My First Film

There has never been a movie like Zia Anger’s My First Film, which premiered at CPH DOX - although it is primarily a hybrid, leaning towards fiction - and which has just landed on MUBI after a tour of festivals. But is it a good thing? Many critics seem to be quite enthusiastic about it…

Its title pretty much answers the question of what it is about, but there is a bit of history to be dealt with here. Namely, Anger’s intended feature debut Always All Ways, Anne Marie was a very difficult production on the verge of being considered “haunted”, and, after it was finally finished, it failed to secure a festival premiere and any form of distribution. The filmmaker went on with her career, directing music videos and shorts. At one point she also converted her experiences with her haunted first film into a live performance piece. That performance piece has now got its feature-length cinematic treatment that also serves as Anger’s official feature-length debut.

We get to see the young filmmaker Vita (played byOdessa Young) trying to shoot her first feature on a shoestring budget, while dealing with a series of challenges. Her own vision, driven from personal experiences, is not yet crystallised, so her instructions to the skeleton cast and crew cannot be clear. She also has to deal with the situation caused by her attention-seeking boyfriend Dustin (Philip Ettinger), with her lead actress Dina (Devon Ross) being unable to channel the performance she wants her to and with the obedience of the tech crew in question due to the fact that alcohol and drugs run freely on the set. After one alcohol-fuelled shooting gets its aftermath in the form of her actor’s (Abram Kurtz) car accident and her crew leaves her, the only person she can turn to is her own larger-than-life father. The epilogue is known from Anger’s own story and her publicised performance.

So, My First Film is a very original and sincere piece of cinema, but it still does not answer the question if it is any good. There are a lot of stylistic choices that might infuriate the viewers, depending on their own taste and preferences, from a very free-flowing stream-of-consciousness-type of structure, hampered with narratorial digressions, to an inflation of TikTok-style clips especially in the beginning. At its best, My First Film feels very disjointed in its apparent lack of any formal rigour, and it seems that Anger is using exactly that with the intention to sell it as an indisputable truth.

Speaking of which, everything we see might ring true, but only to those who are themselves in the film business. Surely enough, there are problematic productions in which the filmmakers’ enthusiasm is constantly tested and tempered by reality, but Anger only occasionally stumbles upon what might be the reason (or the reasons) for it. These range from the teachings in academic circles, to the simple fact that educated filmmakers are now just short of being mass produced and that most of them come from the ranks of the privileged, so the stories that involve them personally or their personal stories do not resonate with the cast and crew members, the audience and the festivals.

The (personal) stories of the young and hopeful filmmakers converted into their films tend to seem like ramblings. Because usually they are not corroborated in relevant experiences. And ramblings are, by default, ramblings, whether they come from up-and-coming filmmakers or from established, even veteran ones, who are now regarded as gatekeepers. In the end, most of the trouble with My First Film is that it is maybe only a tad more articulate and eloquent than the “abandoned” one that inspired it and still is its only raison d’etre.