GHOSTLIGHT Trailer: Onstage Drama Mirrors Real Life in Kelly O’Sullivan & Alex Thompson’s Tragicomedy

Five years after their charming comedy Saint Frances, Chicago-based filmmaking duo Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson reunite for a soulful tragicomedy with just as much heart. Ghostlight, which the pair co-directed, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival where it moved audiences and critics alike. The film stars a real-life family: Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen, and Katherine Mallen Kupferer (who broke out in last year’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) as versions of themselves going through a personal tragedy and unexpectedly find themselves in the orbit of a community theatre group (led by Triangle of Sadness sensation Dolly De Leon). As they get involved in a production of Romeo and Juliet, they must confront emotional scars as they try to heal.

IFC Films and Sapan Studio will release it in NYC and Chicago on June 14, before expanding nationwide.

Here’s an official synopsis from Sundance:

Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan’s moving, gently comic collaboration is about the power of live theater to make sense of our offstage dramas and personal narratives. Ghostlight centers on Dan (Keith Kupferer), a melancholic middle-aged construction worker grieving a family tragedy. Cut off from his devoted wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), and talented but troubled daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), Dan finds comfort and community in a misfit company of amateur actors. While moonlighting in a low-rent production of Shakespeare’s most protean tragedy, Dan is forced to confront his buried emotions.

Check out the trailer below.

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