MY FIRST FILM
- Wed, Feb 19
Director: Zia Anger Run Time: 100 min. Release Year: 2024
Starring: Cole Doman, Devon Ross, Jane Wickline, Odessa Young, Sage Ftacek
Following the success of Anger’s 2019 multimedia performance of the same name, My First Film marks a return to the ground zero of Anger’s artistic development: her lost film, Always All Ways, Annie Marie, which she worked on from 2010 to 2012. In a departure from the performance’s screen-shared visuals and typed-out inner monologue, Anger’s feature debut is a dramatization of that disastrous shoot and its untold truths; an autofictional nesting doll.
Nearly 15 years later, Vita (Odessa Young), recounts making her first feature – a semi-autobiographical film about a young woman who gets pregnant and decides to leave home, starring her friend Dina (Devon Ross). Being an enthusiastic but inexperienced filmmaker, the shoot is chaotic, and Vita’s ego-tripping methods cause a near-death accident. As Vita’s “first film” falls apart, Anger stages a lyrical self-critique that probes the nature of artistic truth and personal mythmaking, all while upending the strictures of traditional memoir.