“A great moralist drama. Jeremy Hersh’s beautiful and brutal film.. gets both harder to watch and harder to break away from with each passing minute.”
– Writer Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play, Zola)
“Hersh’s perceptive, thoroughly absorbing ethical drama is propelled by a performance of stunning psychological insight and raw feeling from Jasmine Batchelor.”
– David Rooney, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“In the superb The Surrogate, Jasmine Batchelor seems to be creating emotions no one’s ever felt before. It made me think of the films of Ira Sachs, Sidney Lumet, and Bogdanovich in Last Picture Show mode.”
– Jose Solís, AMERICAN THEATRE
Synopsis
Jess Harris (Jasmine Batchelor, “The Good Fight”), a 29 year old web designer for a nonprofit in Brooklyn, is ecstatic to be the surrogate and egg-donor for her best friend Josh (Chris Perfetti, “Looking”) and his husband Aaron (Sullivan Jones, Slave Play). Twelve weeks into the pregnancy, a prenatal test comes back with unexpected results that pose a moral dilemma. As they all consider the best course of action, the relationship between the three friends is put to the test.
About the Director
Jeremy Hersh is a filmmaker and playwright based in New York. His short film Actresses premiered at Sundance 2015 where Time Out New York named it one of their five favorite shorts of the festival. Actresses went on to screen at SXSW, BAMCinemafest, and The New Orleans Film Festival, where it won the audience award for best narrative short. Jeremy’s undergraduate thesis film Natives premiered at SXSW 2013, and went on to play numerous festivals including BFI Flare in London. Jeremy was a fellow of the 2015 Film Society of Lincoln Center Artist Academy.
