月亮湖 Moon Lake

Synopsis

In suburban Michigan, in the mid-2000s, Tess, a reserved and strange middle schooler, stains the floor at a sleepover.

Director’s statement

The film is inspired by my youth’s Michigan Lake suburbia sleepovers and explores early female adolescence and the bodily shame and anxieties that come with it. For me, sleepovers created an irreproducible pressure-cooker environment that felt boundary-pushing and formative. I have never seen this fixture of the American coming-of-age experience shown on screen in a non-cartoonish way. I wanted to capture this raucous, intimate setting with fly-on-the-wall realism, vulnerability, and care. The film is a personal one. I made this film with my two younger sisters Chase Sui Wonders and Grace Sui, who star as the film’s leads.