Above all filmmaker Frank V. Ross concerns himself with the here and now. Although he avoids making any grand statements about his work or dissecting his films into themes and narrative through lines, Ross plays with the modern landscape in such a way that it feels a bit like a chronicle, the graceful accumulation of the trends of our time. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his fourth independent feature film Hohokam, a quiet and subtly crafted study of characters and moods all captured in the moment.

“Happiness and sadness is always in you, and sometimes they surface for no apparent reason,” Ross explains. Working with this concept as merely one layer in a multi-layered story, the film captures the lives of Lori and Anson, a couple living seemingly mundane lives dictated by work, bill paying and reaching for the overwhelming responsibility of adulthood.

“I can identify very much with the idea that you’re at a point in your life where you need to make decisions that deal with the rest of your life, but you also feel like your life is taking over and making choices for you,” says lead actress Allison Latta. “Everyone struggles with that to a certain degree. It’s constantly asking, ‘Is this what I want to do? Is this what life is about?’”

A film full of nuance, Hohokam—written, produced, directed and edited solely by Ross—also speaks volumes about people’s miscommunications and moments of communion, but the thematic stress on these is in no way belabored.

“The whole film is about relationships, and a lot of it is an eavesdropping in undertone. What that undertone shows is that there’s a lot that we take for granted in life, and there’s a lot of special moments that wake us up in life,” says actor Danny Rhodes, who plays the minor role of Guy Evans, Lori's flamboyant best friend.

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The film screens at the IFC as part of The New Talkies: Generation DIY this Thursday at both 11:25AM & 9:55PM.