By Valerie Milano
Palm Springs, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/12/26 – Writer, director, editor and cinematographer Jesse LoCascio brings a deeply personal and visually poetic short film to the 2026 River Valley Film Festival with Sunset Smudge.
The film will make its East Coast premiere on July 18 at 3:00 p.m. as part of the festival’s narrative shorts program. The Hollywood Times is proud to serve as a media partner of the River Valley Film Festival.
Set against the heat, color and fading beauty of Florida, Sunset Smudge follows an unnamed young woman as she applies makeup and reflects on identity, ambition, displacement and the changing world around her. Rather than unfolding through a conventional storyline, the film moves like a visual poem, combining tranquil music, spoken narration, saturated Florida imagery and the quiet ritual of getting ready.
During our Zoom interview, LoCascio explained that the poetic quality was intentional from the beginning.
“The poetic prose was very much built into the script,” he said. “I kind of wanted it to feel like a melancholic, sort of beautiful wash of emotion. I didn’t want it to feel overtly heavy, to the point where there was a depressing quality to it.”
Click below for our exclusive interview:
LoCascio deliberately avoided the muted, desaturated visual style often seen in independent films. Instead, he wanted Florida to appear radiant, colorful and almost overwhelming in its beauty.
“I wanted it to feel dripping with light and color and kind of capture Florida like I don’t normally see it on screen,” he said.
The result is a film that presents Florida as both paradise and disappointment. Palm trees, sunlight and pastel colors coexist with aging buildings, strip malls and fading facades. The beauty is real, but so is the sense that something is slowly disappearing.
The film’s changing scenery reflects the emotions of its central character. She is surrounded by light and color, yet she feels uncertain about her future and her place in the world.
The film stars model Callie Dixon in her acting debut. LoCascio first met Dixon approximately five years ago while working as a focus puller on a 16mm fashion shoot in Times Square.
The two remained connected through social media, and LoCascio eventually approached her with the screenplay.
“I sort of worked up the courage to ask her, ‘Would you be interested in doing something very different than your typical modeling?’” he recalled.
They spent approximately three months rehearsing and workshopping the script together.
“I knew immediately that I’d found my kind of muse for this project,” LoCascio said. “She was so great with taking what I had written and filtering it in the exact sort of inflection that I was hoping for.”
Dixon’s character is credited simply as “the Florida Girl.” By leaving her unnamed, LoCascio creates uncertainty about where the actress ends and the character begins.
“I want people to kind of question, ‘Is this Callie?’” he said. “There’s an almost documentary-esque kind of quality to it.”
Dixon also contributed details from her own life. One of those details was her real habit of putting on makeup before going to Publix while living in Florida. That experience helped shape the character and gave the film an element of autofiction.
The act of applying makeup is at the emotional center of Sunset Smudge. It represents beauty, identity, protection and transformation, but it also becomes a private act of control.
“I would say all of the above, and also kind of a quiet act of control,” LoCascio said. “It’s not just about the superficial beauty of it, but also how it makes that individual feel.”
As the Florida Girl carefully works on her face, the ritual begins to feel necessary rather than vain. It is one part of her life she can still shape when everything outside of her feels unstable.
LoCascio wanted Dixon to bring a slightly anxious quality to the routine.
“Almost, not a desperation, but a slight frantic feeling, like, ‘I need to do this, otherwise the world around me is going to crumble even more,’” he explained. “This is the one kind of place I feel in my element.”
Through makeup, the character creates something she can hold onto. Layer by layer, she attempts to make herself feel stronger, brighter and more capable of facing the outside world.
Although the film centers on the Florida Girl, much of the narration was inspired by LoCascio’s own life.
Three years ago, he moved with his family from New York to Sarasota, Florida. The move was something he had wanted, but the reality produced complicated emotions.
“I felt an incredible sense of displacement,” he said. “I was so excited to come here. It was very much something I always wanted to do with me and my family.”
Florida initially felt like paradise, but LoCascio also experienced loneliness and uncertainty.
“I was excited to be here. It was like just paradise to me. But I also felt incredibly melancholic and displaced,” he said.
Coming from the New York City area, he found himself surrounded by strip malls, crumbling facades, intense sunlight and unfamiliar landscapes.
“I really wanted to express this kind of conflicting feeling that you get when you go someplace that’s totally new, you don’t really know anybody and you feel very, very small,” he said.
The film’s narration captures that emotional contradiction.
“I wanted, in one breath, to be, ‘This place is incredible. This place is unlike anything on Earth,’ and also, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know if I can make it here. I’m going to try to make it here.’”
That emotional push and pull gives the film its depth. Florida is both beautiful and oppressive, familiar and alienating, hopeful and decaying.
The tranquil, meditative music is essential to the film’s atmosphere. LoCascio collaborated with composer Katalin Kult, who lives in Sweden and is of Hungarian background.
He discovered her work through Reddit while searching for a composer during production.
“I looked at her YouTube channel, and I knew immediately that I wanted her for this project,” he said.
What attracted him was the emotional and sensual quality of her music.
“It sort of wasn’t quite music to me,” LoCascio explained. “It was like, this is a character in and of itself.”
The two collaborated virtually for four to five months. Kult sent musical samples, while LoCascio responded with notes and visual references from the film.
“I would send her screenshots of just visual references, like, ‘Here’s an image of a fading, crumbling bowling alley. Take this and put it into music,’” he said.
Because music plays through nearly the entire film, LoCascio knew the score would be crucial.
“The film will live and die by the music,” he said. “I really wanted the music to be its own kind of character.”
The final score does more than accompany the film. It guides the audience through the Florida Girl’s internal world and gives the imagery a calm, dreamlike rhythm.
LoCascio described Sunset Smudge as a form of personal emotional processing.
“To me, Sunset Smudge is sort of like film as therapy,” he said. “I very much wanted it to feel like a sensory kind of experience.”
He hopes viewers will understand that uncertainty and displacement are not signs of failure.
“It’s okay to feel displaced and to have these sorts of very conflicting feelings about where you live, where you moved, where you are in life, whether that be a mental headspace or a physical space,” he said.
The film does not provide an easy answer to the question of whether beauty, ritual and hope are enough to sustain someone. LoCascio believes it is acceptable for that question to remain unresolved.
“I just want people to take away a feeling of hope and beauty from the film,” he said. “And also, it’s okay to still have that question at the end, like, ‘Is this all enough?’”
He added, “If I can move people just a little bit with that final question, that to me is the goal of the film.”
Although Sunset Smudge marks LoCascio’s directorial debut, he has worked in camera departments for approximately 12 years on independent films, documentaries, reality television and other productions.
That technical background is apparent throughout the short, especially in its carefully composed imagery, anamorphic visuals, bright sun flares and attention to texture.
LoCascio is already working on his next film, Spiral Tone, which he described as a more narratively driven, 1970s-style psychodrama.
He hopes to complete production soon and return to The Hollywood Times to discuss the new project.
With Sunset Smudge, Jesse LoCascio has created an intimate meditation on identity, beauty and belonging. It is a film about a woman putting on makeup, but beneath that simple act is a much larger story about holding onto control, processing change and searching for something beautiful in a world that can feel as though it is slowly falling apart.
Sunset Smudge screens July 18, 2026, at 3:00 p.m. as part of the River Valley Film Festival’s narrative shorts program.
To purchase tickets: Tickets for River Valley Film Festival – FilmFreeway
SUNSET SMUDGE
Narrative Short | East Coast Premiere
USA | 2025 | 8mins
Director & Writer: Jesse LoCascio
Producer: Katie LoCascio
Key Cast: Callie Dixon
Synopsis: In a sweltering Florida town, a young woman grapples with the slow decay and inevitable demise of her once beautiful surroundings.
Narrative Shorts Block | July 18, 2026 | 3:00pm
