Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer When “My Dead Friend Zoe” filmmaker Kyle Hausmann-Stokes set out to adapt his own experiences as an Army vet onto the big screen, he made two very big changes: gender-flipping the main characters and two women of color in the roles.
Starring Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales, “My Dead Friend Zoe” is a dark dramedy that follows Merit (Martin-Green), a U.S.
Army Afghanistan veteran who is at odds with her family thanks to the presence of Zoe (Morales), her dead best friend from the Army.
Director Hausmann-Stokes co-wrote the film with AJ Bermudez inspired by Hausmann-Stokes’s time serving five years in the Army as a paratrooper, during which he received the Bronze Star in Iraq, and the suicide of his good friend and platoon mate. “My Dead Friend Zoe” marks Hausmann-Stokes’s feature film debut after attending USC film school. “One of the first few ideas, when I finally mustered the courage to finally start putting this down, was that I knew that I wanted this to be funny, and I knew that I wanted the two main characters to be women,” Hausmann-Stokes said during a Q&A after “My Dead Friend Zoe’s” premiere at SXSW Saturday. “For starters, it’s so personal, I just needed some separation from the main characters.
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