One magical night.
Their Town
The film enjoys its world premiere at SXSW 2026. Visit the film's official festival page for more information.
One week before it's due to open, Abby's boyfriend Tyler drops out of the school play in which they were to star together.
At their high school in Bangor, Maine, that's a major crisis, at least for the play's director, Mr. Elliot (Jeffrey Self), who randomly selects stagehand Matt (Chosen Jacobs) to fill the starring role opposite Abby (Ora Duplass). After school that day, Abby runs into Matt outside, offers help in memorizing his lines, and suggests they go to her place to rehearse.
Things quickly get awkward when Abby comes home and discovers her mother Janet (Kim Shaw) in the kitchen with Tyler, who has been invited to dinner. Even more quickly, the awkward situation becomes tense between Abby and her mother, exploding into an argument and prompting the younger woman to flee the premises.
From there, Their Town falls into an agreeable narrative rhythm: Walk somewhere, do something, rehearse the play, and take a break, talking all the way. The cycle is repeated various times, yet always with satisfying variations.
The changing settings, in and around the chilly autumnal beauties of Bangor, Maine, as Abby and Matt walk and talk, furnish the film with lovely, ever-changing backdrops for the lively conversations, which gradually deepen the connection between the two young people. Without sounding like philosophical treatises, their conversation flows easily and naturally, moving from one subject to the next, sometimes making surprising turns, as conversations between newly-formed friendships often do.
Watching Their Town is a lovely, lovely, lovely experience, as much as anything because it's a modest affair that is not seeking to drop atomic bombs, on either a physical or an emotional level. Really, it's just about two people talking, and seeing how they make a connection.
In her feature acting debut, Ora Duplass is extraordinary. (I say that without knowing beforehand that her father, Mark Duplass, wrote the script, and her mother, Katie Aselton, directed.) She captures the fluctuating emotions of Abby as she shifts moods from a "normal" schoolgirl to a would-be drama queen to a frustrated daughter to an angry girlfriend to a supportive friend to a convincing stage actress, all in about 80 minutes. Every emotion she expresses is genuine. Every moment is heartfelt.
Chosen Jacobs is quite good, perhaps not up to her level of excellence, but close, perhaps a reflection of the role as written, which is the second lead, not the first, so naturally it's a bit lesser. Even so, his greater experience (It and its sequel) is tempered to match that of the protagonist.
In comparison with director Katie Aselton's last film, Magic Hour (2025), her new film feels positively buoyant, while still being willing to dig into some hard truths. Solely as a writer, Mark Duplass knows how to reveal character through entertaining dialogue; while that goes somewhat against the age-old filmmaking command 'show, don't tell,' certain films can ignore that maxim and elevate themselves with their words alone, in combination with how they're performed and captured by a good cinematographer. Here, director of photography Sarah Whelden wields light and shadows to enhance the drama, cheer the comedy, and respect the darkness.
The film feels like an ocean of emotion, from buoyant stirrings of romance to the heights of family drama and the depths of depression. Told truthfully, Their Town is a quiet revelation.