Eephus

Eephus is a 2024 sports film directed by Carson Lund about the final game of an amateur New England baseball league before their stadium is demolished. The film premiered in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 77th Cannes Film Festival, where it was eligible for the Caméra d'Or award. The film stars Keith William Richards in his first lead role.

Premise

In a small Massachusetts town in the 1990s, the Adler's Paint baseball team, led by Ed Mortainian, face the Riverdogs, led by Graham Morris, in one last game before their ballfield is demolished to make room for a new school.

Cast

Production

Eephus was filmed on location at Soldiers Field in Douglas, Massachusetts. While the film's story centers on this real-life baseball field, the plot concerning the demolition of the field and the construction of a school was fictional. Lund cited Goodbye, Dragon Inn as an influence on the film's story.

Lund co-wrote the screenplay for Eephus with Michael Basta and Nate Fisher. Due to his experience as a director of photography, Lund had hoped to serve as cinematographer on the film, but chose Greg Tango for the role when this proved impractical.

Eephus was co-produced by members of Chapo Trap House, a prominent left-wing podcast known for its political commentary. Two of its hosts, Will Menaker and Amber A'lee Frost, have voice acting roles in the film.

Release

Eephus world-premiered on May 9, 2024, in the Director's Fortnight section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. The film also screened at Filmfest München on June 30, 2024, and was selected for the Meeting Point section of the 69th Valladolid International Film Festival.

The film made its North American premiere in the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival on October 2, 2024. It also screened at AFI Fest on October 25, 2024. It was released in the United States on March 7, 2025.

Reception

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 58 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Revealing character through the rules of the game, Eephus is a bittersweet baseball outing thrown at a perfect pitch." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 83 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

In a review for IndieWire, critic Christian Zilko praised how Eephus approached social relationships between men. He lauded the filmmakers' choice to make a school the cause of the stadium's demolition, arguing this decision takes the focus off of a potential villain eroding social space and keeps the emphasis on the passage of time. Echoing these sentiments, Jessica Kiang of Variety characterized Eephus as an "adorably existential, off-kilter take on the sports movie."