A psychological drama shot in New London by a Wallingford filmmaker is having its world premiere at one of the film industry’s most prestigious showcases for independent movies, the Toronto International Film Festival.
“The Missing Girl,” directed by A.D. Calvo, is about Mort, a morose comic book-shop owner who is fixated on a young employee, who looks just like a girl he once had a crush on and who vanished years ago. It will have screenings on Sunday, Sept. 13, Tuesday, Sept. 15, and Sunday, Sept. 20, at the Scotiabank Theatre in Toronto.
After that, the movie will have a U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest, to be held Sept. 24 to Oct. 1 in Austin, Texas, and an East Coast premiere at the Woodstock (N.Y.) Film Festival, which will be Sept. 30 to Oct. 4.
“The Missing Girl” is Calvo’s first feature film that isn’t horror-based. He released two films in 2013: “The Midnight Game,” the story about a pagan ritual and an urban legend, shot in Wallingford, and “House of Dust,” a story of a vengeful ghost in an abandoned asylum, filmed at Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic and at UConn in Storrs. “The Melancholy Fantastic,” a 2011 release about a disturbed woman consumed by grief, was shot in Wallingford and Monroe. “The Other Side of the Tracks,” a ghost story from 2008, was filmed in Wallingford.
“It wasn’t really a decision not to do genre. It was a decision to not do a plot-driven film but a more character-driven story,” Calvo said in a phone interview about “The Missing Girl.” “I had been assessing horror films and genre and, looking back, the classics like ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘The Shining’ and ‘The Exorcist’, the ones that are timeless, they were character-driven.”
He also was inspired by the Barker Animation Art Gallery in Cheshire, a huge repository of animation art. “It’s a fascinating place, all cluttered full of great memorabilia and comic books and figurines,” Calvo said. “I always have that in the back of my mind. When I started writing the opening scene, it was situated in a comic-book shop.”
The film was shot in about 23 days in August 2014 in New London, with the exception of one scene in a strip club in Groton. The budget, Calvo said, was less than $500,000.
Calvo said that although Fantastic Fest is a genre specialty festival, focusing on horror, fantasy and science fiction, it was accepted anyway. “At that festival, the theater is full of ‘Morts,'” he said, referring to his lead character.
Calvo is preparing a new film, another horror film, that will be shot in Connecticut in November and December. He calls it a “character-driven, quiet, atmospheric ghost story, very retro” that will focus on two women in their 20s.
He said “The Missing Girl” will have its Connecticut premiere at the Garde Arts Center in New London sometime in February.
