Kate Lyn Sheil – Memphis Flyer

Indie Memphis and U of M Present The Debuts: Three of the Best First Films of the Last 15 Years

Film festivals are where most filmmakers get their start. Indeed, finding fresh new voices and seeing radical new visions in a too-often bland and homogeneous filmscape is a big draw for festivals like Indie Memphis. Now, the fest is teaming up with the University of Memphis to bring three first films from directors who went on to do big things.

The Debuts screenings, May 5-6 at the Malco Summer Drive-In, are curated by University of Memphis Department of Communication and Film professor Marty Lang. The first film in the series (May 5th) is one of the most consequential first films of the 21st century. Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy screened at Indie Memphis in 2008. Set in the booming San Francisco of the Aughts, the film stars Wyatt Cenac, who went on The Daily Show fame, and Tracey Higgins, who would later appear in The Twilight Saga, as two young lovers who try to come to terms with their place in the racial and economic hierarchy of their allegedly free and egalitarian city. Jenkins went on to win Best Picture in 2016 for Moonlight; his new historical fantasy project, The Underground Railroad, drops on Amazon Prime on May 14th. The screening will be followed by a discussion led by members of the Memphis Black arts organization The Collective.

Then, on May 6th, a double feature kicks off with the debut film by Jeff Nichols. The Little Rock, Arkansas native is the brother of Lucero’s frontman Ben Nichols. His first film was Shotgun Stories, starring Michael Shannon. The 2007 film is the story of a feud between two sets of Arkansan half-brothers who find themselves in radically different circumstances, despite their blood connection. After the screening, Nichols will speak with Lang about the making of the film, and his subsequent career, which includes the Matthew McConaughey drama Mud and Loving, the story of the Virginia couple whose relationship led to the Supreme Court legalizing interracial marriage.

The second film on May 6th is Sun Don’t Shine by Amy Seimetz. The 2012 film stars Memphis filmmaker and NoBudge founder Kentucker Audley and Kate Lyn Sheil (who later went on to roles in House of Cards and High Maintenance) as a couple on a tense road trip along the Florida Gulf Coast. Seimetz went on to a prodigious acting career, as well as leading the TV series adaptation of Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience and directing one of 2020’s most paranoid films, She Dies Tomorrow. Lang will also interview Seimetz about beginning her career with Sun Don’t Shine.

Tickets to the screenings are available on the Indie Memphis website.

Kate Lyn Sheil as Amy in She Dies Tomorrow

Wystan Hugh Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for his book-length poem “The Age of Anxiety” in 1948. To which I say, 1948? Whatever. Auden knew nothing of anxiety.

Fear? Certainly. Uncertainty? Probably. But when it comes to anxiety, the world of 1948 ain’t got nothing on 2020. There’s the slow creep of climate change, and the possibility of nuclear war never went away. Economic anxiety is real, even though it’s no excuse for racism. And if you’re a person of color, there’s the background hum of racism. Then there’s social media, which increasingly feels like a gun blasting weaponized anxiety directly into your face. We swim in anxiety to an extent Auden never thought possible.

That pervasive, contagious anxiety is what She Dies Tomorrow is all about. Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a recovering alcoholic in the throes of a recent trauma, the details of which become clearer as the film progresses. Alone in her newly-purchased, almost empty house, she has an unexplained psychedelic experience and promptly falls off the wagon. She calls her friend Jane (Jane Adams) for comfort, and puts on her sparkliest dress. When Jane arrives, Amy tells her the secret: She has an overwhelming sense that death is coming for her when the next sun rises.

Jane, a biologist, has a skeptical view of Amy’s Thanatos ideation. Sure, we’re all going to die at some point. But tomorrow? Judging from the way her alcoholic friend is sucking down white wine, she’s in danger of a massive hangover tomorrow, but probably not death. But Amy is insistent. She’s going to die tomorrow, and her final wish is for her skin to be used to make a cool leather jacket.

Jane Adams comforts her doctor in She Dies Tomorrow

Jane chalks it up to the babbling of a drunk, tells Amy to get some rest, and plans on checking up on her tomorrow. Relapses happen. But when she gets home, she has a psychedelic experience of her own. Jane is seized with a sudden fear that she is going to die tomorrow. Not even a fear, really—more like a resigned certainty.

Jane was trying to avoid her sister-in-law Susan’s (Katie Aselton) birthday party, but alarmed by her new knowledge of imminent demise, she shows up in her pajamas. Soon, her brother Jason (Chris Messina) and party guests Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) and Tilly (Jennifer Kim) are also convinced they’re about to kick the bucket. What you would do if you knew you were going to die tomorrow is a perennial party game question, and the victims of Amy’s fearful contagion all have different ideas for terminal activities. A surprisingly large number of them involve doing some killing of their own.

Writer/producer/director Amy Seimetz is, like Greta Gerwig and Josephine Decker, a product of the indie underground. She was a producer on Barry Jenkins’ first film Medicine for Melancholy and acted in Gaby on the Roof in July and Tiny Furniture. She has a Memphis connection, having starred in Kentucker Audley’s Open Five as an out-of-towner being introduced to the joys of the Bluff City. Audley, whom she directed with Sheil in Sun Don’t Shine, stars in flashbacks as Amy’s boyfriend Craig, whose fate goes a long way toward explaining the origin of this plague of fear.

Or maybe not. She Dies Tomorrow may sound like a great grindhouse horror title, but this film is indie to its core. Seimetz is unconcerned with slashing, splattering, or answering questions, only conjuring a mood of pervasive anxiety. After all, if your questions about the future had answers, you wouldn’t have anxiety, would you? With some beautiful imagery, natural acting, and a dash of gallows humor, Seimetz channels the unquiet spirit of the age. Call it Panic Attack: The Motion Picture.

She Dies Tomorrow

She Dies Tomorrow is playing at the Malco Summer Quartet Drive-In.