And just what is “The Mandela Effect” that makes it fascinating enough for a feature film? The Mandela Effect refers to a situation in which a large mass of people believes that an event occurred when it did not. It’s a unique phenomenon, first coined in 2009 when multiple individuals at a conference collectively remembered the tragedy of former South African president Nelson Mandela’s death in a South African prison in the 1980s. In truth and in fact, Nelson Mandela did not die in the 1980s in a prison—he was released in February 1990 and eventually passed away in 2013 as a free man who spent his years after release from prison promoting peace and democracy while becoming president of South Africa in 1994. And how about “Star Wars”? Everyone remembers “Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back” and Darth Vader uttering the famous line, “Luke, I am your father.” Only that’s not what he said. The line was actually, “No, I am your father.” Most people have memories of the line being the former rather than the latter. And in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, generations have intoned “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” believing that to be the line in the film. It’s not. The phrase is actually, “Magic mirror on the wall. . .” Consider all of the similar instances in our collective consciouness and the result is ripe for a cinematic thriller.
With David Guy Levy’s THE MANDELA EFFECT, a man becomes obsessed with facts and events that have been collectively misremembered by thousands of people. Believing the phenomena to be the symptom of something larger, his obsession eventually leads him to question reality itself.
Written and directed by David Guy Levy, THE MANDELA EFFECT stars Charlie Hofheimer(Escape at Dannemora, Would You Rather), Aleksa Palladino (The Irishman, The Loudest Voice), Robin Lord Taylor (Gotham, Walking Dead, You, Would You Rather), Madeleine McGraw(Toy Story 4, Ant-Man and the Wasp) and Clarke Peters (His Dark Materials, The Wire).
In Theaters and on VOD December 6, 2019
