A self-reflexive origin story about creation, growth and the myth of the lone artist, My First Film heralds a bold, disruptive new talent in American cinema. But if the film’s release is anything like Zia Anger’s previous experience in the film world, it will provoke a mad whimper where it should have provoked a bang.
That’s because Anger, who writes and directs with a lot of feeling and sincerity, has had terrible luck on the film scene (if you want to call it that). Despite making impressive music videos for artists like Mitski and Angel Olsen, Anger was continually overlooked by Hollywood and struggled to get financing. Her first feature film, shot on a very low budget with the support of family and friends, was rejected at every film festival.
One caveat: Even Anger looks back on that first film as “bad.” At least that’s what she suggests in My First Film, a wrenching work in which Anger reckons with her troubled career history by reenacting her doomed first production. Produced by MUBI, the film takes a complex form that includes time jumps, fractured images, and a mix of fiction and real memories. Its plot, about a 25-year-old who has an abortion and makes her first feature, is straightforward, as are its ideas about being a woman in an unfriendly industry. But as the film progresses, it evolves into a moving meditation on what it means to make something that never comes to pass.
The film begins with lines of text on a blank screen. “I don’t know how to start,” it says. The words are intercut with snappy, gestural iPhone videos of Anger dancing, miming, and flashing her butt at the camera. The sequence culminates with a cut to Anger’s second-in-command, Vita (Odessa Young, full of emotion), sitting at a computer, her fingers fluttering over the keyboard. “I’m really glad you’re watching,” she types, “happier than you could ever imagine.”
This joy soon gives way to bitterness. Vita narrates in voice-over, remembering how she presented the concept for a short film to a room full of executives. Sweating in front of them, she babbles away, goes through the motions, and then collapses onto the carpet. The money people laugh and whisper to each other. “Are you convinced by this idea or are you open to something more narrative?” asks one of them.
One could read My First Film as an ambivalent answer to that question. While it excavates Anger’s early career, it is at once passionate, even fanatically narrative – it begins, after all, with Anger/Vita hesitating about where to begin and then follows a production from start to finish – but it is also an examination of what cinematic storytelling entails. Recalling modern masters like Josephine Decker, Joanna Hogg and Mia Hansen-Love, Anger draws generously from her own life while opening up a new kind of cinematic storytelling. Seen through her lens, time is convoluted and the line between art and life is permeable, with real life always seeping in.
We meet Vita on the first day of shooting her film: a saccharine movie about a small-town girl called Always Always. On a deserted road in upstate New York, Vita introduces Dina (Devon Ross), who will play her protagonist, to her small crew, a motley crew of friends and acquaintances. As the team prepares for the first take, Dustin (Philip Ettinger), Vita’s manic boyfriend, snaps a photo of the group. We study the image: a group of kids grinning wildly, intoxicated by the thrill of co-creation. Anger knows their reckless enthusiasm is both electrifying and a little unsettling: it foreshadows the handful of collisions that await them, as well as misjudgments that range from minor to nearly fatal.
As the production scenes escalate, Vita periodically reflects on the experiences off-screen. Looking back, she analyzes what we see, providing context for the events or drawing lessons from the mistakes. The biggest mistake comes after a particularly boisterous night of filming and partying. “I remember thinking I was brilliant,” Vita says darkly, expressing that when you’re young and hungry enough, creative ambition overshadows everything else.
These production traumas ultimately merge with more intimate, unsettling moments, including an abortion scene so powerfully conceived and executed that it actually feels like a break with the world Anger has built so far. For although it tells the story of a production that seems to have gone awry, at its core My First Film is not about turmoil but about longing—and how giving up that longing can sometimes be a beautiful, generous act of creation.
Grade: A-
“My First Film” will be available to stream on MUBI starting Friday, September 6.
