At 23 years old, Julian Sol Jordan has already directed, edited and starred in a feature-length film and dropped a record under the moniker Sunrise Academy, but this multitalented Dallasite should add public relations executive to his growing resume.
The enterprising graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts doesn’t hesitate to hit up the inbox of anyone in the industry, from directors like David Lowery and Sean Baker, to film festival organizers and to media outlets like IndieWire. All in service of Real Life, an 80-minute meditative slice of Generation Z life in which nothing much happens, yet everything is said.
For any members of older generations struggling to understand where these kids are coming from, Real Life (viewable on Vimeo) serves as a CliffsNotes of sorts. Jordan and his friends skateboard, go to warehouse parties and explore the State Fair, all to a dreamy soundtrack by Wolfgang Hunter. Amid the good times come worries about debt and questions about how to be an adult in a world that makes it more complex than ever before.
“Obviously, it doesn’t have a plot, and a lot of people, especially older people, are really annoyed by it, but people my age really connected to it,” Jordan says. “When you’re in your 20s, there is no plot, and you’re trying to find it. I just wanted to make a movie about what it feels like to be my age right now.”
Having grown up in front of a camera and graduated in front of a screen, Jordan captures his environs in a remarkably confident way, not unlike a Holden Caulfield for a new generation. Slamdance and the Dallas International Film Festival turned down Real Life. Lowery (a former neighbor) paid for a screening last May at the Texas Theatre as a college graduation gift, and the film sold out.
Despite being raised by a filmmaker-actor father and a musician mother who sings in the Polyphonic Spree, Jordan is no nepo baby — he financed the $4,500 feature himself. Between his job at Buff City Soap and the money he earns with his music, he is ready to self-finance his next project, a coming-of-age story about late 20-somethings. But he’ll always have a spot in his heart for his first feature.
“I won’t make something as deeply personal as this, but it had to be made,” he says of Real Life. “It’s gonna sound so cringe, but it was a visceral and spiritual experience in my head. I want people to watch it and think it was really interesting and real.”
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