Fourteen

Mara and Jo, in their twenties, have been close friends since middle school. Jo, the more outgoing figure, is a social worker who runs through a series of brief but intense relationships. Mara, a less splashy personality than Jo, bounces among teacher aide jobs while trying to land a position in elementary education, and writes fiction in her spare time. She too has a transient romantic life, though she seems to settle down after meeting Adam, a mild-mannered software developer. It soon becomes apparent that Jo, despite her intellectual gifts, is unreliable in her professional life, losing and acquiring jobs at a troubling rate. Substance abuse may be responsible for Jo’s instability…but some observers suspect a deeper problem. Over the course of a decade, the more stable Mara sometimes tries to help, sometimes backs away to preserve herself, but never leaves behind her powerful childhood connection with Jo.

Dan Sallitt

Direction & Screenplay

Dan Sallitt was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and attended Harvard College and UCLA’s school of Theater, Film and Television. He was the first-string film critic of the Los Angeles Reader from 1983 to 1985, and has written film criticism for many other outlets, including MUBI, the Chicago Reader, and Slate. Sallitt’s previous films are The Unspeakable Act (2012), All the Ships at Sea (2004), Honeymoon (1998), and Polly Perverse Strikes Again! (1986). The Unspeakable Act won Best Film in the Independent Visions Competition at the 2012 Sarasota Film Festival, played several major festivals (including Rotterdam, Vienna, Karlovy Vary, Edinburgh, Melbourne, and BAMcinemaFest), and is distributed by Cinema Guild.