Amanda Ross turns personal survival into film with ‘Stay in the Car’

For writer Amanda Ross, storytelling has always been rooted in lived experience. With her debut short film Stay In The Car, Ross transforms a deeply personal memory into a quiet yet powerful cinematic moment, one that explores survival, resilience, and the fragile line between love and neglect.

Directed by Calvin Ghaznavi, the film, which made its world premiere at CREDO23 in Hollywood will now screen at the Beverly Hills Film Festival later this month.

Meet the cast behind the story

The short film stars Lara Hunter (Dead Life), Timothy V. Murphy (Law & Order: Organized Crime), and Ashley Alva (Bird Box), the short captures a single night in the life of a fifteen-year-old girl waiting alone in her mother’s El Camino.

Based on real events from Ross’s childhood, Stay In The Car explores a pivotal moment when a young girl must decide whether to remain inside the chaos surrounding her or step toward an uncertain freedom of her own making.

For Ross, the story represents just one fragment of a much larger life experience she has carried with her for years. While she had long felt a desire to share her story, it wasn’t until she realized that a single moment from that experience could stand on its own that the idea for the film began to take shape. The possibility of collaborating with her daughter, actress Lara Hunter, who portrays the young protagonist, ultimately helped bring the concept into focus.

Writing therapy meets raw honesty

The writing process itself proved both therapeutic and emotionally challenging. Revisiting painful memories required Ross to navigate deeply personal territory while shaping the narrative into a concise cinematic story. Rather than presenting a full backstory, the script focuses on capturing the emotional interior of a young girl growing up in an abusive environment, something Ross felt was essential to portraying the reality many children experience.

Questions like “Why doesn’t she just leave?” are often asked of victims in similar circumstances. But Ross understood that for many children and victims of domestic violence, the situation is far more complicated. In writing the film, she focused less on explaining the circumstances and more on conveying the emotional chaos of the moment itself.

Authenticity became the guiding principle throughout the creative process. While the events of that night informed the story, Ross was equally focused on capturing the emotional truth behind them. That balance between personal memory and cinematic storytelling allowed the film to remain intimate while still resonating with universal themes of survival and resilience.

Director collaboration sharpens emotional stakes

The partnership with director Calvin Ghaznavi played a crucial role in shaping the film’s final form. According to Ross, Ghaznavi approached the story with thoughtful curiosity, asking questions that helped uncover deeper emotional layers beneath each scene. Because the short format demanded efficiency in storytelling, their collaboration focused on bringing the emotional stakes to the surface quickly and effectively. Interestingly, one of the script’s most challenging scenes ultimately did not make it into the final film. After multiple rewrites and discussions between Ross and Ghaznavi, the decision was made to remove the moment entirely. In retrospect, Ross believes the film benefited from that choice, allowing the story to remain focused on its central emotional turning point.

That turning point arrives when the young protagonist makes the decision to step out of the car. For Ross, that moment represents something far larger than a simple physical action. It symbolizes the realization that a person’s life does not have to remain defined by the circumstances they were born into.

“Choosing yourself,” Ross reflects, means believing that your future can be different from your past. For the young girl at the center of the film, it is the moment she recognizes that no one else is coming to save her and that she must take that step herself.

On‑set moments test personal resilience

While the experience of writing the film was empowering, it also required emotional resilience. Ross describes moments on set when the reality of the story became unexpectedly powerful. Ashley Alva’s portrayal of the mother, for instance, captured familiar details so accurately that it occasionally felt unsettling to watch. Similarly, seeing her daughter embody the emotional weight of the role created moments that were deeply moving.

Despite the personal nature of the story, Ross admits she initially felt hesitant about sharing it publicly. A self-described private person, she experienced moments of imposter syndrome during the filmmaking process, questioning whether her story was significant enough to tell. Ultimately, however, the hope that the film might resonate with others who have experienced similar circumstances helped push her forward.

Working alongside her daughter added an additional emotional dimension to the project. Ross approached the collaboration with care, consciously stepping back during the filmmaking process so Hunter could fully inhabit the character and work closely with the director. The result was a performance that Ross describes as thoughtful and emotionally honest.

Festival run sparks new creative chapter

As Stay In The Car continues on the festival circuit, Ross sees the film not only as a personal milestone but as the beginning of a new creative chapter. Though this marks her first screenplay, the experience has sparked a growing interest in storytelling through film.

While she may continue exploring the larger narrative that inspired this project, Ross is also drawn to psychological thrillers, a genre that often examines survival and resilience from different perspectives.

In many ways, she notes, survival is something everyone understands.

A fresh voice emerges in cinema

With its intimate storytelling and emotional authenticity, Stay In The Car introduces Amanda Ross as a new voice in filmmaking, one unafraid to transform personal history into meaningful cinema.

Stay In The Car will screen during The Beverly Hills Film Festival on April 17^th at 5pm at the world famous TCL Chinese 6 in Hollywood. Tickets are available here.

Watch the Trailer here: Stay in the Car Trailer on Vimeo