There is something that makes you pause about a movie called “My True Fairytale.” The oxymoron of the title is stretched even further when you learn it’s about a teen who “becomes a superhero and saves the world” and yet is “inspired by true events.”
What’s true about Dmitry Gelfand’s first feature is that it was inspired by the death of his own 17-year-old daughter in a car crash while recklessly driving a rural road with her friends. While her two friends are pulled from the wreckage (moved from Albany suburb Guilderland to the similar sounding fictional Florida town of Gardenland) the driver Angie is missing.
Where did she go? In Gelfand’s fantasy (he writes and directs under the name D. MItry), she becomes a kind of spirit helper, appearing and disappearing where people — mostly parents she knows — need help to better connect to their kids. So she gets her mopey dad to dress better and go after his beautiful girlfriend (Taylor Cole); gets another pair of parents to accept their daughter’s Black boyfriend, and helps a third parent understand her daughter’s desire to go to college.