Genevieve’s Garden

Official Selection, 2026 Heartland Film Festival

SDAFF alum Katie Colosimo’s feature debut GENEVIEVE’S GARDEN is a hoppy dramatic comedy that follows Lily (played by comedian Chynna Walker), lost and depressed from a recent breakup, who signs up for a wellness camp to distract her senses and find a new direction. We follow her from the social media ads of upstate mental paradise to the rather ordinary house hosted by the retreat leader, a 20-something Genevieve, and realize that the so-called retreat is little more than a house hang between five strangers.

An energetic and quirky music score accompanies a rabbit hole of Hudson Valley fake yoga, dinnertime confessions, and of course, co-resident make-out sessions. Lily meets Charlie, whose sleepwalking produces quasi-romantic feelings that pine to go somewhere. Between false intimacy and all the conventions of self improvement rituals under capitalism, the characters yearn for what they are searching for in themselves under the strange affliction of moonlight, ticks, and campfire, and perhaps even find a way there.

– Michelle Sui