Directed by Ryan Fleck, who co-wrote the screenplay with Anna Boden. Starring Shareeka Epps, Ryan Gosling, Tina Holmes, Anthony Mackie, Deborah Rush, and Jay O. Sanders. Boden also edited and produced the film with co-producers Lynette Howell Taylor, Rosanne Korenberg, Alex Orlovsky, and Jamie Patricof.
Half-Nelson is a heartfelt drama about a New York City middle school teacher, Dan (Ryan Gosling), battling drug addiction, who forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), after she discovers his secret. As their bond grows, Dan tries to keep Drey away from a local dealer, Frank (Anthony Mackie), not realizing that it is himself who is the one facing danger of slipping.
The film premiered originally at the festival in Jan. 2006, and Gosling earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Half-Nelson was screened again for one night only as part of the Park City Legacy program honoring the incredible films that first debuted here. Now restored by Hunting Lane and Post Works using a new 4k scan from the original negatives under the supervision of director Ryan Fleck, editor/producer Anna Boden, and director of photography Andrij Parekh.
The cast and crew at the Park City Legacy screening of Half-Nelson at The Ray Theatre on Jan. 29, 2026, in Park City, UT.
Shareeka Epps spoke about how she felt returning to the festival, 20 years later. “It’s surreal. It’s a little crazy because you know I haven’t seen some people in like 15, 20 years,” she said.
Epps was a young actress at the time, being 15-16 at the time of the production. She reflected on her journey being part of the production from its inception as a short-form.
“I was actually really lucky to have done the short version of Half-Nelson. So Half-Nelson was the feature of a short film called Gowanus, Brooklyn that actually won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. And so coming back and then having your feature being appreciated for the same storyline is, yeah… How many people can say that? So this film…it means a lot to me.”
Due to Drey’s nature of being around flawed adults, she refuses to judge Dan’s poor decisions, but never excuses him. Epps talked about how she balanced that in her performance, explaining that it was difficult due to becoming close with Ryan behind the scenes. However, she also took inspiration from her life. Crediting Boden and Fleck’s script and the latter’s direction for allowing her to be natural in her performance.
“Also, just allowing a lot of the scenes to just flow. You know, you have a script, but like they gave us some freedom to really like just let it happen naturally, if that makes sense. And it wasn’t hard because all of my cast members made me really comfortable in the room.
Epps spoke about her background. “I was new, you know, aside from like theater and middle school, I wasn’t doing all of that. So it was a hard thing to do. And tapping into, like, talking about addiction. I have parents that were recovering addicts. Shoutout to my mom, 30 years clean. So it meant a lot to me, as a kid. I think I understood a lot more about it than people would think,” she explained.
Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie at the Park City Legacy Screening of Half-Nelson at The Ray Theatre on Jan. 29, 2026, in Park City, UT.
Directing duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck spoke about the process of restoring their first film.
“Yeah, well, it was really special to be able to restore it just because we really…The elements hadn’t been properly kind of taken care of. And so we didn’t have a version of it to screen. We originally shot it on 16 [millimeter], and then it had been screened in theaters on 35 millimeter, but now theaters don’t really play 35 millimeter anymore. And so we had to go back to the original negative and rescan it and do an entirely new color correct for 4K so that it could be screened again theatrically.”
Boden continued, “And it’s really amazing to be able to go back and preserve a film like Half-Nelson, where the elements hadn’t been taken care of and hadn’t been preserved. Because we didn’t have our… Our distributor kind of no longer exists, the original distributor for the movie gone bankrupt. But we got the rights back, we’ve got a new distributor, and now we’ve got this new amazing restored version of it, and we’re so excited that it can go out into the world again and be really seen by people.”
Fleck shared his thoughts on audiences coming to view the film again twenty years later.
“Well, I think it’s just exciting that people are gonna, I mean, we’ll see who shows up, but hopefully people come…Like the idea that a movie, a 20-year-old movie, is playing in a theater at a festival like this and that people choose to come see it with a group, the way that we all used to watch movies in the old days, not streaming it on our television. I think it’s a sort of a profound moment for us that people would continue to see this movie 20 years later in a theater. So I’m excited to see how it plays.”
These interviews have been condensed and edited for concision and clarity.
Watch our entire interviews and coverage of the premiere in the video above.
