James Morosini on the emotional truth of I Love My Father.

Relationships are hard enough to navigate in real life, let alone the virtual world where things aren’t always what they seem and people may not be who they say they are. James Morosini he learned this the hard way when he was caught by his own father. I love my fathera feature film Morosini wrote, starred in and directed, based on his strange, real-life experience.

“Emotionally, the whole film is true,” says Morosini. Since how I love my father won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the short story category of 2022 SXSW Film Festival, people have been asking the 32-year-old triple threat questions about how much of the movie actually happened. Morosini likes to be as transparent as possible, stating that his intention was above all to make a good film. “I wanted to tell a story about fathers and sons using this incredibly personal thing that happened to me,” he says.

I love my father stars Patton Oswalt (The King of Queens, Young adult) as Chuck, the father of Franklin (Morosini), a troubled 20-year-old who suffers from depression and anxiety issues and who is just starting to move on with his life after taking some time to recover from a suicide attempt. The relationship between the two men is strained to say the least, as Chuck was a mediocre father when Franklin was young and absent the rest of the time. While Chuck is determined to keep an eye on his son, Franklin decides that his father’s increased presence in his life is becoming toxic and takes the step of blocking Chuck on social media. When Franklin doesn’t return Chuck’s phone calls, desperate times call for desperate measures: Chuck creates a fake profile for “Becca,” a young woman Franklin’s age, to keep in touch with his son.

“I’ve been a Patton fan for a long time,” says Morosini. “He’s a guy who’s obviously incredibly funny, but he’s also got a great heart. And I knew that those qualities would be really important to Chuck because he’s someone who really cares deeply about his son and is willing to do anything to make sure his son is okay. And there he comes up with this plan that spirals out of control.

“I wanted to capture what it feels like when you’re texting someone or interacting with them online. You feel like the person is right there with you, but you often project so much of who you think that person is.”

Morosini knew it was a tall order to ask audiences to invest in a character who would do something so extremely manipulative, and Oswalt, a 53-year-old comedian known for voicing Remy in Ratatouille, was the natural choice to portray a character who is both fluffy and snarky. “The whole time I was making the film, I was very aware that in order for the audience to follow me here, they really had to relate to Chuck and his investment in making sure his son was OK,” says Morosini. “I wanted to present a moral to the audience: How far would you go to make sure your child is okay?”

The other key piece to round out the cast I love my father it was Claudia Sulewski as Becca, Chuck’s online alter ego. “She has an ease in front of the camera that was undeniable,” Morosini says of Sulewski, a wildly popular YouTube audience making her big-screen debut. The real Becca is a waitress at the restaurant where Chuck regularly eats breakfast, and he uses the photos posted on her own social media page to create the fictitious girl he uses to befriend his son. “I knew that to make this movie cinematic, I couldn’t just show phones for an hour and a half,” explains Moronsini. “I wanted to capture what it feels like when you’re texting someone or interacting with them online. You feel like the person is right there with you, but you often project so much of who you think that person is. So I wanted to materialize those predictions and have them change over the course of the film, depending on who Franklin imagined was the person he was talking to.”

“He’s a guy who’s obviously incredibly funny, but he’s also got a great heart. And I knew those qualities would be really important to Chuck…”

As well as inhabiting a story ripe for comedy, Morosini has struggled with anxiety and depression throughout his life and wants to use I love my father as an opportunity to address mental health on film in a way that is both sensitive and responsible. “When someone really struggles with these things, it happens in the background most of the time,” says Morosini. “Sometimes it’s not even something you think about much until it becomes a problem.” For Morosini, it was important to stay true to his own experiences while illustrating how difficult it was for Chuck to navigate Franklin’s delicate condition in a volatile relationship .

I love my father is now in theaters and became available to rent or own on demand platforms on August 12. An even mix of outrageously funny and deeply moving, the film represents a breakthrough for its creator, establishing him as an interesting and ambitious artist with a promising future.

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