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‘Lane 1974’ Trailer: SJ Chiro’s Festival Favorite Captures Life Growing Up Inside A Commune — Exclusive

The SXSW 2017 selection tells the story of a daughter facing the pitfalls of her mother's hippie lifestyle.
Lane 1974 Trailer The Orchard
"Lane 1974"
Sebastien Scandiuzzi

“What’s your dream house?” might be a simple question. But as the fantasy that guides much of “Lane 1974,” the latest from writer-director SJ Chiro, it’s enough to build a film around.

The Orchard has released a new trailer for the SXSW 2017 favorite, which will be released on-demand later this month.

Set in Northern California in 1974, the charming coming-of-age film features life growing up on a commune. 13-year-old Lane (played by Sophia Mitri Schloss) and her siblings do their best to keep up with their rebellious mother, the self-named Hallelujah (Katherine Moennig), as she migrates through various communes and across the dirt roads of the Northern California.

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Based on the memoir, “The Hypocrisy of Disco,” by Clane Hayward, the film follows precocious Lane, who yearns for a normal life. A teen brought up in the Me Decade, Lane tries to guide her younger brother and sister through the hippie counterculture her mother ushered them into. Unknowingly, she also faces the repercussions of a culture where typical child-rearing replaced with instability and free reign.

Writer-director SJ Chiro pulled a great amount of inspiration from her own childhood experiences. According to The Stranger, Chiro and Hayward lived in communes in the same county in Northern California. On why she chose not to tell her own story, Chiro said, “It was too hard to tell my own story. It was too amorphous. It was too huge to get my mind around. But when I read Clane’s book, I could see it. It was just easier to talk about my own experience through somebody else.”

This first look shows how “Lane 1974” captures the vastness of the Pacific Coast. A campsite in the middle of a forest or a beach stretching hundreds of miles feel within reach through a sweet bedtime story.

Watch the trailer below for a taste of the mellow visuals and a vintage feel that capture the lifestyle and the era:

“Lane 1974” is available in select theaters and will be released via digital/on-demand platforms September 26.

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