The Rest I Make Up

The Mother of Avant-Garde Theater

Maria Irene Fornes was one of America's greatest playwrights and most influential teachers, but many know her only as the ex-lover of writer and social critic Susan Sontag. The visionary Cuban-American dramatist constructed astonishing worlds on-stage, writing over 40 plays and winning nine Obie Awards.

At the vanguard of the nascent Off-Off Broadway experimental theater movement in NYC, Fornes is often referred to as American theater's "Mother Avant-Garde." When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a decade-long collaboration that picks up where the pen left off.

Official Selection at the Frameline Film Festival, Miami Film Festival, and MoMA Doc Fortnight. Named one of "The Best Movies of 2018" by The New Yorker. Nominated for an AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Documentary.

"Intimate and exhilarating...Fornes exerts a hypnotic force of stardom, while her offhanded yet urgent remarks resound with life-tested literary authority." - Richard Brody, The New Yorker