Aspiring director Ava Farrar only has three films under her belt so far—but considering one of them was tapped for the St. Louis International Film Festival, it seems wise to pay attention to what she’s up to.
A St. Louis native who graduated from Washington University last spring, Farrar is currently raising funds for her third film, Sweet Young Thing, which she plans to film in St. Louis this summer. The short film explores the relationship between an older woman, Dorothy, and her 19-year-old granddaughter, Delaney. As its promotional materials explain, “Through her interactions at home with her family, the story explores Dorothy’s inner world—her pride, regret, and quiet resilience—alongside her relationships, especially with Delaney, who is determined to keep their relationship as it has always been. The two share a love of music that allows them to communicate in ways that words alone cannot.”
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The film was inspired by Farrar’s relationship with her grandmother, who not only played the dulcimer, guitar, banjo, canjo, and jawharp, but inspired the musicianship of her four sons, who include, notably, Jay Farrar of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt (and, yes, Ava’s dad). “Our family is very musical, and she made a strong point to pass that down to him and the rest of his brothers,” Ava Farrar says. “It was just something that was always there. And, yeah, it’s always been present in my life as well.”
Unlike her father, though, for Farrar, music has stayed in what she calls “the hobby lane.” It’s filmmaking that compels her. She was first turned onto moviemaking at St. Louis’ top-ranked Metro Academic and Classical High, where she took a film class as part of the International Baccalaureate curriculum and found herself enthralled by the process. “It was that kind of collaborative nature and just raw creativity that delivered me in,” she says. “It was something I’d never been exposed to before. I’d made videos or just done silly stuff with my friends, but seeing it as an art form was really eye-opening for me.”
Farrar earned a bachelor’s in film & media studies at WashU, but her real breakthrough came in 2022 as she studied abroad at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. That’s where she shot her first film, Thicker Than Blood, which won best student film at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase before being tapped for the St. Louis International Film Festival. She later followed that with a short documentary, Classroom 230 and then Garbage Man. The other two were also featured in the filmmakers’ showcase.
Farrar feels lucky to have landed a job in the industry after graduating last spring, and that the job is in St. Louis seems even more lucky; she works as a junior editor and production coordinator at Mercury Films. Whether she can build a career here in the long run is a bigger question.
“It is something I think about going forward,” she acknowledges. “What does the long term look like for me, career wise, and is it St. Louis? And it’s something that I really hope it can be.” While Sweet Young Thing has too small a budget to qualify for the state’s new tax credits for film productions, their existence feels like a hopeful sign.
For now, though, Farrar is focused on the short term: raising money to pay a crew to work on her film, and then returning to the director’s chair. “This is my first post-graduate film, which is really exciting and a little bit nerve-wracking in many ways, to not have the same structure that I’m used to on a student set,” she says. “But I think it’s that next big step that I’m really excited to take and explore.”
