“Leaving Barstow” to be released soon on DVD

Barstownians who couldn’t make the Newport Beach Film Festival last year or Phoenix Film Festival this year will soon get a chance to own a copy of “Leaving Barstow.” The film comes out on DVD on Tuesday.

The film — about the longing for a bigger world a Barstow high school senior feels and his fear of leaving  his family, friends and new girlfriend behind — wound up its circuit of U.S. film festivals this year, playing at 15 festivals and winning eight awards. Now, as the DVD is scheduled for release, Madelon Smith, who produced the film with Kevin Sheridan, who is also the star, said the film will be released to an international audience.

“We believe emotionally it’s a worldwide story,” Smith said, adding that a company called Film Watch will be their foreign sale agents for film festivals at Caan, Berlin and Toronto as well as DVD and television rights internationally. “We have no idea where that’s going to go.”

“Leaving Barstow” has garnered awards at film festivals from Newport Beach, where it won the Audience Award for a feature film, to Rhode Island, where Sheridan’s performance as Andrew won him the Best Actor award in 2008. Smith said the film also played at the Indie World Film Festival in Brazil.

Doug Dohmen, vice president of sales and marketing for Osiris Entertainment, the film’s U.S. distributor, said his company hasn’t scheduled anything as far as screening the film locally goes, but is trying to create additional awareness for “Leaving Barstow” at the local Blockbuster store and other independent video outlets. The release of the film, he said, may generate enough word-of-mouth that interest in the film would pick up.

“’Slumdog Millionaire’ is a very good example,” Dohmen said. “It almost never made it to theaters. (The film ) made $100 million plus in the United States and wins an academy award. On a smaller different scale (’Leaving Barstow’) is the same type of thing.”

Smith said the reception for “Leaving Barstow” has been overwhelming. One of the pieces of feedback filmmakers received, especially from festivals away from Southern California, is the film is sympathetic of small towns.

“(Sheridan) has been through Barstow, like so many people in Southern California,” she said. “He got caught up in the idea of what is it like to be in a place that other people are passing through. What is it like to be in a place where you can see other people going on with their life somewhere, and you know you’re close enough to do it and you’re afraid?”

The film is available for $19.98 from Webmovienow.com or for $17.99 on Amazon.com.

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(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com