EXCLUSIVE: MountainA production company founders Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas have signed on as executive producers of Carol & Joy, a documentary
EXCLUSIVE: MountainA production company founders Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas have signed on as executive producers of Carol & Joy, a documentary about actress Carol Kane and her 98-year-old mom, Joy.
The miniature film directed by Nathan Silver will make its New York premiere at the New York Film Festival, which begins September 26 (details on the world premiere are pending). On Carol & Joy, Portman — the Oscar-winning actor and producer — and Mas join producers Jamie Gonçalves, C. Mason Wells, Dweck Productions’ Hannah Dweck and Theodore Schaefer, and Brian Liebman.
The film paints “a portrait of Kane and her 98-year-old mother Joy, an active music teacher, former dancer, and lifelong Francophile who live together on New York’s Upper West Side,” according to a synopsis. “In this intimate vérité documentary shot on 16mm in the tradition of nonfiction classics from the ’60s and ’70s, Silver visits Carol and Joy in their home for an afternoon of music and friends and stories, covering decades of family, history, art, and a truly special mother-daughter relationship.”
(L-R) Jason Schwartzman, director Nathan Silver and Carol Kane attend the ‘Between The Temples’ premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
The project reunites Silver with Kane, who starred in the director’s 2024 narrative feature Between the Temples, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It went on to earn Kane the Best Supporting Actress Award from the New York Film Critics Circle.
(L-R) Natalie Portman and Sophie Mas
Courtesy of Frederic Auerbach; Samuel Kirszenbaum
MountainA, launched in 2020 by Portman and Mas, has produced several high-profile projects including the Todd Haynes feature May December (starring Portman, Charles Melton and Julianne Moore) and the HBO original docuseries Angel City. Portman and Mas also produced Lady in the Lake, the Apple TV+ circumscribed series from writer-director Alma Har’el.
“I’m thrilled to have Natalie and Sophie join the Carol & Joy family,” Silver said in a statement. “Our film is straight from the heart, a handmade portrait of two grand women. We couldn’t ask for better partners than MountainA in our efforts to bring Carol and Joy’s remarkable stories beyond New York City and to the wider world.”
Upcoming projects for MountainA include the animated feature Arco by Ugo Bienvenu, which premiered in Cannes and won the Cristal Award for best film at Annecy 2025; art world satire The Gallerist, written and directed by Cathy Yan; and Good Sex, an original feature for Netflix written and directed by Lena Dunham and starring Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Rashida Jones, Meg Ryan, Tucker Pillsbury and Tramell Tillman.
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