Lindsay Calleran’s ‘Caity’ Turned Grief Into Art

Lindsay Calleran’s – Award-winning New York filmmaker Lindsay Calleran says an unexpected heart attack that killed her father mid-development reshaped her debut feature “Caity,” turning a project about family into a softer, more personal bridge back to him. “Caity” is premiering a

When Lindsay Calleran sat in a small holding room where families are placed when they’re “crying too loud for the ER,” she suddenly remembered the one thing that didn’t feel real yet: “But we didn’t make the movie yet.”

Her father’s death had come without warning—an out-of-the-blue heart attack on a particularly hot day in May—during the middle of developing “Caity,” the debut feature she was making about her relationship with him.

Everything about their creative life had been built on “we.” It had lasted a lifetime. In between years working together at a dinner theater for 15 years. her father helped her make short films—endless roles and reshoots and costumes and car rides. Calleran describes their bond as the kind that shapes everything, even when you can’t put it into language.

In “Caity,” her father was supposed to play a small part: “Tall Dave,” an old-timer of the haunted house where much of the film takes place, a crustacean of sorts. The character began as an idea they tossed back and forth—what if he was always eating peanuts?

Then fate took them to Kevin McCurdy’s Haunted Mansion. a local Halloween attraction that has been in operation for 50 years and sits ten minutes away from her parents’ home. Calleran scouted the haunt with her dad. and she says Kevin McCurdy and her father “got on like a house on fire.” Shared material—used and re-used. torn apart and tie-dyed cloth—came with something she calls precious: the willingness to spend “a thousand hours of creative labor on ten minutes of shared joy.”.

Before long, her father was working for Kevin at the very haunt meant to serve as her metaphor.

The shock of his passing hurdled through the people who knew him, and the film development timeline shifted with it. Kevin; his business partner and wife, Holly; and their daughter Kelly tapped Calleran on the shoulder at his funeral service. She says it was three years into the development of “Caity. ” about a year and a half before the team would come to shoot the film on location at their haunt—where Kevin would take on the role originally meant for her father.

She recalls a group hug after the service: “wept without words.” And the echo returned again and again—“But we didn’t make the movie yet.”

The project, she adds, was never meant to be a grieving endeavor. She knew that if “Caity” were made. it would explore “the effects of alcoholism and addiction on the family system. ” with as much specificity as she could manage. It would also carry the ache of her own coming-of-age—an “aching terror at vulnerability” and a desire to escape through drugs and alcohol herself.

Her father passed with 15 years sober. Calleran says she recently celebrated six.

Still, after his death, the script changed. She credits editor and dear friend Joe Stankus with a theory: people may be more likely to respond positively to a cut of a film when they’re told it’s done—not because they’re being nice. but because the finishing changes how choices are interpreted. encouraging “curious wonder.” Calleran isn’t sure if the theory is real. but she says it was true for her father’s death.

“When his life was deemed finished,” she says, “I had no notes.” She wanted to tell him—and everyone—that the imperfections were part of it.

Those memories are stitched into the way she remembers making the film. She describes leaving the restaurant where she worked on the Upper West Side and calling her father late at night. when he’d answer like “the brightness of a night owl. ” saying. “Hey girl. what’s the news!” She’d walk down Amsterdam toward the subway. share updates—often meandering and infuriating at the time—and feel him hang on every word.

Those walks, she says, were more precious than the film itself could ever be.

Now, two years since her father passed, “Caity” has been made. Calleran says that when she thinks about production. she remembers him there—partly because she created a posthumous cameo for him. meant to be funny. But she also believes he’s present in the “air” and “the space between me and everything. ” in the ways the production came together.

She points to collaborators she says her father would have adored: Chiara Aurelia and Morgan Spector, “with their unimaginable gifts.” She also highlights Kevin’s haunt “perfectly on display,” and friends and family “sewn into the fabric at each turn.”

The feature itself is supported by Sundance Catalyst, the Gotham Film Market, the OUTFEST Screenwriting Lab, The SAGIndie New Voices! Reading Series, and the Los Cabos Gabriel Figueroa Meet Market.

For Calleran, that support and all the hours of creative labor beneath it aren’t abstract. They’re bound to what she lost—and what she kept reaching for.

“I hate it,” she says, “but I find that accepting it helps me catch a better glimpse of the gifts hiding in plain sight.”

Before “Caity,” she built her career on screens large and small. An award-winning filmmaker from New York. Calleran holds an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema. where her work was nominated for the KODAK Student Award and the IFP Short Film Showcase. Before film, she taught and performed improv comedy at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre and toured with the UCBTourCo.

Her short film “What I See When I Look” won the top prize after its premiere at the Sun Valley Film Festival and was included at Palm Springs ShortFest. Indie Memphis. Oak Cliff. and many more. Her most recent short. “I’m Really Scared I’m Dying TBH. ” was commissioned in partnership with Modern Silent Shorts and first exhibited at Isabella Rossellini’s MAMA FARM. The film won the audience award after premiering at Nitehawk Shorts Festival and went on to play festivals nationally before screening as part of the 2025 NYC Rooftop Summer Series. It later received the 2025 Trailblazer Award by Short of the Week.

Now, “Caity” is moving toward its first big public step. Calleran says it will premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival, and it is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

For her, the story’s real premiere is closer than a festival date. It lives in that moment in the holding room, the same thought returning—“But we didn’t make the movie yet”—and the decision, somehow, to make it anyway, as a way to reach across time.

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