Upstate

USA
1997, 35mm, Color, 87 min.
World Premiere

Director: Steven O'Connor
Producers: Beth Cohen, Robert Ortiz
Executive Producer: Larry Meistrich
Cinematographer: Mathieu Roberts
Editor: Greg Stroud
Screenwriter: Steven O'Connor
Music: Brian Ales
Principal Cast: Jonah Bay, Julie Kessler, Hugh O'Gorman

After his mother's funeral, Dan McCarthy (Jonah Bay) returns to his childhood home in upstate New York, to confront his older brother Robert (Hugh O'Gorman), who had not attended the ceremony. A former child prodigy on the piano, Robert now drives a truck delivering potato chips to provide for himself and Julie (Julie Kessler), his live-in girlfriend. He is prone to bouts of anger and depression that Julie doesn't understand but has come to tolerate. Gradually, Julie compels Dan to help her uncover clues to Robert's angst. But as they delve deeper and deeper into the past, they find themselves unwittingly reliving a tragedy that occurred in the McCarthy family twenty year's earlier, which Dan had been too young to comprehend. Steven O'Connor's feature debut is an intricately structured psychological drama that probes the shadowy recesses of seemingly commonplace lives to stunning effect.