I am working on a feature film set in Las Vegas about two estranged friends learning how to become friends again despite having very different lives (one married and pregnant, one with a drinking problem and fresh off a breakup).
It's a relational, character-driven story. In the words of Kelly Reichardt, “a glimpse of people passing through.”
Along the lines of GARDEN STATE and LADY BIRD, LO & EM is a coming-of-age story that follows Lola, a young woman with a subversive nature, as she returns home to a Las Vegas suburb after a breakup. There, she reconnects with her estranged best friend, Emerald (Em), now married and an expectant mother. Confronted by the fact that they are leading wildly different lives, Lola pushes Emerald to explore old wounds and answer old questions.
LO & EM asks the question: “Can we really understand each other?” Told from a female perspective, it’s a story of acceptance filtered through family dynamics, class dynamics, and mental illness. It’s threaded with magical realism and dark humor, and it offers a folksy view on a notorious city.
I wrote, directed, produced, and edited my short film THE WEDDING PAINTING, completed in 2022.
Check out the trailer!!!! Wanna see the whole movie?
I wrote and co-produced a feature film called MARISOL, completed in 2022.
MARISOL premiered at the Twin Cities Film Festival in October 2022. Our lead actress, Esmeralda Camargo, won the Breakthrough Performance Award. Neat!!!
Check out a clip below :) :)
When 17-year-old Marisol Rivera is accused of a crime the same night she finds out she’s undocumented, she flees her small Texas border town in search of her mother and a new life, but when the same forces of hate that drove her away turn on her family, she must choose whether to return home to confront them or continue living in the shadows.
