Invention (2024, Courtney Stephens)

Feels like 10% doc, 90% light indie drama. There will be production noise (“cut… and that’s a wrap on Paul!”) in the blackout between scenes, puncturing the story of daughter Callie Hernandez following up on her late father’s inventions, interviewing friends/investors and other participants. But the actual documentary quantity is unknown, since people are playing version of themselves (others are played by fellow indie filmmakers), and the inventor dad was also real, playing himself in archival appearances on local TV. Courtney unpacks the precise true/false nature in a good Filmmaker interview, where they also discuss dads, “the mythology they have around themselves, and even fantasies about themselves, which as someone’s child you often enter because you’re very little, and it’s the way to be close to them and to love them.”