Filmmaker Matthew Simpson, formerly of Blackshear, will present his feature film Before Me at the Golden Isles Film Festival in October.
Simpson is a 2019 graduate of Pierce County High School and is currently a resident of Atlanta. He studied film and video production at the University of West Georgia in Carollton and graduated in the spring of 2023.
He wrote and directed Before Me. The film was recently accepted for the Golden Isles Film Festival and will play there at 9:45 p.m. Friday, October 23. The festival will run from October 2225 in Historic Downtown Brunswick.
For more information, visit www.giff26.eventive.org/welcome He says his mom worked two jobs when he was growing up in Pierce County and he had lots of free time. He spent that free time watching movies, playing video games and reading books.
“I consumed stories left and right, and whenever I watched movies it was always the stories that I was interested in,” he recalls. “I wanted to know why characters behaved a certain way, why people made their choices in life.”
Once he got to college, Simpson says he began writing every day and learned how to tell a story visually through film.
“And I’ve been doing that ever since,” he said. “To me, when I watch a great film, it makes me reflect on my own life and my own choices and sticks in my mind well after the credits roll. My goal is to offer that same feeling to someone else out there with my work.”
Simpson describes the film as a romantic thriller with a running time of one hour and 52 minutes.
The film follows the main character Roland, who, after a devastating breakup, meets aspiring writer Stephanie. But as Roland gets closer to Stephanie, he experiences retroactive jealousy: A mental condition causing him to fixate on Stephanie’s exes and endure intrusive visions of her romantic past. When Roland discovers a heartbreaking secret about Stephanie’s past, his retroactive jealousy threatens to ruin everything.
Before Me tackles the topic of retroactive jealousy.
“I believe that one of film’s great powers is creating space to talk about difficult topics,” he said.
“It’s a condition I suffered with for a time where someone becomes jealous and obsessed with their partner’s exes. The more I researched, the more I realized how common it is to struggle with retroactive jealousy, but I couldn’t find a definitive movie that covered the condition in detail.” Simpson decided to change that and created Before Me, which serves as the first film about retroactive jealousy in modern dating.
“Viewers, hopefully, have not made the same destructive decisions as the characters in
Before Me, but they recognize the feelings and motivations behind those actions. Since I began my journey writing this film in 2022, its themes have helped me form new relationships and spread awareness of this condition,” he relates.
Simpson’s film uses an all Georgia cast and crew. It was filmed largely in Carrollton and at his alma mater the University of West Georgia.
“I wanted to capture the feeling of being tapped in an endless loop of jealous thoughts about your partners past as well as discuss if the phrase “once a cheater always a cheater” is a true statement. The film draws a lot of inspiration from the TV show You as well as the films Memento and One Hour Photo.
Simpson displays his work on his website at www.matthewsimpson.org.
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