Wakita, Oklahoma, in the early 1960s. The wind blows clouds of dust across a plain beneath a vast sky. A handful of scattered houses, a not very impressive center of town, a lone road cutting through a wasteland, and not much else. The scenery is reminiscent of Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, especially since it is shot in elegant black-and-white, lending it a classic feel. This is the background for a melodrama about growing up and being different. Iris is a shy schoolgirl, the unlucky owner of huge glasses and a weak bladder. Maggie is the new girl in town—seemingly radiating confidence, she is in fact hiding a difficult truth about her life. These different, albeit similarly lost, teenagers develop a friendship. They will no doubt need each other’s support—the surrounding world is no oasis of kindness and tolerance.
Cinetopia FF 2019 – Festival Director's Award
Born in 1984, Martha Stephens is related to the writer Jesse Stuart. She was born in West Virginia and grew up in Kentucky. She studied at the University of North Carolina’s School of the Arts. She made her full-length debut with Passenger Pigeons, for which she won the Gamechanger Emergent Woman Director Award at the SXSW Festival. Her fourth film, To the Stars, premiered at the Sundance Festival.
2005 Echo Hollow (short)
2006 Ant Hills (short)
2010 Gołębie pocztowe / Passenger Pigeons
2012 Pilgrim Song
2014 Zejście na ląd / Land Ho! (co-dir.)
2019 Do gwiazd / To the Stars