Principal photography has been completed for a feature length version of the award winning short film AWOL, now starring Lola Kirke, who recently co-starred in Mistress America and appeared in Gone Girl.
AWOL premiered as a short film at Sundance in 2011, winning awards from Kodak, Technicolor and Women in Film. The feature was chosen for Film Independent’s Fast Track Fellowship and the IFP’s Narrative Completion Lab, and received grants from the Jerome Foundation and Frameline. The project was one of three nominees for the Calvin Klein Live the Dream grant at the 2013 Gotham Awards.
Joey, 18, falls hard for Rayna, 27, a sexy, married mother of two. Threatened by Rayna’s husband, fired from her job at the local dairy, and without many economic opportunities, Joey reluctantly joins the Army. Days before deployment to Afghanistan and still wildly in love, Joey returns home to rural Pennsylvania and plans to go AWOL with Rayna and her kids.
“I am thrilled that we have finished production on the feature length ‘AWOL,” said Producer Laura Teodosio. “The relationship between Joey and Rayna, portrayed brilliantly by Lola Kirke and Breeda Wool, is the heart of the film’s message about love, loss and growing up.”
“To think of AWOL merely as “a lesbian love story” might win it some followers while turning others away. But in reality, Deb Shoval’s vision is much larger and universal,” said Lola Kirke, AWOL’s lead. “There is no shortage of this kind of story out there, perhaps because there is no shortage of this kind of pain and joy in real life. People need to make movies about it and people need to see them; both experiences can be healing and enlightening, and that’s what my experience on this shoot has been. It is a very special film and I am so happy to be a part of it.”
