SNL’s Aidy Bryant directed and starred in a short film, Darby Forever, that’s set to premiere on Vimeo next month. It’s a quirky-looking film about Darby, a fabric-store employee with a rich, bizarre fantasy life inspired by her customers and her co-workers, who are played by Retta and Natasha Lyonne (seriously, a dream cast).
Bryant’s film is the first entry in Vimeo’s new Share the Screen initiative, which seeks to create more opportunities for female filmmakers to get their movies made. This year, Vimeo will fund five female-driven movies, then help promote and sell those films, using the format that helped High Maintenance become such a success (that partnership ended up with an HBO deal).
Five films might not sound like a lot, but considering only 9 percent of 2015’s highest-grossing films were directed by women, this program has the potential to unman the male-dominated landscape a bit (and hopefully create more movies starring Aidy, Natasha, and Retta).
