The Blue House
A woman grieving her closest friend confronts a harder grief beneath it: for the unlived life that friend's death has foreclosed.
Emma is grieving her closest friend. But beneath that grief is another one: for a life she fears she never lived. That life persists nonetheless, calling to her from somewhere just beyond her own. One afternoon, a strange and enigmatic theater performance touches something in Emma she cannot name. Its disturbance stays with her as she attempts to resume her life, and the familiar world returns to her subtly changed, charged with the presence of everything she has not chosen. The Blue House dwells in the grief we carry for our unlived lives, and in the strange capacity of art to crack us open to a possibility as overwhelming as it is liberating.
Writer/Director: Benjamin Stroman
Benjamin Stroman is a filmmaker and theatre artist based in New York. He studied film at Bard College under Kelly Reichardt and Richard Suchenski. He has worked extensively in performance and theatre, serving as assistant director and performer for renowned Greek director Dimitris Papaioannou on This That Keeps On, created for the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, and performing in Requiem for the End of Love at the Greek National Opera. He also assisted choreographer and director Pontus Lidberg on On the Nature of Rabbits, which premiered at the Venice Biennale. The Blue House is his debut film.
Producer: Paul Bronisław Kmiec
Paul Bronisław Kmiec is an award-winning filmmaker and educator, terminally in love with Central Coast and Northern California. He earned his BFA in Filmmaking from the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory in New York and his Master's in Film & Television from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He is the resident Acting for Film Instructor at the International Theatre & Dance Project in Greece and serves as a judge for the San Francisco Greek Film Festival. Paul has written and directed six short films; each of his films have screened and won awards at festivals nationwide and abroad. Paul is currently producing a feature film in NYC starring Alec Baldwin and Karen Allen. The film is the first place winning screenplay of the Golden Script Competition (2023) and a two-time semi-finalist at the Sundance Institute Writer’s Lab.
Paul has over 15 years in arts education including designing and leading the pre-college filmmaking institute at Purchase College for six years. He has Guest Lectured at the University of Amherst, Massachusetts and at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in NYC. Additionally, Paul has redesigned the summer film institute at Education Unlimited, which he directed at Stanford and UC Berkeley. He is also a Co-Founder of 48 Hills, 24 Frames, an innovative film institute in San Francisco, designed by the filmmakers behind the 2019 film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
Emma: Kara Overlien
Kara Overlien is an actor and filmmaker based in New York City. Recent film credits include Mouth Feel (dir. Max Tullio), Cerulea (dir. AJ Lambert, produced by Simone Films), Gold Rush (dir. Jessie Klueter), A Definitive Ranking of My Closest Friends (dir. Lana Dvorak). She is currently a third year graduate student at The Juilliard School of Drama. Recent Juilliard credits include: Veronica/Joan in The Hills of California (dir. Alex Shaw), Dunyasha in The Cherry Orchard (dir. Richard Feldman), Smeraldina in The Green Bird (dir. Richard Dent), and Mia Dolan in a workshop of Broadway bound La La Land (dir. Bartlett Sher, produced by Marc Platt).
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