A University of Toledo theatre professor’s latest endeavor is taking him — and several of his students — to the Cleveland International Film Festival.
Dr. Matt Foss is a co-writer and actor starring in “Lone Wolves,” an independently produced comedy exploring aging, infertility and autism. It’s available to stream through the film festival website from Sunday, April 6, through Sunday, April 13, with its festival screening scheduled for National Autism Day on Wednesday, April 2.
Matt Foss, a professor of theatre, stars alongside Cora Vander Broek in “Lone Wolves.”
It will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Playhouse Square’s Allen Theatre.
Foss will be in the audience alongside more than a dozen UToledo students and community members with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the cast of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Jukebox Musical,” opening at the UToledo Center for Performing Arts on Thursday, April 10. The cast members are joining him to learn and network at one of the longest-running and largest film festivals in the country.
“As a professor in the arts, I feel it’s important for my students to see me taking the same creative risks and seeking the same artistic excellence I am encouraging them to pursue in the classroom,” Foss said. “It’s important to me that those lessons don’t ring hollow.”
Foss is active in the theatre world, with award-winning professional credits including 2019’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” and 2020’s “20K Leagues Under the Sea,” both of which premiered as student productions at the UToledo Center for Performing Arts and received recognition from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
“Lone Wolves” is his first feature film. It follows co-writer Cora Vander Broek’s character, Fran, a single, pragmatic forty-something woman looking to conceive a child, and Foss’ character Ben, a high school friend whom she recruits as a sperm donor. Over the course of a weekend shot onsite in northwest Ohio, Fran’s careful plans are upended as she comes to learn that Ben is autistic and navigating significant mental health issues.
“As a person with autism, I was particularly thrilled to also tell a story around neurodiversity and those Gen Xers discovering how their brains worked when they grew up in a system and time without the tools or interest in investigating who and how they were,” Foss said.
“Lone Wolves” is a microbudget film directed by Ryan Cunningham.
At the Cleveland International Film Festival, it will screen in competition for the Roxane T. Mueller Audience Choice Award and the Reel Woman Direct Award for Excellence in Directing by a Woman. It is also nominated for the Cleveland International Film Festival Local Heroes Award for films made about Ohio, in Ohio or by Ohioans.
