Tara Mallen

This tender drama about a family grappling with grief is a paean to the transformative power of theater. If that sounds lofty, Ghostlight is anything but. It’s grounded in believable, well defined characters led by Keith Kupferer as Dan Mueller, a father fumbling through life in the wake of a tragedy but who begins to comes alive when he stumbles upon a community theater troupe and gets cast in their production of Romeo and Juliet.

A distinguished Chicago theater family and The Triangle of Sadness’ Dolly De Leon unite in this cinematic tour de force in which grief finds an outlet in the mounting of a play. Construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) copes with the loss of a family member by not really coping at all. He’s barely hanging on at his job, is increasingly remote from his wife Sharon (played by Kupferer’s real-life partner Tara Mallen), and at odds with his troubled teen daughter Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer, who is the real life daughter of Keith and Tara). What remains of his energy is reserved for a long-odds wrongful death lawsuit that will never make him whole again even if it succeeds.