mining the emotional sense memories of their own fractured childhoods, Josh and Benny Safdie craft a by turns empathetic and disquieting portrait of parental dysfunction poised between fierce love and terrifying irresponsibility. Manic Manhattan movie theater projectionist Lenny (cowriter and longtime Safdie collaborator Ronald Bronstein) is perhaps the last person who should be raising kids, yet here he is, trying (and failing) to keep it together as his life unravels over the two whirlwind weeks that he has custody of his young boys (real-life brothers Sage and Frey Ranaldo), with an impromptu road trip, a sleeping-pill mishap, and a night in jail all part of the chaos. Vérité New York naturalism gives way to flights of surreal lyricism in Daddy Longlegs, a blearily impressionistic anti–fairy tale that finds unexpected humanity in the seemingly most irredeemable of fathers.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital transfer, approved by directors Josh and Benny Safdie, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
- New interviews with actors Sage and Frey Ranaldo and their parents, photographer Leah Singer and musician Lee Ranaldo
- Documentary from 2017 about the Safdies
- Footage of Sage and Frey Ranaldo’s first meeting with actor Ronald Bronstein
- Making-of program
- There’s Nothing You Can Do (2008), a short film by the Safdies featuring members of the Daddy Longlegs cast and crew
- Deleted scenes
- Promotional films and trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: A 2009 print interview with the SafdiesNew illustration by Sammy Harkham
