An 11 year old girl searches for a missing rare book from her grandmother's (Holland Taylor) library and tries to understand why her family is fractured the way it is during a memorable summer at an isolated New Mexico adobe. While her mother (Kelly Lynch), like astronaut Michael Collins, goes to the dark side of the moon for a leukemia treatment, Ella must journey on her own to the strange moon of her grandmother's world. Ella's father, (Sean Patrick Flanery) orbits his daughter, as Ella befriends Miguel and Rosie to find acceptance of her mother's fate. Emotional connections are reshaped, and the music of Patrick Neil Doyle helps tell this unusual story.
Acting
Holland Taylor devours every scene as the prickly grandmother.
Cinematography
New Mexico adobe landscapes that breathe loneliness and wonder.
Score
Patrick Neil Doyle's music carries what dialogue cannot say.
Director
Amy Glazer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The rare book at the center of the mystery is a real astronomical text by Johannes Kepler, tying to the film's celestial metaphors about isolation and orbit.
Director Amy Glazer adapted this from her sister Sylvia Brownrigg's novel, keeping the Santa Fe setting where their own grandmother lived—making this secretly a family excavation disguised as fiction.
US
