Invention

Stephens and cinematographer Rafael Palacio Illingworth give the world of “Invention” an appropriately somber color palette and painterly compositions, sometimes from the distance of a curious observer, to create a mournful tone.

“Invention” is committed to finding its own wavelength.

Courtney Stephens’s film blends fiction and autobiography to fascinating implications.

With startling views of unspoiled nature, Stephens evokes vestiges of the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau surviving the din of modern media.

This is an open-hearted, playful and perceptive film that does achieve its own sort of magic in seeing just how far you can test the boundaries between metafiction and explicit documentary.

Invention is an airily shaggy, collaborative piece of improvised, genre-fluid auto-fiction.

Stephens too mixes archival and new material, to equally probing if more playful effect.

A curious and experimental mixtape of fiction, non-fiction, and behind-the-scenes filmmaking ...

Somewhere between Mubi-core essay film, autobiopic, and narrative filmmaking, Courtney Stephens’ Invention feels fresh and groundbreaking in a way that few films can manage, while still never feeling gimmicky.


Lethargic, unimaginative and underwhelming while ultimately less than the sum of its parts.