In an adaptation of the Greek myth of Persephone, a young woman awakes to find herself held captive in a root cellar. With no one searching for her, she begins dictating her own Missing Persons Report, filling in the blanks of the report and in so doing conjures more than she expected.
While planting corn with her mother, Demeter, the teenage Persephone is kidnapped. She awakes underground in a root cellar and must decide how to get help. Persephone begins dictating her own Missing Persons Report--filling in the blank "when last seen?" That evocation conjures up the ghosts of many Persephones. As her mother searches for her above ground, those held beneath the earth, signal a call-to-arms using their own bodies as drum beat. Running to her temple, the present day Demeter meets allies who form a search party, drumming their resistance to gender violence, a global scourge where no one is safe. Dedicated to the use of found text--the discarded, the overlooked--Donna Di Novelli revives the erasure of the words and of the missing mothers and daughters. WHEN LAST SEEN asks, "Who is our Persephone now?"
Donna Di Novelli has a writing career that spans film, opera, music-theater and stage. A multi-genre artist, Di Novelli attended the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as the co-writer with director Josephine Decker of the Indie narrative feature Madeline's Madeline, chosen as one of the top ten films of the decade by The New Yorker and distributed by NEON. Her director debut, the short, When Last Seen won finishing funds from the NYC Womens Fund through the office of the Mayor, 2023-24 and was screened at the NY International Shorts Fest (2024) and New Plaza Cinema, (2026.) She conceived and wrote The Good Swimmer, a Pop Requiem with Heidi Rodewald (Passing Strange) presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival in the same year. Constructed completely of “found text” from lifesaving manuals, the music-theater piece, an adaptation of Antigone, was developed in workshops at Beth Morrison’s Prototype Festival of New Opera/New Music Theater and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance. Her opera libretti includes: Florida, with Randall Eng; Oceanic Verses with Paola Prestini; and the San Francisco Opera commissioned, Heart of a Soldier, with music by Grammy-winning Christopher Theofanidis. As a screenwriter, she penned the award-winning short film, Stag directed by Kevin Newbury, starring Sarah Steele, ("Best of New York.") Her episodic pilot, Nubile, advanced to the final round of the 2021 Sundance Episodic Lab. She co-directed its proof-of-concept, 2025. She is a Assistant Arts Professor at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts.
World Premiere: New York Shorts International Film Festival, 2024
Indie Short Fest, Los Angeles International Film Festival, 2024 - Certificate of Achievement, Best Women Short; Best First Time Female Director
Canada Shorts Film Festival, 2024 - Award of Distinction
Actor - Ashnah Strongheart
Actor - Rachel Jett
Editor - Alex H. Liu, Rock Paper Scissors
