After enchanting audiences on the West Coast throughout the summer, director Tomer Almagor’s 9 FULL MOONS has been selected to compete for the honor of Best International Feature at the 21st Raindance Film Festival. Starring Amy Seimetz and Bret Roberts, and co-starring Donal Logue, Harry Dean Stanton, and Dale Dickey, this gritty, emotional, and authentic love story displays its beautiful and complex characters, as well as the sun-baked expanse of Los Angeles, with affection and realism.
Frankie (Amy Seimetz) is a wild and enigmatic train wreck with a candid outlook on life. Lev (Bret Roberts) is a solitary, stoic young man with profound aspirations to become one of the legendary musical vagabonds he earnestly admires. These two radically different free spirits embark on a handicapped and frenzied affair, but their non-conformist attitude toward social norms sends them on a rollercoaster ride. In order to escape the downward spiral of their lives, and take a serious stab at a future together, Frankie and Lev must force themselves to examine and come face-to-face with their painful histories, and to make peace. As the young couple struggle with their personal demons, they try to hold on to one another against insurmountable odds.
Amy Seimetz, whose LUCKY THEM, directed by Megan Griffiths, was acclaimed at TIFF and who was recently featured in W Magazine, called Frankie “alluring and crazy and fun and enigmatic” in an interview with Another Rainy Saturday during the Seattle International Film Festival. “Before she understands what she has to do for herself, she is filled with so much love for this other person . . . but in order to have this stable love, and to give to the other person, she needs to take a look at herself first and to work on herself.”
9 FULL MOONS, like life itself, is filled with contradictions; through Frankie and Lev’s moments of anguish and glimpses of happiness, the film juxtaposes genuinely fresh and oddly romantic moments with scenes of bleak, raw, painful emotions and utter despair. This compelling, modern love story resonates with anyone who has ever fallen in love, worked hard to make their dreams come true, or simply tried their best to get through the everyday struggles of life on this planet.