Here's our interview with Kyle Smith (writer/director) and Jeff Powers (cinematographer), the team behind 'SYLVANIA,' which is part of the "Narrative Features Competition" selection at the 2026 Florida Film Festival.
-----
About the film:
In Kyle Smith’s Sylvania, a marriage on the brink becomes the backdrop for a sharply observed and deeply human road trip. Stewart (Morgan Beck) and Gracie (Kerry Bishé, Argo) load their four-month-old baby and 17-year-old, basketball-obsessed son into the car and head to St. Louis to convince Gracie’s estranged father, Frank (Paul Dillon), who is in the early stages of dementia, to accept help. But Stewart has his own coping mechanism: he’s abandoned his iPhone and moves the family from Chicago back to his childhood home, committed to living as if it’s the 1990s—complete with mixtapes, period-specific groceries, and analog nostalgia. For Gracie, already stretched thin by sleepless nights and emotional distance, the retro experiment feels less like a reset and more like regression. She’s resolved to leave him after the trip. Once they arrive, her father is mean-spirited and stubborn, but still lucid and with plenty to say about the current family chemistry. Though dementia clouds his present, it sharpens his recollections of the past, offering Gracie fragments of the mother she barely knew. Beautifully acted and emotionally resonant, Sylvania blends road movie and dramedy into a smart, funny, and tender meditation on family, memory, and the ways we cling to the past—set against a perfectly curated ’90s soundtrack.
Director Bio
Kyle Smith (Sylvania) (he/him) was raised in Columbia, Missouri. His previous films include Turkey Bowl and Blue Highway. He lives in Los Angeles with his family.
