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Director Andrew Morgan’s (Long Gone By, The True Cost) latest feature film, Samantha Rose, conceived of, shot and completed during the 2020 pandemic in a small and safe cast and crew setting in the rural settings of the Pacific Northwest. The film wis now available on digital platforms through Freestyle Digital Media.
Centering non-binary actor, Sam Rose, the feature is a tale of a young woman battling family codependence and aimlessness alike. Marking their first feature film role, Samantha Rose returns to her hometown in northern Oregon and is reunited with a childhood friend and his misfit commune of friends where they work the fall harvest on the surrounding vineyards. Sam is lost, working a dead-end job, and afraid to pursue a real life of her own, while this ragtag family of runaways are fearless and free, leading Sam on a journey of discovery and healing. There are motorcycle rides and homemade wine, midnight swims and bonfires, horses, camping, and a love story that unfolds as Sam comes to see her life for what it really is: her own.
“People showed up in the face of the pandemic to create a story that they believed in and there is nothing more beautiful than that,” said Rose.
Centering a non-male protagonist was important to the team and to the actors. Rose added, “Everyone goes through what Samantha Rose goes through in the film whether it be self doubt, insecurities, or being lost. Having the story be told by someone who isn’t a white cis male gives a dynamic nature to the human experience. I want everyone who is on any spectrum of gender to understand the universal nature of this experience.”
Watch the trailer below.