Amidst an exciting 2022 Oxford Film Festival slate, one of the most notable films included is “Disfluency,” written and directed by Anna Baumgarten.
The film follows a young woman, Jane, returning home to her family’s lake house after failing her final college class. During this turbulent period, she begins to reconnect with old friends and truly reconcile with the traumatic events that derailed her senior year.
In the same manner Jane, played by Libe Barer, best known for her role in the Amazon series “Sneaky Pete,” is figuratively reaching into the annals of memory, Baumgarten is drawing from personal experiences in an incredibly candid fashion, however, the film is not directly autobiographical. It has been a long time in the making, with Baumgarten stating she initially conceived the idea seven years ago.
Before being produced into a feature film and garnering great acclaim, winning the Narrative Feature Jury Prize at the Austin Film Festival, “Disfluency” was initially produced as a short film, directed by longtime friend/collaborator of Baumgarten, Laura Holliday, with Baumgarten as writer/producer.
The 12-minute short, released in 2018, garnered the attention of many, including award-winning filmmaker Jim Cummings, who helped develop the screenplay into a feature through his annual “Shorts to Feature Lab,” a prestigious program that competitively selects 10 filmmakers per year. Additionally, the Duplass Brothers — the perennial directing duo who helped shape the modern independent film scene — further assisted Baumgarten’s development of the feature by awarding her their prestigious “Hometown Heroes” grant.
When it came time to direct the feature film Holliday was not available, so Baumgarten decided to take this personal story into her own hands, marking her feature directorial debut.
“The film covers PTSD, imposter syndrome and all the emotional highs and lows after a traumatic incident occurs,” Baumgarten said in an interview at the Austin Film Festival.
The title itself refers to speech disfluencies: filler words we unconsciously use in everyday conversation, such as umm…, uh…, sorry…, etc.
These verbal hiccups, directly represented through Baumgarten’s dialogue, tie into the film’s theme of the failure to communicate, especially in the aftermath of personal tragedy and all the societal pressure that ensues. These verbal hiccups are what Jane unconsciously turns to when faced with the difficulties of attempting to vocalize her trauma.
While attempting to tackle difficult subject matter, Baumgarten offers a glimmer of hope within the closing lines of the short film:
“Speech is not perfect because we are not perfect,” says Jane’s communication sciences and disorders teacher in a pivotal final scene.
Baumgarten seems poised to screen the 95-minute feature film in front of an in-person audience, and filmgoers are equally poised to see it.
“Disfluency” will be screening Friday from 2-3:45 p.m. at the Oxford Commons Cinema in Tito’s Handmade Vodka Auditorium. More information can be found on the Oxford Film Festival website.
