DEBUT or
OBJECTS OF THE FIELD OF DEBRIS AS CURRENTLY CATALOGUED
a film by Julian Castronovo
FEATURE PRESENTATION
MAY 29, 2026 • 5 PM
@ THE BUS STOP THEATRE
(2203 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX)
2025 / USA / 78 mins
A reclusive young man named Julian Castronovo moves into an apartment he believes was once inhabited by an enigmatic art forger. Absorbed in a placid frenzy of uncovering clues and tenuous connections, he finds himself tangled in the cobwebs of an old murder conspiracy: the ideal subject for his newest film.
Debut—the literal feature debut of filmmaker Julian Castronovo—was made with nearly no money but is utterly gripping in its rich evocation of the paranoid imagination and its aesthetic specificity. Lo-fi Zillenial technological artefacts, like Photo Booth and The Sims, exist alongside high-fidelity media, like scans of evidentiary materials and documentation of photographic and performance art (also created by Castronovo). Debut arrives from the self-cataloguing of a generation that understands itself as always being perceived, while peering over into the abyss of self and truth. —Kelly Li
TRAILER
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Julian Castronovo
Julian Castronovo is a Chinese-American filmmaker and writer living in Los Angeles. Interested in the unsteady boundary between fiction and non-fiction, he is drawn to research, re-enactment, speculation and other representational modes that involve blurring past, present and future. His work has appeared at institutions such as the Neuberger Museum of Art, REDCAT, the Chazen Museum of Art, the Wisconsin Film Festival, the San Diego Asian Film Festival and in publications such as The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail and Oxford American. He holds BAs, from Brown University, in Literary Arts and Modern Culture & Media and received an MFA in Film Directing from the California Institute of the Arts in 2024.