Written and directed by George Spyros, this independent feature received a New York State Council on the Arts grant as well as the Screen Actors Guild Best Actress Award at the 1999 American Film Institute Film Festival. In the same year, Spyros received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for the film.
[Super 16/35mm, 93 minutes]
In a series of staggeringly real and emotionally expansive sequences, filmmaker George Spyros has crafted an unflinching, unpatronizing, and deep-hearted portrait of a mentally unstable woman trying to cope with everyday life. May, a nursery school teacher with a history of nervous breakdowns, has a very co-dependent relationship with Pat, her cynical, over-protective, but deeply caring mother. They tangle up each other’s lives — Pat’s work suffers from May’s constant interruptions, while May allows her self-confidence to be corrupted by Pat’s fears of relapse. When Pat’s friend Rosie suggests setting May up with her “brother’s wife’s nephew,” Tom, Pat reluctantly agrees — as long as she can supervise. Although the date’s a fiasco, Tom is attracted to the waif-like May. Mistaking her fragile state of mind as simply nervous kookiness, Tom is surprised when faced with the full display of her emotional distress — surprised, but not deterred. In a masterful, extended final scene, a family gathering brings all scars to the surface of the skin. With heart-fixing performances from all the leads, and a screenplay charged with the elliptical, tangential nature of real conversation, Last Days of May introduces an independent filmmaker worthy of comparison to John Cassavetes or Mike Leigh.
– Andrew Smith, Philadelphia Film Festival
Family Dinner Gone Wrong
................Fire!!!
Drunken Quarters Game
Last Days of May
AFI Award Win
Spyros Awarded NYFA Fellowship
NYSC Grant goes to 'Last Days of May'
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March 22nd, 2009 at 8:59 pm
[...] Dahlia Mindlin won the Screen Actors Guild Best Actress Award at the 1999 American Film Institute Film Festival for the role of may in George Spyros’s indie feature Last Days of May. [...]
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:09 pm
[...] Spyros’s feature film Last Days of May was awarded a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). The funds will go to [...]
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
[...] George Spyros received a NYFA Fellowship for his work on the feature film Last Days of May. [...]