Come Stay

Director’s Statement:

The day the mayor of New York City announced that schools were closing for Covid, my family and I had just arrived in western Maine for four days to attend my father’s funeral. We began hunkering down for what would end up being two and a half years in my childhood home.

We counted our blessings that we were safe, but I felt completely unmoored. A series of choices that didn’t really feel like choices left me silently screaming as I went for endless walks in the woods. Meanwhile, a heat was building inside me. I have since started to notice it in other mothers in their late 30s: a slightly panicky glint in the eyes, a telltale feral shimmer that says “I may be nearing the height of my powers, but I don’t know how much time I have left”.

Come Stay catches two women in that moment, looking at each other across the chasm of their different circumstances with an uncomfortable mixture of love and envy. Each sees in the other the choices they didn’t make.

I believe that humans are not very good at feeling satisfied, but we are very good at seeking out meaning and magic wherever we find ourselves. Come Stay is a story about how silly and sweet it is that we keep up the attempt.