Fresh off her Golden Globe-nominated performance in Ruben Östlund’s Triangle Of Sadness, Dolly De Leon is leading her own troupe of actors in Ghostlight. The new movie from co-directors Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson (Saint Frances) was acquired by IFC Films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered to critical acclaim. It will debut in select theaters June 14 before opening nationwide. Ahead of the release, The A.V. Club has an exclusive clip of De Leon coaxing a reticent construction worker into expressing himself—through the power of theater.
Rita (De Leon) originally recruited Dan (Keith Kupferer) to help out with her rehearsal as a last-minute replacement for a member of the troupe who dropped out. In this clip, she attempts to convince him to join her “island of misfit toys” on a permanent basis. “You know why I asked you to help?” She says. “It seemed like… you might want a chance of being somebody else for a while.”
Rita is a former theater professional who “didn’t want to stop” when she moved home, as she explains in the clip. “It’s not all just Shakespeare, you know?” she says as a means of convincing Dan to stay. An ironic proclamation, given that Dan eventually does end up joining the troupe for their production of Romeo And Juliet. Per the film’s synopsis, when the melancholic Dan “finds himself drifting from his wife and daughter, he discovers community and purpose” through joining the theater. But “[as] the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life, he and his family are forced to confront a personal loss.”
Ghostlight stars the real-life family of actors Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen, and Katherine Mallen Kupferer (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret). Katherine plays Keith’s troubled daughter Daisy, who discovers his secret theater habit and decides to get in on the action herself. For the father-daughter duo, theater becomes the therapy that Dan has previously refused to entertain. “When things get hard, you either blow up or bail! It’s a bad habit!” Daisy scolds her dad on the side of the stage in the trailer. “Many of us live our lives repressing our emotions, because out there, they can be a liability,” De Leon explains to her actors. “But in here, we can put those into good use.”