Coming Soon
MY FIRST FILM
2024
Director
Zia Anger
Starring
Odessa Young
Devon Ross
Cole Doman
Sage Ftacek
Runtime
100 MINUTES
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Between 2010 and 2012, Zia Anger directed a feature film titled ALWAYS ALL WAYS, ANNE MARIE in her hometown of Ithaca, New York. She cast her friend Deana LeBlanc as a surrogate for herself, and her actual father as the father. The semi-fantastical, semi-autobiographical film had a beleaguered production—rife with Adderall, an unwanted pregnancy, near-fatal accidents, and imploding friendships. It was never screened or distributed, but Anger has long bore its scars…
Anger’s new feature, titled MY FIRST FILM—adapted from her 2018 video-art performance of the same name—is a final exorcism of ALWAYS ALL WAYS, ANNE MARIE. The bulk of the sinewy, essayistic, and highly personal material is comprised of recreations of that film’s making, with the actress Odessa Young cast as Vita, a young and excitable filmmaker in over her head as she corrals friends, family, and neighbors into the hills and gorges of Ithaca to make her first movie. The film breathlessly covers an ambitious amount of thematic ground, putting the creative process in conversation with stories of birth, abortion, and Anger’s family history, specifically her two mothers and father’s ties to the gay communes of Ithaca and the “town myth” of her own conception.
“One of the most surprising, layered films of the year. It’s the meta movie to end all meta movies.” - collider
“Anger has an incisive sense of humor about her failures, especially about her first film, which she concedes may not actually be her first film because nobody saw it. If a movie is never viewed, is it even a movie?” - Paste
“MY FIRST FILM — a wildly imaginative, almost disorientingly complex and unapologetically sincere film — is a testament to the collective energy necessary for all creation... It’s the supreme accomplishment of this film that, by the end, you don’t feel pressured to interpret or rationalise [its] improbable scenario, but instead experience it as if it were the real thing.” - Journey Into Cinema
Anger’s new feature, titled MY FIRST FILM—adapted from her 2018 video-art performance of the same name—is a final exorcism of ALWAYS ALL WAYS, ANNE MARIE. The bulk of the sinewy, essayistic, and highly personal material is comprised of recreations of that film’s making, with the actress Odessa Young cast as Vita, a young and excitable filmmaker in over her head as she corrals friends, family, and neighbors into the hills and gorges of Ithaca to make her first movie. The film breathlessly covers an ambitious amount of thematic ground, putting the creative process in conversation with stories of birth, abortion, and Anger’s family history, specifically her two mothers and father’s ties to the gay communes of Ithaca and the “town myth” of her own conception.
“One of the most surprising, layered films of the year. It’s the meta movie to end all meta movies.” - collider
“Anger has an incisive sense of humor about her failures, especially about her first film, which she concedes may not actually be her first film because nobody saw it. If a movie is never viewed, is it even a movie?” - Paste
“MY FIRST FILM — a wildly imaginative, almost disorientingly complex and unapologetically sincere film — is a testament to the collective energy necessary for all creation... It’s the supreme accomplishment of this film that, by the end, you don’t feel pressured to interpret or rationalise [its] improbable scenario, but instead experience it as if it were the real thing.” - Journey Into Cinema