Emerging Filmmakers Showcase: ‘Space Cowboy’
August 6 @ 8:00 pm
The Lindsay’s latest Emerging Filmmakers Showcase is a high school drama conceived by and heavily featuring a Pittsburgh creative.
Space Cowboy was co-written by Penn Hills/Wexford native Lorenzo Zottoli, who also stars as an impressionable soccer player who becomes dependent on pain medication after suffering a season-ending injury. The film explores real issues affecting modern teenagers from the perspective of young people only slightly removed from those experiences.
Zottoli is bringing Space Cowboy‘s Pittsburgh debut to The Lindsay on Thursday, Aug. 6, at 8 p.m. He and other members of the film’s cast and crew will participate in a live Q&A following the screening. Tickets are free, and we recommend RSVPing in advance via the sign-up form below due to space limitations.
“As someone who grew up in Pittsburgh my entire life, being able to share my first feature with my friends and family who supported me along the way means the world,” says Zottoli.
Space Cowboy is centered around Chris (Zottoli), an eager-to-impress suburban teenager and high school sophomore. He plays on his school’s soccer team and befriends June (Max Bennett Kelly), a charming senior and the varsity team’s popular captain. However, after suffering a gruesome injury at practice, Chris gradually becomes dependent on opiate painkillers.
Hoping to grow closer to June, Chris offers to share his pills, keeping it hidden from his new friends—including June’s sister, Sofia (Brooklyn Ramirez). When tragedy strikes, Chris continues taking painkillers in a desperate effort to numb his grief and guilt. As he grows closer to Sofia, the burden of his secret becomes too much to bear, pushing Chris to finally get clean and face the consequences of his actions.
Zottoli is a North Allegheny High School graduate who, before moving to Los Angeles, appeared in Pittsburgh-shot films Unsinkable, Basic Psych and The Deliverance. He is the founder of Gone West Films, a production company that specializes in coming-of-age stories.
Space Cowboy was filmed over the course of July and August 2024 in Winston Salem, N.C. Zottoli co-wrote the script with Sophie Montgomery, a University of North Carolina filmmaking graduate who’s currently working toward a master’s degree in creative writing at Eastern Washington University. It was directed by Luca Huff, another UNC alumnus and founder of 1716 Digital, a film production and distribution company.
Huff is proud of the fact that almost everyone who worked on his feature directorial debut was between the ages of 18 and 27 at the time of filming.
“We as the filmmakers wanted to make something that felt true to our collective personal experiences as suburban teenagers exposed to life-changing traumas beyond their understanding,” he says. “While none of us were ever explicitly the characters of Chris or June or Sofia in real life, as adolescents we each brushed with death, addiction and sexuality in ways that informed the story of Space Cowboy.”
Having the opportunity to show this project to a hometown crowd is a special honor for Zottoli.
“I hope to continue to have the opportunity to incorporate Pittsburgh into my work throughout my career,” he says. “It’s an honor to be part of this city’s filmmaking community!”
