the curse of willow song
PR & Marketing Consultant
Vancouver International Film Festival + Reel World Film Festival
Pender PR was engaged by the The Curse of Willow Song’s Director Karen Lam and Producer Karen Wong team in advance of the world premiere at the Vancouver International Film Festival. We worked alongside the team to secure and coordinate press, consulted on marketing materials including the EPK and developed a strategy for outreach to the media. We led the outreach for VIFF as well as Reel World and helped with distribution strategy after the premiere.
Karen Lam. Photo credit: Tallulah
Valerie Tian + Ingrid Nilson. Photo credit: Tallulah
The successful press campaign, combined with award wins led to the films pickup by Cineplex theatres nationally where Monkey Beach remained the #1 Canadian film for 4 weeks. We were responsible for all outreach to the media, working with the cast, team, collecting and consulting on deliverables including press kit, trailer, poster and strategizing every step of the way. Interviews we secured included outlets such as etalk, ET Canada, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and hundreds more.
The success of our promotional campaign for The Curse of Willow Song helped elevate this important film increasing exposure for the film and team, ticket sales at the festivals, profile for the Director and discoverability for the film. This was a world class launch, which could only be done because of the brilliant film and team.
the curse of willow song Synopsis
Having served her time for arson, Willow Song (Valerie Tian) is now fending for herself on the unforgiving streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. There, she’s asked to contend with the squalid condition of her SRO, a sketchy bestie (Ingrid Nilson), her ongoing struggle to stay clean, constant harassment in her workplace and festering resentment towards Asian-Canadians. With the fates seemingly conspiring against her, she’s thrown a lifeline by a figure from her past (Elfina Luk). As Willow holes up in an abandoned warehouse, her latent psychokinetic abilities manifest and an uncanny transformation commences.
In a somewhat perverse paraphrasing of one of Leonard Cohen’s most famous lyrics, writer-director Karen Lam intimates here that it’s through glaring socioeconomic divides that the darkness seeps in. Drawing inspiration from manga, ghost stories, interviews with female inmates and personal experiences, Lam delivers an exceedingly eerie supernatural thriller steeped in searing social commentary. What’s perhaps most chilling about Curse is its compelling suggestion that we’ve left Willow with no alternative but to become a monster.