Q&A with writer/director Matthew Petock, producer Zachary Shedd and cast members Sayra Player, Eric Baskerville, Chris Kies, Natalie Racoosin, moderated by Ted Hope!

The debut feature of writer-director Matthew Petock—a former production assistant to Martin Scorsese—A Little Closer is a stunning, note-perfect family drama that recalls Scorsese’s own Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in its intensely lyrical portrait of a single mother and her two sons eking out a marginal existence in rural Virginia. Working as a house cleaner to make ends (barely) meet, mom Sheryl (the extraordinary Sayra Player) spends her nights looking for love at a dead-end community dance hall, while 11-year-old Stephen (Eric Baskerville) flirts with juvenile delinquency and 15-year-old Marc (Parker Lutz) flirts with a neighbor girl he hopes to bed before the end of the long, humid summer. An uncannily frank American film in its depiction of class and ripening teenage sexuality, gorgeously photographed by d.p. Daniel Patrick Carbone, A Little Closer announces Petock and his gifted cast as dynamic new voices on the indie film scene.

“Matthew Petock's first feature shows him to be a director of depth, sensitivity and assurance. He captures the quiet emotions and heartbreak of his characters with profound respect for the dignity of the everyday struggles in life and what it means to be a family. A Little Closer is a hauntingly beautiful film and a remarkable debut.” —Martin Scorsese