2024’s beautiful and very human indie film Ghostlight made my Top 10 movies of the year and is still high on the list of the most memorably written, acted and directed movies I have seen in the first quarter of this century. From filmmakers Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan, it opened up the world of Chicago regional moviemaking for me and made this team who had made the small but acclaimed Saint Frances talents to watch.

Now that faith in them not only has been confirmed but taken to a new level of accomplishment with their latest, Mouse, premiering Friday in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival, and if there is any justice it is one that will come out of this year’s Berlinale with a distributor ready to spring it on the world. It is worthy in every way.

Mouse actually was written by O’Sullivan before Ghostlight and was meant to be their next film following Saint Frances, but the pandemic and other matters got in the way. It deals with themes of loss, grief and a theatrical setting that contains some unmistakable similarities to Ghostlight, in which a family finds a local theater company becomes a path toward healing from unimaginable personal tragedy. But Mouse comes out of O’Sullivan’s own life and experience in its location and its story of a young girl changed by sudden loss of a best friend and finding her own identity in a high school senior year.

Set in North Little Rock, Arkansas, in May 2002, Ghostlight breakout Katherine Mallen-Kupferer stars in the titular role of Minnie, a high school junior on the eve of her last day of the school year, looking forward to summer and then senior year and living a carefree life with best friend, Callie (Chloe Coleman), inseparable since they were young kids. Callie, a vivacious and talented star drama student is markedly different than the non-descript, OK mousy, Minnie, who lives with mother Barbara (Tara Mallen), a divorced veterinarian trying to make ends meet in a house full of adopted animals and an adopted baby, making life hectic for Minnie. She would rather hang with Callie at the airy house where she lives with mom, Helen (Sophie Okonedo), a classically trained pianist who is also encouraging her beloved daughter’s theatrical aspirations.

This comfortable dynamic is upended, rather shockingly, when Callie suddenly dies. Everything changes — not just for Minnie but also Helen as a parent who has lost the lifeforce her own existence revolved around. In O’Sullivan’s story these two come together, however haltingly at first, out of necessity for both just to go on and find a semblance of their lives without Callie. Things really hit hard for Minnie at the memorial service, where popular student Cara (Audrey Grace Marshall) pronounces that she (and equally popular Brandi, played by Addisyn Cain) were Callie’s best friends, something that causes Minnie to sink even more into the background, even to the point of not speaking at the service.

Eventually Minnie finds some renewal in a budding friendship with video store clerk Kat (a wonderful Iman Vellani), who had lost her mother a year earlier and could see Minnie’s pain. When Cara suggests the school put on a talent show to honor Callie’s memory, the talent-challenged Minnie, with the help of Helen, finds a way out of her deep hurt determined to perform a Callie favorite, “One.”

There is so much authenticity in this film, the feel and smell of a suburban Southern town, the start of summer, a coming-of-age near the turn of a century, the search for your own identity lost in the shadow of a bigger personality, the meaning of being a true friend and finding a way forward when you discover that you are alone.

I cannot say enough about the performance of Mallen-Kupferer, who is perfectly cast and will simply break your heart. There is not a false note anywhere near this portrayal of a young girl in search of who she is and where she is headed. The same goes for veteran Okonedo, who here gets her best screen role in year as a grieving parent who finds purpose in helping her daughter’s BFF who lost the “forever” part of that. Also standouts are Beck Nolan as Callie’s confused boyfriend Brad and David Hyde Pierce, who makes the most of his few scenes with a understanding and poignant turn as the drama teacher Mr. Murdaugh.

Mallen, also from Ghostlight, here beautifully plays a mother just trying to keep things together and finding frustration that Minnie can’t appreciate the sacrifices she has made. A devastating and gut-wrenchingly honest scene between her and Okonedo hits you right in the heart. And although Coleman is in briefly as Callie, the presence she establishes in the film’s first part resonates throughout and is a key part of making the remainder of the movie, without her physical participation, work as well as it does.

Mouse is a humane, rich and rewarding experience. Let’s hope it finds its way into the world with a distributor that can give the film the tender loving care it deserves.

Title: Mouse
Festival: Berlin Film Festival – Panorama
Directors: Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan
Screenwriter: Kelly O’Sullivan
Cast: Katherine Mallen-Kupferer, Sophie Okonedo, Tara Mallen, Chloe Coleman, Iman Vellani, David Hyde Pierce, Beck Nolan, Audrey Grace Marshall, Addisyn Cain, Christopher R. Ellis
Sales agent: CAA
Running time: 2 hrs