Inside Liz Sargent’s Personal New Orlando-Set Film Take Me Home
- Liz Sargent’s narrative feature film "Take Me Home" is scheduled to begin a week-long theatrical run at the Enzian Theater on October 16, offering audiences an intimate exploration...
- The feature is set in the family's real East Orlando home and stars the filmmaker's sister, Anna Sargent, who is 37 years old and has cognitive disabilities.
- The project originated as a 16-minute short film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023.
Liz Sargent’s narrative feature film “Take Me Home” is scheduled to begin a week-long theatrical run at the Enzian Theater on October 16, offering audiences an intimate exploration of caregiving, disabilities, and family dynamics in suburban Florida. The 90-minute film draws heavily from the filmmaker’s personal life growing up as one of seven adopted children alongside four biological siblings.
Production Background and Real-Life Roots
The feature is set in the family’s real East Orlando home and stars the filmmaker’s sister, Anna Sargent, who is 37 years old and has cognitive disabilities. While professional actors portray parents Bob and Joan—played by Victor Slezak and Marceline Hugot—alongside sister Emily, played by Ali Ahn, the core narrative remains anchored in the reality Liz Sargent shared with her family. Liz Sargent experienced profound anxiety during her twenties regarding the future care of her sister and aging parents, noting the difficulties of navigating the medical system and securing guardianship. “I was drowning in the medical system trying to fight for my sister who has mental illness and getting her health care, and finding guardianship for Anna, and thinking about my parents aging out of their role as caregivers,” Liz Sargent said. Choosing to film in Florida was a deliberate decision to capture an environment that shaped her family, acknowledging both the harshness of the climate and the specific visual quality of its downpours.
Festival Journey and Grant Support
The project originated as a 16-minute short film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. After screening at multiple regional events including the Florida Film Festival, the project secured a $1 million production grant through the Tribeca Film Festival and AT&T Untold Stories. Within a year, the short expanded into a feature-length project that premiered at Sundance in January, where Liz Sargent earned a screenwriting award. The production subsequently held its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival and its New York premiere at Tribeca.
Accessibility on Set and Caregiver Advocacy
To support Anna Sargent’s participation, the production utilized an improvisational approach alongside an acting coach and a disability producer. Lydia Storie, an executive producer on the film and director of culture change for the advocacy organization Caring Across Generations, explained the production’s support structure.
“We were able to provide some grant funding to the film in order to make sure she had a caregiver, an accessibility producer that trained everybody else to work with Anna in the way that she needed to be worked with, and also an acting coach to really work in a personalized way to help Anna prepare for all of her scenes,”
Lydia Storie Storie noted that these measures enabled Anna Sargent to deliver an award-winning performance. In the feature film’s plot, Anna must navigate her relationship with her sister, adjust to her father’s memory loss, and learn to navigate the world following the loss of their mother.