Invention

In collaboration, director Courtney Stephens and actress/filmmaker Callie Hernandez fictionalise the aftermath of Hernandez’s father’s death, using a real archive of varied TV appearances he made as an alternative health doctor from the late 1990s to the 2020s, and a fictional storyline revolving around the patent of an experimental healing device—the daughter’s sole inheritance. With other independent filmmakers in acting roles, Invention also serves as a portrait of America in its late period, a country in which widespread disappointment infuses the culture with hopeful fictions and toxic nostalgia.