Lake Forest Park

Filmed on location in Northwest Washington, Lake Forest Park (un)winds through a coming-of-age tale of a group of friends dealing with the secret of a classmate’s death. The film explores collective and individual grief tinged with existential confusions. Caught are sweet subtleties of youth while the unsayable calls out to the sounds that are raining.

Kersti Jan Werdal is a photographer and filmmaker whose work centers around collective memory, hidden truths within cultures that experience(d) erasure, and place. Demanding an active viewer, she typically situates specific plot-points opaque, and prefers to pivot away from the expository. Her films focus on off-screen sound and framing of the subject to tell a story, while often working within a structuralist form. She frequently works in Washington State, where she was born and raised, incorporating landscapes and histories of the region. Lake Forest Park is Werdal’s second feature-length film.