Still Life explores coming-of-age love and loss
For Oakland Filmmaker Lauren Shapiro, the road from concept to seeing her feature-length film Still Life on a movie theater screen has been a long one, spanning decades, but worth the wait. She wanted to make this film about her own coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of her mother’s battle with cancer since the events in the film happened, beginning in late 1999. But it wasn’t until the 2020 pandemic struck that she really set the ball in motion. Along the way, she gained filmmaking knowledge and experience and made new lifelong friends, including Alameda High School alumnus Anika Jensen, who stars in the film. Still Life will debut at its first film festival, the San Francisco IndieFest, on Saturday, February 7.
A coming-of-age story
Still Life is set in the Bay Area in 1999 and centers on Dafne, a teen whose mother is battling leukemia. Over several months on the eve of the new millennium, Dafne juggles school, ballet, a nascent romance, and the everyday rhythms of youth—all while living with the pall of fear and grief that her mother’s illness casts over her life. As the year turns and her mother’s condition worsens, Dafne stands between childhood and adulthood, and between having someone who loves her and losing that person. When her mother dies, Dafne is alone in liminal space—grown but still growing, alive but changed.
Birthing a film
Shapiro filmed Still Life in 2024 during Jensen’s gap year between graduating from Alameda High School and starting at UC Irvine, then filmed pick-up shots during spring break of 2025. In between, rough-cut editing began in earnest. “As soon as my Kickstarter was successful, I reached out to (film editor) Ellie Vanderlip whom I had worked with before,” she said. “I went through all the footage, selected my favorite takes, and added lots of notes. She put it all together over months of us sitting next to each other and trying things out. We started in January and worked through August.”
Film festivals allowed Shapiro to submit Still Life for consideration even before she had finished sound editing, so she began submitting as soon as the rough cut was done in August. “Waiting to hear back was excruciating because I had poured so much time and heart into this project, and my hope is for it to reach a wider audience,” Shapiro said. “I had been told that acceptance into a film festival is an important first step. When I wasn’t sure if I was going to be accepted into any festival, it was crushing. But I started to explore other pathways, like connecting with [organizations] for motherless daughters and learning how to contact sales agents and distributors directly, which was empowering. I’m glad I did that because now I have other paths that I’m excited to pursue in parallel.
“Still, when I found out I got accepted, it was huge, because it’s what I had been working and hoping for, for so long. One of the festival programmers explained that once you get into one festival, it can open other doors. All you need is one person to give you a chance. San Francisco Indie Fest has given us the opportunity, so I’m grateful.”
Preparing for the first film festival
Acceptance to the SF IndieFest on December 12 was galvanizing. Suddenly, Shapiro had to finish the sound editing to meet the festival’s January 20 final submission deadline. Unfortunately, she was short on funds…