Stay Awake Movie Still 2 of 1

An American indie debut drama of uncommon empathy that is very much of the moment: a fictionalized account of the filmmaker’s coming of age, as he struggles to get out from under the yoke of a prescription-drug-addicted mother in small-town Virginia. Life in the last, lame-duck months of high school, with a job at the Jolly Cow ice cream drive-in, would be cringe-inducing enough without a deeply depressed, self-destructive mother (Chrissy Metz). Wyatt Oleff and Fin Argus play teenage brothers stuck in a cycle of discovering their mom passed out, dragging her to the hospital, and encouraging rehab. Despair quickly turns to hope and then boomerangs back again.