The Fits is an independent film directed, produced and co-written by Anna Rose Holmer with the editor Saela Davis, and additional producer Lisa Kjerulff.

This movie tells the story of an 11-year-old black girl named Toni played by Royalty Hightower. The Fits follows the many facets of life that the main character, and other young girls in the film go through on a daily basis. During the course of the film, some of the girls in Toni’s dance troupe begin to have fits.

Creatively, this is representative, metaphorically, of the transformation that comes about through the process of adolescence.

The Fits has been shown at Sundance, as well as the Venice Film Festival. It was funded by the Venice Biennale, an organization based in Venice that provides grants for creative projects and the arts. The Fits’s cast is made up of Royalty, and 44 members from her dance troupe in real life, Q-Kidz.

“It’s one of the most powerful things that I think I’ve ever put on screen. Royalty’s performance in it is just incredible. I was crying on set, as I think most of my crew was. It just felt so magical,” Holmer said. “That was the end of week one and I think we all realized that the movie we were making, the sum of all of our efforts, was adding up to something really incredible. I’ve never had a moment quite like that on set before.”

The film debuts in Los Angeles on June 10.

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independent films

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