INVENTION Trailer: Callie Hernandez Goes on a Bizarre, Personal Journey of Grief in Courtney Stephens’ 16mm Hybrid Feature

Filmmaker Courtney Stephens (Terra Femme, The American Sector) blurs fiction and autobiographical nonfiction in her newest 16mm feature, Invention. It stars Callie Hernandez (who co-wrote the script with Stephens) as a woman who returns to her hometown following the passing of her eccentric inventionist father, where she inherits a patent for an experimental healing device. Hernandez’s real father is featured throughout the film in archival footage of varied TV appearances he made as an alternative health doctor in the late 90s through 2020. It had its world premiere at last year’s Locarno International Film Festival, where Hernandez won the Pardo for Best Performance. The film also stars James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Lucy Kaminsky, Sahm McGlynn, Tony Torn, Paul Kleiman, Tony Torn, Joe Swanberg, and Caveh Zahedi.

Invention will have its U.S. premiere at the Los Angeles Festival of Movies on Friday, April 4, and its East Coast Premiere at New Directors/New Films on Saturday, April 5. It will premiere on April 18 at Metrograph.

As the official synopsis reads:

The film fictionalizes the aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s death using a real archive of varied TV appearances he made as an alternative health doctor in the late ’90s through 2020. The fictional storyline revolves around the patent of an experimental healing device that becomes his daughter’s (played by Hernandez as the character of ‘Carrie Fernandez’) sole inheritance. Featuring other independent filmmakers in acting roles, INVENTION serves as a portrait of America in its late period, a country in which widespread disappointment infuses the culture with hopeful fictions and toxic nostalgia.

See the official trailer and poster below.

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