33. Zia Anger on 'My First Film' and the Pressures of the Debut

Fairly or not, there’s a huge amount of pressure placed on the way an artist chooses to debut. The first film, album, book–it has potential to launch, and sometimes even define, a career. There’s something thrilling about a first film that manages to break out and signal a unique voice, someone announcing their talent and potential that we as viewers get to anticipate and experience across an emerging body of work. If we perhaps put too much emphasis on debuts, there are only a few debuts about debuting. This is, in fact, the plot, the function, and the thematic exploration of Zia Anger’s aptly titled My First Film, which tells the story of a failed attempt at debuting, mixing autobiographical elements with the fictionalized telling of how authorship manifests, clashes, and announces its presence. My First Film is streaming now on Mubi.

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