World Premiere Of New Documentary O PIONEER To Screen At California's Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival

O PIONEER, the latest feature documentary from filmmaking team Clara Lehmann & Jonathan Lacocque (Born in a Ballroom) will receive its World Premiere at next month's Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival in San Jose, California.

The filmmakers, who are partners in the creative studio Coat of Arms in Helvetia, West Virginia, will be in attendance at the prestigious festival, which celebrates its 33rd edition from August 15th-30th, 2023.

Cinequest fuses innovation with the arts to empower great creations and to engage audiences, youth, artists, and innovators with creations and each other, forging community, joy, and the future. Set in Silicon Valley, Cinequest's uniqueness, impact, and legacy result from applying the powerful integration of creativity, technology, and community to inspire and transform lives.

O PIONEER is a documentary that celebrates three Appalachians from West Virginia as they embark upon an important journey - a journey that unfolds in the midst of a pandemic and personal heartache. Weaving narration with archival pioneer footage, candid moments from each subject, poetic vignettes, and dream-like animation, O PIONEER redefines what it means to be a pioneer and asks viewers to courageously champion the pioneer within.

The film also aims to rethink the stereotypical understanding of the American pioneer through a fresh and modern narrative set in West Virginia, which continues to experience a decline in population. In 2017, West Virginia ranked second highest in both numeric and percentage population decline. With this exodus and the grim facts about how opioids and joblessness ravage the state, those that stay face two paths-one of hopelessness and apathy, and the other of the pioneer.

Following its World Premiere at Cinequest, the film will screen publicly at two additional events, the Richmond International Film Festival from September 26th-October 1st and Clarksburg, West Virginia's MTN Craft Film Festival from September 29th-30th. Additional film festival screenings will be announced as they become available and an Appalachian tour of screenings will follow the film's festival run.

Directed by Clara Lehmann and Jonathan Lacocque, O PIONEER stars (in order of appearance) Kaïa Kater, Nellie Rose Gundersen Davis, Tim Hibbs and James Morley. Written by Lehmann and produced by Lehmann, Lacocque and Grace Lawson, the film features cinematography by Lacocque, who also edits with Chris Parkhurst to a score composed by Ho-Ling Tang.

Co-directors Clara Lehmann & Jonathan Lacocque said: "We're thrilled to start our film festival journey in California at Cinequest. The festival's stamp of approval gives us hope that these stories - often mistold or overlooked - are important. We're also confident audiences will enjoy the film's ambitious mix of live action, musical interludes, and hand-drawn animation."