Midway through director Hal Hartley’s 1992 comedy Simple Men, the ultra-hip, raven-haired epileptic character played by Romanian actress Elina Löwensohn leads the cast in a choreographed dance to the crunchy guitar groove of Sonic Youth’s Kool Thing. It’s a formative moment for young Federica (Jasmine Trinca), an epileptic herself, being able to associate her destabilizing fits with this bewitching on-screen enigma. Now an adult and a film director, Federica runs into her childhood role model (Löwensohn, juicily playing herself) on the street and gushes, convincing the 1990s indie film darling to star in a film about her life. As their creative and personal relationship evolves, it also devolves, and the film’s production becomes plagued by disaster and ego, leaving Federica to confront certain truths about her art, her hero and herself. Director Chiara Malta’s darkly funny narrative debut mischievously blurs the line between fiction and reality, and takes the idiom “Never meet your heroes” to amusing and unsettling extremes.

Director Chiara Malta is expected to be in attendance on January 10 and 11.