Griffin in Summer

Nicholas Colia · 2024 · 90 minutes
November 15 · Regal Riviera · 6:00 p.m.

Fourteen-year-old Griffin Nafly is the most ambitious playwright of his generation. But once he meets handsome twenty-five-year-old handyman Brad, his life (and play) will never be the same.

Programmer’s Note

Like a Gen Z Max Fischer, the precocious hero of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998), fourteen-year-old Griffin Nafly (Everett Blunck) has wrangled a small group of friends into a makeshift theater troupe and begun rehearsing his most ambitious work yet, Regrets of Autumn, a play he describes as “‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ meets ‘American Beauty.’” Blunck’s delivery of the line — earnest, a bit disturbing, and very, very funny — is typical of the tone of writer/director Nicholas Colia’s debut.

When his friends get distracted by more common teenage pursuits — summer camp, boys, the first sips of alcohol — Griffin begrudgingly turns his attention to Brad (Owen Teague, NCIS: Los Angeles, It), an attractive but dim-witted handyman who does odd jobs around the Nafly home in hopes of saving enough money to get back to his failing career as a performance artist in New York City. Griffin in Summer is a coming-of-age comedy that makes the most of that pleasant tension we experience when a good hard laugh is tinged with concern and heartache.

A multi-award winner at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival — Best U.S. Narrative Feature, Best Screenplay for U.S. Narrative Feature, and Special Jury Mention for New Narrative Director — Griffin in Summer also stars Melanie Lynskey (Two and a Half Men, Heavenly Creatures) as Griffin’s mother and Abby Ryder Fortson (Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret) as his best friend. Everett Blunck steals the show, though, in what should be a star-making performance.

Everett Blunck and producer Juliet Berman will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A.