Australian-born, US-based director Cara Stricker’s latest film centers on a girl experiencing the heartbreaking dissociation of destructive love and gaslighting—the term that’s come to mean a form of intimidation or abuse that causes a victim to question their own instincts and sanity. Model Abbey Lee plays Maverick, a woman on the edge of sanity who is forced to confront herself and her femininity to see beyond her ex-lover’s manipulation, played by actor Rhys Coiro (The Walking Dead).
Speaking about the project, Stricker says she is driven by a desire to ensure “a generation of women see themselves represented in film,” showcasing the “strong and complicated individual characters they are. Through Maverick I hope to create and share an intimate portrait of what it means to be female—to create a dialogue about gender, identity and art.”