Enduring Destiny (2014): If you ever wanted to see what happens when the ambition of a film school student collides with the total lack of a budget and a massive amount of hubris, you’ve found it. Enduring Destiny is the reason to be for Thomas Reilly-King (TRK), a college student who has been in school for what could be a decade. He cared less about being a student and more about creating an auteur film — or vanity project, the line is so thin — that’s a sprawling, unclassifiable epic.

TRK plays the lead, writes the script and directs the madness, forcing his friends to inhabit his world. He approaches the lead role with the kind of unflappable intensity usually reserved for Method actors playing historical figures, not kids making movies in their dorms. He also insisted on an 80s-style theme song that sounds like it was recorded on a Casio keyboard in a wind tunnel. It is the perfect, misplaced anthem for a movie that doesn’t actually exist in the 80s but wishes that it could.

Max Kenner is our hero, a scholarship wrestler and aspiring C.I.A. agent. He has traveled from his suburban California home and is away from his high school sweetheart, Jessica Bateman (Ariel Vida). All alone during a bitterly cold semester at Michigan State University, he will endure triumphs, romance, comedy, mishaps and downright misery. Once a squeaky-clean, slightly cocky guy of privilege and self-determination, he is thrust into a humbling life of physical dependence after tragedy strikes. As a man in a wheelchair, Max’s masculinity is challenged by his reliance on others. 

Don’t step on my brakes, as the song sings. This feels like it lives in the same world as A Karate Christmas Miracle or the zero-budget religious movies that I love, except it’s secular and therefore somehow even more innocent, charming and just plain off. Or maybe a movie like Heard She Got Married, if it had no sense of collaboration. Anyway, whatever it is, it’s entertaining.

First Feature (2026): If you’ve ever spent your last dime on a roll of film, bullied your friends into acting in your magnum opus, or realized halfway through production that your vision is absolutely insane, then you know exactly what’s going on in First Feature. This isn’t just a documentary; it’s a time capsule of ambition, ego and the beautiful, messy reality of DIY filmmaking.

The film follows the journey of Thomas Reilly-King (TRK), an indefatigable student filmmaker with a singular goal: to birth his masterpiece, Enduring Destiny, into the world. Shot over several years, the documentary tracks TRK as he stretches his budget, his friendships and his sanity to the breaking point.

Intercut with this chaos is the perspective of his classmate and documentarian, Curtis Matzke. Looking back ten years later, Matzke provides the necessary distance to examine the absurdity of the original production. It’s a classic case of the tortured artist trope played out in a dorm room setting, capturing that specific, frantic energy of someone convinced they are making the next Citizen Kane while actually operating on a shoestring budget and sheer willpower.

The heart of this film is TRK himself. He serves as the writer, director and lead actor, the holy trinity of the independent filmmaker’s complex. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t just want to make a movie; he wants to build an empire. We watch as he calls in every favor available, treats his student crew like a Hollywood production team  and dives headfirst into the pitfalls of digital-age filmmaking. Watching him navigate the professional aspirations of a student filmmaker against the bizarre, homemade reality of Enduring Destiny is both painful and deeply relatable for anyone who has ever tried to create something out of nothing.

First Feature captures that unique moment in a filmmaker’s life when good doesn’t matter as much as getting it done. It’s a raw, funny and surprisingly poignant look at the obsessive nature of the creative process. If you’ve ever sat through a local screening of a movie that clearly meant everything to its director, you’ll find yourself nodding along to every frame of this documentary. It’s a love letter to the process, warts and all.

I love that TRK made talking action figures of himself and characters from the movie that cost $5,000, which is more than half of Enduring Destiny‘s budget.

This is an essential watch before or after Enduring Destiny.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.