This is a deeply personal film. I grew up taking care of my mother who has Multiple Sclerosis and has been in a wheelchair for as long as I can remember. For my first feature, I returned home to the San Francisco Bay Area to shoot inside the high school I attended, the movie theater I worked at and the house that I grew up in. Further blurring the lines between fact and fiction, I decided to cast my mother to play a version of herself in the film. Not only did this bring a level of authenticity to the performance, but it brought us closer together in real life as well.

I Believe in Unicorns portrays a teenage girl who runs away from her disabled mother and into the arms of an older boy, only to discover that their new life together is not the fantasy she had imagined it would be. Through an honest yet artful portrayal of a complex young girl struggling with the realities of an abusive relationship, this film hopes to provoke dialogue about the ambiguities inherent in teen dating violence.

While there are plenty of male coming of age stories, realistic female protagonists are few and far between. I am interested in developing a new language to describe what it means to be a teenage girl and at the same time give voice to desperate situations that often go unheard. Since coming of age films help shape the way teenagers come of age in real life, this film has great potential to affect social change.

I Believe In Unicorns is about a pair of lonely outsiders and their messed up relationship. It is about the dark underbelly of teenage love and lust. Although it may not always be pretty, it is a story that needs to be told.

- Leah Meyerhoff