Seattle International Film Festival to exhibit Aberdeen filmmaker’s sci-fi romance

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Aberdeen filmmaker Mia Moore’s full-length science fiction romance titled Again Again will be exhibited during three showings at the 52nd Annual Seattle International Film Festival. Moore wrote, co-directed and stars in the movie filmed in Aberdeen. Executive Producer Lilly Wachowski is one half of the directing, writing and producing duo most famous for creating The Matrix series.

Time travel stories date back to Hindu culture in 400 BCE, with modern or contemporary tales starting with Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in 1843 and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine in 1895. In film, the earliest include The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1917), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1921) and Berkeley Square (1933). Most recently, Groundhog Day and the Back to the Future franchise come to mind for most people. “Time loop” stories occupy their own subgenre. Many such movies illustrate the frustration of feeling stuck.

Moore’s film does just that. Born out of the on-again, off-again restrictions placed in and around the global COVID-19 pandemic, Again Again revisits the shelter-in-place orders, mask mandates and social distancing that crippled American society for more than a year.

“After COVID lockdowns ended, there was this moment where everybody was allowed to go outside again. You could go to the bar with your friends, you could go to Disneyland, or you could go to the park, or you could go to the movies. I think that really stressed me out,” Moore said. “I had spent a whole year convincing myself that it was dangerous to go out. I had become a bit of an agoraphobe at the time when I was a bit afraid to go outside. So I needed to sort of write to deal with that feeling. This was the story that came out of that.”

Although she never meant to star in the movie, Moore says the main character, Agatha (Aggie) started off as an idealized version of herself, until she came to a realization.

“A lot of the time when I write characters in films, my leads are like, ‘Oh, what if it was just like me, but cooler and funnier and hotter?’ And then I thought that we were gonna get like an A-list or, you know, B-list TV actor to come in and play the character,” Moore said. “Then in the end, it ended up being me and I’m like, ‘I guess I am cool and funny and hot, actually.’”

Again Again may be a work of fiction, but for Moore, it is also a bit autobiographical in some ways.

“Because writing is a bit of therapy a lot of the time, this movie’s a ‘two-hander,’ and so the leads, Agatha and Tessa, are both kind of some facet of my personality,” Moore said.

Moore, a transgender woman, says that Again Again has a bit of retro sensibility to it and hearkens back to a time when queer stories were starting to find the mainstream.

“(1990s indie cinema) was an era where gay stories and lesbian stories were really prominent and I think that people were trying to tell stories about transgender people, but they were not very good at it,” Moore said. “I think that we’re at a place in our culture where the fact that some, broke, redneck trans woman from Aberdeen, Washington can make a movie is kind of an incredible thing. All of those parts of myself, like my class, my gender, my sexuality, all of those things kind of inform the story, even though they’re not always what the story’s about.”

And to have Lilly Wachowski, who is also transgender, on board as the executive producer for the film certainly gives Moore and Again Again some instant cache and gravitas.

“When we were crowdfunding the movie, [Wachowski] was sort of on a kick of just supporting queer and independent filmmakers. I think that she retweeted our crowdfund or something like that. I reached out to her in Twitter DMs and we talked a little bit and she was just like, ‘I want to cut you a $5,000 check. I don’t want to send it through Indiegogo where they’re going to take a cut of the money. I want you to take all of it,’” Moore said. “So she sent me a check and she sent me a really nice handwritten note on the back of a page from one of her scripts, ‘Go get ‘em, kid.’ After we finished the movie, we sent it back to her and said, ‘Would you want to jump on board with us on this? Would you want to give us notes and help us really refine this thing and put it out in the world?’ She attached herself as an executive producer and that was one of the best days of my entire life.”

In many stories set in big cities around the world such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, etc., the locale becomes a character unto itself. Moore says Again Again is no different with Aberdeen playing a prominent role in the film.

“It really is immensely a character in the film. When people are telling stories about queer people or about trans people, a lot of the time it’s really metropolitan, and I really don’t see this kind of backwoods, rural kind of thing very often. I wanted to tell a story about somebody who lives in a motorhome and goes out every day and just kicks rocks because she doesn’t have any money to spend. Definitely shooting in Aberdeen was such an amazing experience because both of my parents were teachers in the community,” Moore said. “That small town community energy just really pulls you through. All of the locations in the movie are places that I spent my teen years just killing time in. We had a shot at the ice cream shop, we shot at the record store and the tattoo parlor. … There was something really nostalgic about that and fun for me to do.”

While elements of the story were inspired by COVID restrictions and the associated fears, Moore was certainly influenced by other films in the time travel genre.

“I love Groundhog Day and Palm Springs and Happy Death Day. It’s fun because a lot of those movies lean on all of the same tropes. They lean on this thing of comedic suicide where the character will kill themselves because they know they’re going to wake up the next day. They lean on the character trying to get somebody to fall in love with them, even though that person doesn’t know about the time loop,” Moore said. “The movie starts the day after Agatha breaks out of her time loop. I wanted to sort of tell a story that assumes that you’ve seen all of those movies already. You can watch this movie and sort of fill in the blanks of what Agatha’s experiences were like.”

Through it all, making the movie, unexpectedly landing a big-name executive producer and gaining acceptance for the Seattle Film Festival, Moore hopes the people of Grays Harbor come out to see the film.

“I’d love for people to come out to Seattle and see the movie if they have any chance to do so. We had two screenings that ended up selling out and the festival was really excited that people wanted to see the movie and they added a third,” Moore said. “If anybody from Grays Harbor wants to come out on Friday, May 15 at 8 p.m. … I’d absolutely love for people from Grays Harbor to be able to make it out to the movie so that it’s not just Seattle people. In so many ways I made this movie for that community. I really love that town and I want to keep making movies there forever.”

Monday and Tuesday’s screenings are nearly sold out. Tickets are still available for the May 15 showing at https://www.siff.net/festival/again-again. Moore added that she hopes to screen Again Again at the 7th Street Theatre in Hoquiam later this summer.

Watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/PPVr0dejg8c