Fairyland

Andrew Durham's first feature is adapted from Alysia Abbott's memoir about her father. After her mother dies in a car accident, young Alysia moves to San Francisco with Steve, her father, a poet living openly as a gay man; the child grows up inside that world. The film sets two periods against each other. The freedom of the seventies gives way to the AIDS epidemic of the eighties; the narrative shows that shift not as an event but as a household and a circle slowly emptying. Scoot McNairy plays the father and Emilia Jones the older Alysia, with a separate performer for the childhood section. Sofia Coppola is among the producers. The tone is measured and the narrative avoids emotional exploitation. Who it's for: those who follow family drama drawn from real lives and queer history. Who it's not for: viewers for whom parental death and the AIDS epidemic would sit heavily.