Synopsis

MIRA is a young, lonely actress in New York, struggling to find purpose in her performance. As she juggles bizarre acting classes verging on therapy, and dayplayer gigs like selling her likeness for an educational avatar, she meets VINH, a terminally ill man who mistakes her for his long-lost daughter. Drawn together by loneliness, curiosity, and a shared pain of loss, they begin a game of pretense. But Mira struggles to inhabit the daughter role.As Mira gets immersed in the performance, she grapples with memories and dreams of her own disappeared father. When Vinh's health worsens, SIERRA, his long lost daughter, appears to return, confronting Mira.As Mira continues to return questioning her narrative of abandonment. Reckoning with the loss and grief, Mira returns to auditions, finding a new purpose in her performance.

Themes

Family, performance, memory, images, AIFIDELITY interrogates our relationship with our images and with the narratives that drive our relationships.The three intersecting storylines, centered on an underemployed actress in pursuit of meaning and self-discovery, forge a timely psychological drama that ultimately seeks to question what stories serve us and what stories hurt us, and whether lies and pretense can serve a healing purpose.

Screener and trailer available upon request.

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Key Team

ROBERTO DRILEA (Director, Writer, Editor)

Roberto Drilea is a Romanian writer-director based in New York. A 2016 Film graduate of Northwestern University, he has had short film and VR work premiere at festivals including SXSW and Reykjavik. He has apprenticed under renowned directors including Lucrecia Martel and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. FIDELITY is his debut as a writer-director.

VADIM EGOUL (Producer)

Vadim is a Kazakhstani-American filmmaker and recovering lawyer.
Vadim has produced nearly a dozen feature and short films, including EXUVIA (Mill Valley, IFFBoston, Sun Valley, Stony Brook), slated for release in late 2024/early 2025.
Vadim is also a co-leader of the Manhattan non-profit filmmaker collective, Filmshop.

JUN-TING ZHOU (Cinematographer)

Jun-ting Zhou (周駿挺) is a filmmaker, director of photography and writer. His films were shown and selected in publications and film festivals such as New York Times, New York Shorts International Film Festival, Big Apple Film Festival and more. His cinematography for short films Agatha and Dora (dir. Julian de la Chica) has won numerous awards around the globe.

Key Cast

CATHERINE DAUPHIN (Lead)

Catherine Dauphin is a queer, Vietnamese-French actress based in London. She was born in south of France and grew up across Europe and the UK. She has worked alongside directors and actors such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Vicky Krieps, Emily Atef, and Gaspard Ulliel. Fidelity is her leading debut.

Thom Sesma (Co-Lead)

Thom Sesma is a New York-based actor who has appeared in TV (Madam Secretary, The Good Wife, Jessica Jones, Law & Order), Broadway (The Lion King, Miss Saigon) and more. In 2024 he won the Outer Critics Circle Award for his Off-Broadway performance in DEAD OUTLAW (now on Broadway.)

Ethelyn Friend

Ethelyn Friend is an actress, voice coach, a teaching member of the International Roy Hart Center in France, and a founding faculty member of Naropa University’s groundbreaking MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance Program, the first graduate training program to integrate contemporary physical theatre forms, Viewpoints theory and practice, extended range vocal work and traditional contemplative practices.

Alex Hernandez

Alex Hernandez is best known as Kenny on the Apple TV series Sugar, and detective Tommy Constantine on the Amazon series The Peripheral.

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Director's Statement

FIDELITY examines our relationship with images and the narratives shaping our connections. Through three intersecting storylines, centered on an underemployed Asian-American actress searching for meaning, connection, and self-discovery, the film creates a timely psychological drama that questions which stories help us and which harm us.This is my first feature as a writer-director. Made with a five-figure budget and many favors, FIDELITY was developed in collaboration with Catherine Dauphin, the French-Vietnamese actress who plays Mira and Sierra. The film began after we met in a 2022 workshop led by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (MEMORIA, UNCLE BOONMEE), and grew out of shared questions about the mystical nature of performance and the challenges of creating art in a society that continues to devalue it.I believe acting is the heart of cinema, so I was particularly intrigued to tackle questions about acting in the age of AI. Cinema and drama don't exist without performance, but as an actor, your existence becomes somewhat secondary to your image. Once you're recognizable, people see you as a character first, and a person second—a kind of shell. That duality intrigued me and became a key theme in this film.I’m also fascinated by our shift to a society increasingly mediated by AI. AI, though long embedded in our lives, is advancing rapidly, often in unsettling ways. To make it less intimidating, we put human faces on it—educational bots wrapped in deepfake avatars, holograms at airports, customer chat heads on websites. But who are these people lending their likenesses? And what happens when their images, initially used with consent, are repurposed?Exploring these questions felt particularly poignant with an actress on the cusp—someone experienced but not yet recognizable, someone just committing to acting as a career. What does it mean to dedicate one’s life to acting—or any art?I think, among other things, it means to commit oneself to the notion that, as humans, perhaps we can't really handle the truth directly. That’s a notion I share as a fiction-maker, as a director. We make painful truths more palatable by wrapping them in lies.We need art to hold our hands as we experience the depths of our own feelings.Roberto Drilea

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Behind the Scenes

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