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In 2007, three teenagers had a vision for growing youth-made film in Seattle. Jesse Harris, Jocelyn R.C. and Kyle Seago founded their non-profit, The Talented Youth, and the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY), a showcase for filmmakers age 24 and under. Since its inception, the fest has blossomed into a four-day event that receives around 1,000 movie submissions and garners 10,000 attendees. 

This year, 17-year-old Seattleite Wynter Rhys, who attends classes at Bellevue College as part of its Running Start program for high school students, is one of the young filmmakers participating in NFFTY. She’ll show her 17-minute movie, The Fawn Response, on Saturday, April 30 at 10 p.m., as part of the Edge of Your Seat screening series. Fawn is a psychological thriller about two serial killers – one clean-cut, one ragged – who are after the same victim.

Rhys says she knew from a very early age she wanted to make movies. 

“I physically can’t listen to a song without having images running through my head,” she says. She wrote her first film, Little Red, inspired by an “old, creepy house” she passed on the way to school, when she was 13 and produced it at 14. 

She’s particularly drawn to thrillers when she makes movies — mostly because they represent the circle of life. 

“All my films are about the scariness of humanity,” she says. “The creepy is beautiful to me because humanity is beautiful, but it’s also terrifying. Humanity has created all these beautiful things, but has created also so much destruction.” 

Making Fawn, she says, felt out of her comfort zone and was a challenge. 

“It was the first time I dealt with a lot of dialogue. All my other work has been experimental, very visually heavy and working with that under-the-skin feeling. But this time I had to make my characters come alive in a completely different way.” 

Rhys says she takes her character inspiration from watching people’s reaction to different stimuli. 

“I consider myself a people collector of sorts,” she explains. “I take pieces from different people I meet and incorporate them into my characters – how this person moved, or how this person reacted to a particular sentence.” 

But does she feel awkward or intimidated to work with actors twice her age? Turns out, not really. 

“I know my characters and their back stories so well, that regardless of my life experience, I know them well enough to discuss them with my actors,” she says. “What made them demented killers became very real to me – and in such a way that me and my actors could connect.” 

Somehow, this seems exactly what NFFTY’s three founders had in mind for their fest, which launched when Rhys was only 7 years old. 

For more information on NFFTY, visit its website here.

And check out Little Red here: