THE STORY – A young filmmaker recounts the struggle to make her first feature.
THE CAST – Odessa Young, Devon Ross, Cole Doman, Jane Wickline, Seth Steinberg, Sage Ftacek, Abram Kurtz, Jackson Anthony, Philip Ettinger, Sarah Michelson & Ruby Max Fury
THE TEAM – Zia Anger (Director/Writer) & Billy Feldman (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
When it comes to truthfully depicting personal subjects on screen, can the rules of traditional cinema be trusted to do them justice? Indie filmmaker Zia Anger breaks the rules with an unconventional piece of storytelling that unapologetically confronts her unfinished work. Anger’s feature “debut” is less an actual debut and more her finalized version of an abandoned film. Between 2010 and 2012, she made a first feature called “Always All Ways, Anne Marie” that went unseen. What began as a lost labor of love morphed into a 2019 self-reflective multimedia performance that Anger developed about the ghost of her work. The performance was her way of processing the fallen-apart production. Anger continued to play in this creative sandbox by adapting the performance into a feature, “My First Film,” which exists in a sweet spot between fiction and reality.
The fact that Anger chooses to start “My First Film” with the typed-out text, “This probably shouldn’t be a film,” speaks to an incredibly candid perspective on her work, which she dramatizes to neat effect. “My First Film” explores the vulnerable, disorientating journey of a project she’d been trying to put into fruition for more than a decade. From gaps in funding and rejected festival runs to her voice being called “too esoteric” for general audiences, Anger lays out her full experience on the table, which is utterly absorbing to watch. She uses various elements of multimedia — including typed-on-screen dialogue, archived personal footage, and a desktop computer screen — which beautifully subverts the idea of what makes a film “complete” enough for everyone to see. “My First Film” shines bright through its unique language, cementing Anger as a compelling new filmmaker.
Anger visualizes her work through the eager eyes of Vita (Odessa Young), her alter-ego from 15 years ago. Vita is a passionate young director who recounts the making of her first film, a semi-autobiographical piece titled “Always All Ways, Anne Marie.” The story, about a young woman who gets pregnant and leaves home, echoes Vita’s own experience of having an unwanted pregnancy. Her personal life spills onto the set, where her crew of friends face blurred lines between fiction and reality. As Vita navigates through the intense healing power of art, the production starts to crumble on a foundation of buried truths and puts the future of her would-be feature debut in limbo. The meta experience of watching a film within a film initially feels muddled, but it finds clarity in an extraordinary collaboration between Anger and Young.
The film delves into the protagonist’s multi-faceted frame of mind by incorporating different forms of storytelling. Some of Vita’s internal monologues are typed onto the screen, which creates an immersive quality. Archival footage of Anger’s family adds layers of an origin story, from which the viewer can decipher a source of the filmmaker’s inspiration. A reenactment of Anger’s desktop performance piece provides insight into her uninhibited voice. All this creative expression can co-exist and not feel at odds in Anger’s cinematic world. The past, present, and future can melt into one continuous take, as it does for the character of Vita. She has her characterization as it appears in the narrative, and she has a life beyond it as a representation of the director. These versions overlap to form the Vita, who we see in “My First Film,” personified by a remarkable performance by Young.
From 2020’s “Shirley” and 2021’s “Mothering Sunday” to 2022’s “The Staircase,” Young has proven to be a beguiling talent who truly disappears into each character. She continues on a transformative path with a tremendous performance in “My First Film.” Young’s vibrant portrayal of a first-time director gives the film a wide-eyed enthusiasm with melancholic notes. Her work is a triumph, made even more impressive once Anger herself appears in the frame at the end of the film, and their collective energies melt into one. Young finds a clear interpretation of Vita in a playground with so much individualistic expression – from the material itself to the various formats of storytelling. She keeps the non-linear storytelling in focus and expertly guides the viewer through rediscovering a lost world.
In addition to Young’s performance, the imagery and sound are a pure embrace of Anger’s filmmaking style. “My First Film” looks and feels like undiscovered terrain. From creative handheld shots and unfocused camera angles to a mythical score by Perfume Genius, the stellar technical achievements make space for Anger’s voice to fill. No component overpowers another; instead, each finds a beautiful blend between the fictional and non-fictional elements. Ashley Connor’s cinematography, in particular, brings a surreal quality to the film, like being in a gentle stream of consciousness. Overall, the visuals neatly fit the unique way this story plays out.
A ghost story is not top of mind going into “My First Film,” but the film resonates as an expression of how unfinished works can haunt artists. In Anger’s case, a feature debut over a decade in the making has finally come to fruition and, most significantly, on her own creative terms. The film’s very existence in its current form gives finality to the years of ideas swirling in Anger’s mind. It makes one think about the true finality of film for artists: is a project ever truly finished, or does it linger and repeat in other works? “My First Film” takes a hypnotic first-hand look into vulnerable creativity and works wonders as a compelling origin story for its filmmaker.
