INDIANAPOLIS — The 31st annual Heartland International Film Festival begins Thursday, Oct. 6.
There are hundreds of films this year, and several have an Indiana connection. One of them is "Always Lola."
It's about a group of young people who go on a camping trip to celebrate a friend's birthday, and meet again a year later to mourn her loss.
It's the work of a husband and wife, Jeffrey Crane Graham and Laura Palmer.
"We said was, you know, the only thing that sounds harder than making a feature film ourselves for the first time is the idea of not doing it," said Palmer.
"Two of us put our heads together and said, 'You know, we don't want to be 90 years old in a nursing home talking about the movie we never made,'" Graham said.
They've lived in Los Angeles for ten years, but returned to their Midwest roots, filming on the campus of Miami University in Ohio and in Union County, Indiana.
They shot the entire film in 11 days.
Palmer is a 2010 graduate of Carmel High School. She went on to intern at NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and now works on "The Jimmy Kimmel Show."
For Palmer, it's a dream career sparked early on.
"My first touchpoint with entertainment was when my high school theater teacher took us to the Heartland Film Festival on a field trip," Palmer said. "And so that was when I saw, 'Oh my gosh, somebody from Indiana can can do this can actually, you know, make make an impact in the film and television industry.'"
Graham wrote the script from his heart.
"I lost my best friend in high school, and this movie is really a tribute and kind of a love letter to her," he said.
He used his industry connections to hire the actors.
"It was fun to bring them all into Indiana and Ohio and watch them kind of fall in love with the Midwest," said Palmer. "They're like, 'It's more than corn and soybeans. Let us show you.'"
Campus connections helped with the rest.
"We kind of designed the production as sort of a co-production with Miami University. I taught a class leading up to production, kind of about how we put the film together. You know, how do you take a script from pre-production all the way through post production, and my students are background actors in the movie," said Graham.
"So that's our hope, that people will see this film, Indiana students will see this film and know that, you know, there's nothing inherently special about us," Palmer added.
Except they dared to dream. They got it done, and hopefully are now triggering key conversations and healing for their audience.
"Even though the movie is serious, it has an uplifting message and people can really be moved by the film, which I think was kind of our goal, to start a conversation," said Graham.
"And you know, anyone who's gone through grief, I want them to feel seen and supported by the movie in the same way that you know, this was such a healing process for me. I hope it can be that for other people," Graham added.
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