Julie Pacino makes her directorial feature debut with I Live Here Now, a haunting, dreamlike psychodrama set to premiere at this year’s Fantasia Festival. Festival dates and screening times are still to be announced, but the film’s atmospheric approach and psychological depth certainly sounds like one to watch.
Inspired by Pacino’s cinematic NFT photography series by the same title, which consists of 100 photographs portraying three characters, each of which will appear in the film, I Live Here Now stars Lucy Fry (Bright, Night Teeth) as Rose, a struggling actress in Los Angeles who finds herself knocked off course by an unexpected pregnancy — one she thought medically impossible due to past trauma. Just as a breakthrough role comes into view, Rose is forced to reckon with a future she never planned for.
Pressure mounts from all sides, including her noncommittal boyfriend Travis (comedian Matt Rife – Marriage Material) and his controlling mother (Sheryl Lee – “Twin Peaks”). Overwhelmed, Rose escapes to a rundown desert motel — The Crown Inn — where time slips, memories distort, and reality begins to bend.
There, she crosses paths with Lillian (played with eerie magnetism by Madeline Brewer), and the lines between past and present start to blur. As Rose unravels, I Live Here Now digs deep into themes of identity, trauma, and the body’s long memory.
Shot on a mix of vivid 35mm and 16mm film, Pacino crafts a visually textured debut that leans into identity, trauma, and the fragile line between memory and madness.
For a debut, this sounds like one heck of a a bold and ambitious swing; a film that might just mark Pacino as one to watch.
