ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
On the cusp of a pivotal promotion, a once-successful theater professor has 24 hours to rescue her new play, save her marriage, and win over a notoriously malicious playwright.

SYNOPSIS
The follow-up to writer-director Jenny Deller’s award-winning drama, Future Weather (Perla Haney-Jardine, Amy Madigan, Lili Taylor), THE IMPOSTER follows a woman on the verge of a mid-life fiasco.

Trudy Svoboda has left behind her days as the artistic director of a successful theater troupe and followed her husband Luis, a charming Spanish neurologist, to a Midwestern university on a multi-million-dollar research grant. Six years later, she’s plagued with self-doubt and suppressed creativity. As a last-ditch effort at tenure, she’s staging a new play: a memoir about her Czech dissident father who was killed in a hit-and-run. All she needs is a positive review from an outside juror.

But two days before the show, everything blows up. Her lead actor drops out, and Trudy is saddled with playing the role of her father who she hasn't seen since she was thirteen. Her juror, playwright Paul Ian Kennedy, turns out to be a renowned narcissist and enfant terrible. And Luis—accused of forging data for a high-profile research project—first insists he’s being targeted and then goes missing. Shaken to the bone, Trudy must chaperone Kennedy, who one minute seduces her, and the next publicly undermines her.

As they battle it out over an icy weekend, the two form an unlikely connection that propels Trudy’s work—and life—in a startling new direction. Along the way, she is paid cryptic visits from her deceased father, who offers guidance from the beyond and coaxes her back to herself.

Balancing sharp satire with moments both tender and surreal, THE IMPOSTER asks what happens when we stop betraying ourselves to get ahead? It's a mid-life coming-of-age that finds humor in crisis and has rich and dynamic roles for seasoned actors.

PROJECT TYPE Narrative Feature

DIRECTOR Jenny Deller
SCREENWRITER Jenny Deller
PRODUCER Jenny Deller, Joe Guest, Olivia Kavanaugh

WEBSITE theimposterfilm.com

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