Stranded at her family’s secluded Montana ranch during the summer of 2020, Anji places an ad for a ranch hand to help out in her family’s absence. She soon meets Lu, a queer college student from Columbia University with dreams of escaping her family’s apartment and spending the summer out west. As the two spend the summer together, they grow closer to one another and fall in love while taking care of the horses and land in isolation
We explore their relationships in two interwoven timelines. The first timeline occurs in July of 2020, when Anji first hires Lu, and they begin their working relationship together. The second timeline occurs a month later, in the wake of their breakup, with the potential reopening of schools on the horizon. Anji’s brother Taran flies back from isolation in India after a family tragedy. These two timelines showcase how our main character Anji interacts with and deals with her changing relationships while isolated from the rest of the world.
A Word
from
the Director
My relationship with my own queerness grew out of my early relationship with nature and spending my time outside with loved ones. I grew up in a small town in Virginia and spent much of my childhood in the mountains and Paradise Valley of Montana. Later, I found community during quarantine through riding horses with my mom and revisiting my connection with my family farm in isolation.
In my experience, queer members of rural America are underrepresented in media, especially in a way that showcases the intersecting identities of rural life. My relationship with my rural home and my queer identity are often put into conflict, and I want to explore this complexity in my film to ultimately showcase that queer joy and community can be discovered in these sparse landscapes. Many rural queer narratives portray queer people leaving these spaces with the promise of finding community, but neglect the community that can be developed within them.
- Bella C Sonen
Behind the Scenes
9 days of filming, 90 pages of script
The cast and crew traveled to Montana to live and work together for two weeks in the Paradise Valley. The entirety of filming took place during nine of those days.
The Team is made up of college students and recent graduates from around the country and the project was funded independently through a campaign with Seed & Spark.
