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Read the press release here.

Fort Greene Director Turned Camera Onto Her Cancer In New Film

By Rosa Goldensohn | October 9, 2015 4:33pm | Updated on October 12, 2015 8:39am
 Alex Sichel and Lili Taylor in A Woman Like Me, now playing at the Village East.
Alex Sichel and Lili Taylor in A Woman Like Me, now playing at the Village East.
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courtesy Elizabeth Giamatti

FORT GREENE — When Fort Greene resident and film director Alex Sichel was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer, her daughter was just starting kindergarten.

“I wanted to find a better story for her,” Sichel, who died in 2014, says in a trailer for her movie, “A Woman Like Me,” which is opening at the Village East Cinema on Second Avenue in Manhattan Friday.

“I started imagining this other person who was having much more fun having terminal cancer than I was.”

So she set to work making a film that weaves together her real experiences and those of her fictional counterpart, who is dealing with a similar diagnosis but managing to have a better time of it. 

The film, co-directed by Elizabeth Giamatti, is part–documentary, part-fiction, and follows Sichel, who also directed the cult classic "All Over Me," directing a movie about a character named Anna, played by Lili Taylor.

The film runs through Oct. 15.

The movie filmed around Fort Greene, including at Lafayette Avenue restaurant Berlyn and in Fort Greene Park, as well as in Sichel and her family's home.   

Her husband Erich Hahn, who makes appearances in the movie, said he finds it “sad, but it’s not depressing.”

“It’s impossible for it not to be sad,” he said, but added, “I think there’s something uplifting about it.

"Part of that is like, when Alex was diagnosed with a terminal illness, she could have gone to bed and waited to die. She chose to harness all of her energy and try and do something creative as opposed to negative," he said.

“I mean, I wish that sheer act of creativity could have changed the course of her illness but it couldn’t.”

Here's another trailer for "A Woman Like Me:"