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When director David Gordon Green set out to make Nutcrackers, the family comedy starring Ben Stiller that opened the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday, he didn’t have to search to find his four key child actors. Central to the story, the kids play the unruly brothers who torment their Uncle Michael, Stiller’s real estate developer character, who is charged with figuring out their care after the death of their parents.
Instead, the film was entirely based around Green’s relationship with the four real-life siblings: Atlas, Arlo, Ulysses, and Homer Janson—ages 8 through 13 (Arlo and Atlas are twins). Their mother Karey Williams was a film school classmate of Green’s.
“After making a few movies as a collaborator of hers, she went back to the farm, fifth-generation farm in Ohio, and had four beautiful sons,” Green says in a phone interview the morning after the premiere. “As we kept up and they grew up I was always blown away by their charisma and charm, and every time I’d go over there and hang out I just felt there’s a movie here if we just bring a camera next time.”
Nutcrackers, which is seeking distribution out of the festival, marks Stiller’s first lead acting role in seven years—he’s been away directing television like the highly acclaimed Apple TV+ series Severance. However, it’s the Jansons who pilot the story and who inspired Green, who had recently been making studio horror like the Halloween revivals and directing shows like The Righteous Gemstones, to return to his roots in indie filmmaking. While the film hits familiar beats, it’s also the kind of throwback live-action family movie that feels like it’s from another era.
The boys play the Kicklighters, who have recently lost their mother and father. Their uncle arrives on their farm with the idea that he’ll just have to sign some papers before they are shipped off to a foster home. But Michael is quickly told that finding people to take them in will be harder than he expected—it’s…
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