IDEALLY FRENCH-SPEAKING (NOT REQUIRED).

Jean is Dorothea’s former protégé — a fiercely intelligent, self-contained woman whose photographic eye is matched only by her emotional precision. She was once seen as a kind of successor to Dorothea…not just in talent, but in temperament. Raised in a fragmented home, Jean long ago learned to rely only on herself. Her connection to Dorothea offered structure, belief, and belonging, and her relationship with Zoe introduced something far more elusive — intimacy. Though their time together was brief, it was defining. Jean is the kind of person who watches more than she speaks, who carries her pain and pressure privately, and who expresses love in acts of care more than declarations. Her presence in the story — both as memory and apparition — complicate Zoe’s return. She is not a figure of blame or clarity, but of ambiguity. What’s left unspoken between them matters as much as what is said.

Moments of closeness / intimacy between Zoe and Jean. Talent MUST be comfortable portraying a same-sex relationship (no nudity, kissing, etc)

IDEALLY FRENCH-SPEAKING (NOT REQUIRED)

Zoe is a woman suspended between past and present, between the person she has become and postures and the version of herself she suspects she abandoned somewhere along the way. Intellectual, composed, and emotionally withheld, she returns to her grandmother’s estate not just to settle family affairs, but to be confronted with the choices she made, the people she left, and the artistic life she never fully claimed as her own. Zoe grew up under the shadow and favor of Dorothea, who nurtured her curiosity and conviction but also, perhaps unintentionally, instilled a weighty idealism about art and purpose within the world — that left little room for error or emotional connection. Her past with Jean — complex, unspoken, unresolved — she cannot quite escape. As she moves through the house, she is both remembering and reassembling herself, attempting to locate the pieces that once felt whole. Where it went wrong. Her struggle is interior, quiet, and deeply felt: how to reconcile the person she pretended to be with the one who still wants to be known.

Moments of closeness / intimacy between Zoe and Jean. Talent MUST be comfortable portraying a same-sex relationship (no nudity, kissing, etc)

Dorthea was a woman who built her world as carefully as she composed her photographs, with precision, elegance, and a relentless belief in the power of beauty. An American expatriate and once-renowned photographer in both reportage and fine art, she spent the second half of her life in self-imposed exile on the Normandy coast. Her home became a sanctuary: equal parts archive and respite from the realities she set aside. To those who entered the home, artists, students, lovers, family. Dorothea presented something rare: a life shaped entirely by intellect, taste, and creative pursuit. But this world she created was also a refuge from vulnerability. She saw herself as a mentor, not a mother figure; a cultivator of talent, not a keeper of emotional wounds.

MUST be English-speaking, ideally French-speaking as well.

Written as an American expatriate, however open to other nationalities (i.e. French, English, Canadian, etc.).