What’s grief if not dwelling within the liminal area between mourning and coping, of life and demise itself? Courtney Stephens‘ fiction and autobiography hybrid movie “Invention” blurs reality and fiction because it facilities on the aftermath of actress/co-writer Callie Hernandez’s personal father’s demise.
Director Stephens and Hernandez each are credited for the script, with Hernandez additionally starring in it (the duo additionally produce collectively). Hernandez gained the Pardo for Finest Efficiency within the Filmmakers of the Current on the 2024 Locarno Movie Competition.
The official synopsis for the movie reads: “The movie fictionalizes the aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s demise utilizing an actual archive of various TV appearances he made in its place well being physician within the late ’90s by means of 2020. The fictional storyline revolves across the patent of an experimental therapeutic machine that turns into his daughter’s (performed by Hernandez because the character of ‘Carrie Fernandez’) sole inheritance. That includes different impartial filmmakers in performing roles, ‘Invention’ serves as a portrait of America in its late interval, a rustic by which widespread disappointment infuses the tradition with hopeful fictions and poisonous nostalgia.”
James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Lucy Kaminsky, Sahm McGlynn, Tony Torn, Paul Kleinwald, Tony Torn, Joe Swanberg, and Caveh Zahedi co-star. The cinematography is by Rafael Palacio Illingworth, who shot on 16mm. “Invention” is a Neurotika Haus and Jacket Climate manufacturing.
“We’re so excited to lastly share this movie with American audiences,” Hernandez and Stephens instructed IndieWire. “It’s so deeply intertwined with our observations in regards to the U.S., about the place we’ve been and the place we’re heading and the way it’s feeling. We’ve cherished sharing this ‘little movie that might’ at festivals around the globe and conserving the torch of impartial filmmaking burning.”
Hernandez additionally seems in Pete Ohs’ “The True Great thing about Being Bitten by a Tick,” which premiered at SXSW 2025, and Albert Birney’s “OBEX,” which premiered at Sundance 2025. She can even lead “The Misconceived,” directed by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, and “The Narcissists,” directed by Mike Crane.
The IndieWire evaluate for “Invention” deemed the movie a “compelling and heat” characteristic that’s “open-hearted, playful, and perceptive. “‘Invention’ achieves its personal type of magic in seeing simply how far you possibly can check the boundaries between metafiction and express documentary,” the evaluate reads. “‘Invention’ could have the narrative tropes of many a grief drama we’ve seen earlier than, however the expertise is altogether extra distinctive because of Stephens’ shape-shifting, more and more summary method.”
The movie may have its U.S. premiere on the Los Angeles Competition of Films on Friday, April 4 and its East Coast Premiere at New Administrators/New Movies on Saturday, April 5. “Invention” premieres April 18 at Metrograph.
Try the primary trailer for “Invention,” an IndieWire unique, under.