Filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo embarks on a quest to reconcile her tortured teen years in the HBO documentary You Were My First Boyfriend.
Release Date
Directed and produced by Cecilia Aldarondo (“Memories of a Penitent Heart,” “Landfall”) and co-directed by Sarah Enid Hagey, You Were My First Boyfriend world premiered at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival. debuts Wednesday, November 8 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.
Synopsis
What if you could rewrite your adolescence? In this high school reunion movie turned inside out, filmmaker Aldarondo embarks on a fantastical quest to reconcile her tortured teen years. She revisits some of her most formative – and at times cringeworthy – childhood experiences, tracking down old crushes and reenacting visceral memories of youthful humiliation and desire, at times playing the role of her younger self and casting teenagers to play the kids in her life who still haunt her. Oscillating between present and past, humor and heartbreak, You Were My First Boyfriend is a hybrid documentary that takes seriously the power of adolescence and the way time impacts memories, exploring what it means to grow up and make peace with the drama of our teenage trauma.
Part memoir with an ode to iconic teen television series, movies and the music that gave a soundtrack to our collective angst (with a nod to Tori Amos), the documentary includes immersive re-enactments highlighting moments of adolescent longing and creating the ability to re-live an unresolved and sometimes painful past event. Instead of being trapped by her memories, through this experience, Aldarondo finds a path to self-acceptance that is ultimately empowering and cathartic.
Reviews
POV Magazine review described the film as “Part cinematic scrapbook, part revisionist history, and part therapy session”, writing, “Aldarondo has a great eye for both the documentary and dramatic poles of her film. She knows how to put them in conversation. The mix of archive, verité, and fictional-ish recreations illustrates how people with whom we share our lives shape the past, present, and future. Moreover, she gets the fluidity and subjectivity of memory, and the productive exercise that arises in sorting out the creative differences of memory.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for You Were My First Boyfriend.