My First Film

Independent • Unrated • Directed by: Zia Anger • 100 minutes

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, Anne 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.