Shia LaBeouf-Starrer ‘Padre Pio’ From Abel Ferrara to Open Mammoth Film Festival (Exclusive)

The Mammoth Film Festival is set to open with Shia LeBeouf’s Padre Pio, Abel Ferrara’s historical drama that debuted at Venice.

Ferrara’s latest feature has LeBoeuf playing an Italian friar who rose to prominence at a time when fascist powers began to take over Italy. Padre Pio also stars Asia Argento, Marco Leonardi and Christina Chiriac, and director Ferrara will be at the northern California festival to do a post-film Q&A on March 2.

Mammoth will close with Dreamer, which stars Diego Calva, is directed by Mohit Ramchandani and was earlier titled Bonded. The thriller is inspired by a true story from the producers of Argentina 1985 and is executive produced by Yalitza Aparicio.

Mammoth, which is set to run from March 2 to 6 in Mammoth Lakes, California, has also added the horror thriller Night Shift, which stars Phoebe Tonkin, Lamorne Morris and Patrick Fischler and is directed and written by Benjamin and Paul China.

Also booked into Mammoth is The Mental State, the James Camali drama that stars Bryan Greenberg, Carly Pope, Alyssa Sutherland and Alison Thornton and will have a festival debut, and the documentary Citizen Athlete, which is directed by Brandt Wille and has appearances by Olympians and pro athletes Elana Meyers, Hunter Church and Kaillie Humphries of the U.S. Olympic women’s bobsled competition.

Mammoth earlier announced it had booked the Israeli-crime drama The Engineer, directed by Danny A. Abeckaser and starring Emile Hirsch and Kyle Stefanski; Joel David Moore’s Some Other Woman, with Amanda Crew, Ashley Greene and Tom Felton headlining; Maritte Lee Go’s Rise, which stars Jimmy Jean-Louis and Joy Sunday; and the documentary American Badass: Michael Madsen Retrospective.

Wild7Films is presenter of the fest.