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When I'm a Moth (2019)

A challenging, unusual film...worth watching

I saw this film at its premiere (2019 San Francisco Film Festival). It's an unusual film in that it is based on a little-known real event in Hillary Rodham's life: in 1969, just after graduating from Wellesley, in the summer before Yale Law School, she went to Valdez, Alaska, and worked in a fish-packing plant. She didn't stay long, and that's about all anyone knows about that short adventure.

Zachary Cotler used this thin biographical thread to write what he calls an "un-biopic." WHEN I'M A MOTH is entirely fictional. It speaks about career, destiny, power, and the fiction one must agree to live in order to become part of the American political system.

Directed by Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak, the photography is terrific, and the acting is superb. This is a deep, thoughtful film about the beginnings of a political life. It may not truly be about Hillary Rodham (whose name is never mentioned in the film), but it's definitely about goals and ambition...the drivers of any political life.