Zia Anger prefers the term "autofiction" when describing My First Film, her project that tells the story of her journey as a first-time filmmaker, creating Always All Ways, Annie Marie — an unreleased film she laboured over for two years, but was never to be seen by audiences. (Anger submitted the movie to as many film festivals as she could and was rejected by each one.)
She describes it as autofiction as opposed to "hybrid," which is how the vast majority of us would have categorized it — part narrative feature, part documentary. Using clips from Anger's social media accounts, on-screen text to help describe parts of the film, and fourth-wall breaking, the documentary elements form an important part of recalling the challenges Anger encountered and created.
It's the reenactments of filming Anger's unreleased first film that tilt the film the other way. Rather than the tacky reenactments often seen in documentary films, Anger's is a full-on narrative film, starring Odessa Young as (basically) Anger. It was written by Anger herself, based on real events, with real people showing the behind-the-scenes drama that took place over a decade ago.
"I thought I was going to make a narrative film," Anger tells Exclaim! over Zoom. "As we started to edit, it really felt like all of these different things from my past, like the Instagram videos, really served the story that we were trying to tell. If we didn't allow ourselves access to those things, the story that we were trying to tell just wouldn't be as good. It really was about letting the story lead and guide us."
Some of these elements, such as the on-screen text, can actually be traced back to a multimedia performance that Anger toured between 2018 and 2022. After Anger shelved Always All Ways, Annie Marie, she became a nanny and decided she'd never make a movie again. The experience of making her first film, and the rejection that followed, discouraged Anger for years.
After tossing a flippant tweet onto Twitter (as it was then known) about her abandoned film, a friend reached out to her to present the film in June 2018 at Spectacle Theater in New York City. Anger grabbed her laptop and showed clips to the 15-person audience, using textedit to form the narrative.
This was the moment that enlivened Anger, and it was that feeling she chased into a feature film.
"I wanted to enjoy making films again," Anger says with a touching sincerity. In approaching the film, Anger "prepared [herself] for it to go either way." Maybe she'd make the film and absolutely detest being in the director's chair.
"I prepared myself to not fall in love with it — for everything bad to happen again," she says. "Hypothetically, if it had gone really bad, I would probably have finished and been like, 'I'm never doing that again.'"
Thankfully, for Anger and her team, she found making My First Film "really exciting," leaving the final day of the shoot thinking, "I really, really, really want to do this again."
She recalls. "The process is the product. I think you can tell that not only I, but everybody, really enjoyed making this film. I did totally fall back in love with making movies again. It really allowed me to see this path forward of like making films, and how I like to make films, and who I like to make films with."
What makes My First Film a particularly interesting investigation into filmmaking is that the project doesn't examine the failings of Always All Ways, Annie Marie upon its release. Instead, it's an examination of Anger's failings as a young and brash filmmaker.
It's that personal, self-awareness and self-reflection that Anger injects into the film that prevents My First Film from being positioned under any one category. The film is a personal essay, a therapeutic fictional take, an ode to its original form, and, most importantly, a look back to a time where bad decisions were made but ultimately forgiven.
"I had a lot of delusions of grandeur. I thought I was the shit," remembers Anger. "To be able to look back and say, 'That's something I don't want to do again,' and also, '[That's] something I want to make fun of.' Everybody is young and dumb and super excited at some point in their life."