Premier Partner

SPARE ROOM to be shown at SCAD Savannah Film Festival

0

One of the film’s being shown at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival next week is from Director Jenica Bergere. The movie is part of large slate of features being included in this year’s festival. Jenica is a well respected actress and director. Her first movie as a director was COME SIMI – a hilarious story essentially about her life. This movie is quiet different. You can view the film Monday October 29th at 3:30 or Friday November 2nd at 12:30. More info here.   

Director’s Statement from Jenica:

SPARE ROOM is a film about redemption and love.

The script came to me during one of the lowest points in my life. My 4 month old daughter was hospitalized with life threatening bacterial meningitis, I was fighting with health insurance companies and feeling alone because my husband was out of the country for work in a remote location and unable to get right home.

Despite it all, nursing my baby to life while staring into her face, the only thing that mattered was…. love. Pure love. Love of family.

Spare Room is about a young widow LIL living in a very small town, grieving the loss of her husband to war, mother to cancer left with the responsibility to care for her teenage brother ARROW with Down Syndrome while struggling to pay racked up insurance bills and meet basic needs. To make ends meet, she rents a spare room to DAVID a veteran who just returned from war and is struggling to reacclimate.

My own mother suffered from dementia putting me in the role of caring for her with no help from my absentee sister. For many years, I felt like my situation was truly a burden, but it wasn’t until I made my debut as a writer, director, with an autobiographical film, COME SIMI, that I understood the power of story telling to heal in ways I could have never imagined.

Turning a perceived burden into a gift is what I want people to take away from SPARE ROOM. In my own life, my baby girl was by no means a burden but the situation was, and I NEVER could have seen the gift had I not read SPARE ROOM.

I related to the script on many levels. A quintessential American story; a young post war Vet with PTSD, a small town, a football field, a diner, a young woman whose stuck in that diner, her brother with special needs reminding people to love and care for each other. The bullish boyfriend, the sage bar owner and a secret- yearning for redemption.

I know you will recognize the characters in this film, in many ways they are forgotten, in many ways we are them.

More info here.   

Share.

Leave A Reply