With a prime-time Virginia film fest screening at the Paramount Theater, the movie Stay Awake has made longtime Charlottesville resident Jamie Sisley an indie-festival darling again.
Sisley first produced Stay Awake, which chronicles a family’s struggles with a mother’s addiction, in 2015 as an award-winning short. After securing Best Narrative Short honors at the Slamdance Film Festival, the picture went on to be nominated for another award at the acclaimed Berlin International Film Festival.
Now, Sisley is back with a full-length version of the movie, a semi-autobiographical story drawing on the UVA grad’s childhood in Chantilly and Leesburg near the well-known drug trafficking corridor along Interstate 81.
But, as Sisley considers the geographic touchpoints that have made him who he is today, he focuses not on his more rural place of birth and early life, but rather on Charlottesville.
“I did most of my growing up in Charlottesville,” he says. “I have an almost obnoxious affinity for my home state … and the Virginia Film Festival was such an education for me. It brought films and people to contextualize those films in a way that really opened my mind.”
While earning his business degree from the McIntire School of Commerce, Sisley heard a Red Light Management rep was speaking at James Madison University. He skipped class, drove to Harrisonburg, and sat in a JMU classroom as Randy Reed talked about what it meant to be an artist manager. He asked Reed if he could join the agency as an intern. He got the gig.
Sisley says his time at Red Light started it all—his desire to work in the arts, his understanding of the way business and creativity could mingle, how artists could find their voice, and what it meant to be the kind of leader he’d have to be to someday sit in the director’s chair.
“Red Light was probably the greatest and luckiest opportunity I’ve ever gotten,” Sisley says. “It was a master class in business, but it was more than that. Coran [Capshaw] really brought the best out of me, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how he did that and trying to replicate it on set.”
While working at Red Light, Sisley began watching movies in bunches—titles by Fellini and Bergman and Carlos Reygadas. He bought a book about directing by Nick Proferes. He teamed up with another local filmmaker, Miguel Martinez, and applied for a PBS grant to make a documentary. Against all odds, Sisley and Martinez won the funding.
Next for Sisley was film school at Columbia University. While in New York, he also worked on his funded documentary, Farewell Ferris Wheel, which followed Mexican migrants in the U.S. carnival industry. Absorbing theory in the classroom while shooting and budgeting for the doc was like “going to film school twice,” he says.
Sisley released the 14-minute version of Stay Awake as his capstone grad school project in 2015, and Farewell Ferris Wheel in 2016 after seven years of production.
It was on Stay Awake’s first festival circuit run that Sisley decided to write and direct a full-length. So many people approached him to talk about their own issues with addiction—and their family members’ issues.
“I didn’t want to make another film about addiction,” Sisley says. “It takes a lot out of you from the writing side.” But make it, he did.
Stay Awake is different from most addict pics because it focuses on the caregiver, Sisley says. The angle has resonated—both with star talent and critics. Chrissy Metz of “This Is Us” fame took on the role of the mother battling addiction, and the film made it back to the Berlin festival for its world premiere, this time being nominated for four awards. It won two of them. Variety called Stay Awake “especially resonant,” and IndieWire said it was a “sensitive drama [that] illustrates a key truth about addiction: It doesn’t only affect one person, but sucks everyone around into its vortex.” With some reservations, the reviewer went on: “It’s an earnest look at the collateral damage surrounding addiction.”
In addition to Metz, Wyatt Oleff headlines the Stay Awake cast as Ethan, one of two brothers trying desperately to handle their mother’s drug use.
“Stay Awake was an unforgettable experience with an excellent cast and crew who bonded together like a real family,” Oleff says about working with Sisley. “Such a great team to tell such an important and impactful story, and there’s not one thing about it that I would’ve changed.”
Oleff had a major role in the two-part 2017 adaptation of the Stephen King novel It and a minor role in Guardians of the Galaxy. Fin Argus, a multi-talent artist whose biggest role was on Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” rounds out the cast as Derek, the film’s second dogged brother.
At the screening, Sisley will receive another honor, the festival’s own Governor Gerald L. Baliles Founder’s Award, which recognizes “excellence in Virginia filmmaking and honors an exceptional filmmaker who has roots in Virginia or prominently spotlights Commonwealth locales, history, and culture.” Discussion of Stay Awake will follow, featuring Metz and Oleff in addition to Sisley. USA Today’s Brian Truitt will moderate.
The post-screening discussion is certain to hit on addiction, still a significant and growing problem in the commonwealth. Opioid overdoses in Virginia increased by one-third from 2019 to 2022, as measured by emergency department visits.
Sisley hopes his film humanizes the folks who struggle. “In the vast majority of the films I saw growing up … addicts were demonized,” he says.
The filmmaker says he still has so much love for his mother, who is doing well handling her own addiction. But the battle continues. “She would be the first to say that it is a daily struggle,” Sisley says. “I don’t think you’re ever cured of addiction.”