Film Screening: Ghostlight

dESCRIPTION

This moving dramedy about amateur theater and a family coping with loss premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

During the day he operates a milling machine, which mutes every other sound around him, and in the evening sits with his wife Sharon (Tara Mallen) in the office of the school principal, trying to understand the problems of his teenage daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer). The family is on the verge of falling apart: in addition to their constant fighting, Dan is having trouble at work and is about to get fired. Suddenly, an eccentric resident of their town, Rita (Dolly De Leon), invites Dan to play in an amateur production of Shakespeare, cleverly pointing out that it looks like he wants to be someone else for a while.

In theater the introverted Dan finds a common topic for conversations with his daughter. During rehearsals, he learns to speak through emotions and about them, to relax, and to be in agreement with himself and with others. Shakespeare’s text helps Dan to speak about his own tragedy, the death of his son. At the same time, the film does not turn into a tragedy. The sardonic tone of directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson and the awkward sitcom moments counterbalance the emotional tension between the characters.

Ghostlight begins with a theater-like curtain ajar on a window. The opening scene with rhythmical street noise refers to musicals, and the title to the theatrical tradition of lighting the stage when there is no audience in the hall. This is a story about theater, and the filmmakers have been close to the world of theater themselves. Screenwriter and director Kelly O’Sullivan began her career as a theater actress, the main actors are stars of the Chicago theater scene, and the jewel of the ensemble, Dolly De Leon, known for Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness and the films of Lav Diaz, was formerly a costume designer at a university theater in the Philippines.

The film will be screened in English with Russian subtitles.