''My First Film'' is a 2024 American

drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...

film directed by Zia Anger, who the screenplay with Billy Feldman. A film based on Anger's experiences, it stars

Odessa Young Odessa Young (born 1997 or 1998) is an Australian actress. She gained prominence through her roles in the Nine Network drama '' Tricky Business'' (2012) and the 2015 films '' Looking for Grace'' and '' The Daughter'', the latter of which earned ...

as a young filmmaker who recounts the struggle to make her first feature film. The film had its world premiere at CPH:DOX in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

on March 19, 2024, then had a

limited release __FORCETOC__ Limited theatrical release is a film distribution strategy of releasing a new film in a few cinemas across a country, typically art house theaters in major metropolitan markets. Since 1994, a limited theatrical release in the Unite ...

on August 30 before streaming on

Mubi Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; the Auteurs before 2010) is a global streaming platform, production company and film distributor. MUBI produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusively available ...

on September 6. It received critical acclaim.

Cast

as Vita * Devon Ross as Dina * Cole Doman as JJ *

Jane Wickline Jane Wickline (born July 1, 1999) is an American comedian and actress. She is a featured cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' for its 50th season. Early life and education Wickline's mother is Marcella "Marcy" Hardart, a pediatrician who prev ...

as Alexis *

Philip Ettinger Philip Ettinger (born September 8, 1985) is an American actor. He first gained attention for his supporting role as the troubled environmental activist, Michael, in Paul Schrader's ''First Reformed'' (2017). Other significant roles have been as ...

as Dustin *

Eamon Farren Eamon Farren (born 19 May 1985) is an Australian actor. Following starring roles in the films '' X: Night of Vengeance'' (2011) and '' Chained'' (2012), he came to prominence for portraying Richard Horne in the 2017 revival of ''Twin Peaks''. ...

as Joe * Eleanore Hendricks as Sylvia * Sage Ftacek as Bobby * Jackson Anthony as Sound Guy * Seth Steinberg as Sam * Sarah Michelson as Doctor * Abram Kurtz as Cash * Ruby Max Fury as Dad

Production

Between 2010 and 2012, Zia Anger shot her first feature film ''Always All Ways, Anne Marie'' with her family and friends as cast and crew, but the project was rejected by multiple film festivals and left as "abandoned" on

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

. Anger then created an interactive live performance due to her frustration with filmmaking and festivals, using a

TextEdit TextEdit is an open-source software, open-source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with macOS since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application fo ...

documentary and

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

files of the feature film, involving viewers through

iMessage iMessage is an instant messaging service developed by Apple Inc. and launched in 2011. iMessage functions exclusively on Apple platforms – including iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and visionOS – as part of Apple ecosystem, Apple's approach t ...

and

AirDrop An airdrop is a type of airlift in which items including weapons, equipment, humanitarian aid or leaflets are delivered by military or civilian aircraft without their landing. Developed during World War II to resupply otherwise inaccessible tr ...

. Anger and Billy Feldman began writing the film's screenplay during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, Devon Ross, Cole Doman,

, Eleanore Hendricks, Sage Ftacek, Jackson Anthony, Seth Steinberg, Hailey Gates, Sarah Michelson, Abram Kurtz, and Ruby Max Fury joined the cast of the film in November 2022, with Anger set to direct and

set to produce and distribute.

Release

It had its world premiere at CPH:DOX on March 19, 2024. It received a

on August 30, 2024, and began streaming on

on September 6, 2024.

Reception

Natalie Winkelman of '' IndieWire'' gave the film an A- and wrote, "''My First Film'' is, at its core, a movie not about upheaval but about yearning, and about how, sometimes, giving that yearning up can be a beautiful, generous act of creation all its own."

Richard Brody Richard Brody (born January 22, 1958) is an American film critic, filmmaker and author. Background Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York. He is Jewish and has personally identified as an atheist. Brody attended Princeton University, receiving a B ...

of ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'' praised the film and called it "a masterwork of an artistic coming-of-age and a virtuosic reconception of the art of cinema itself".

References

External links

* {{IMDB title, tt23778542 2024 directorial debut films American drama films Films about filmmaking