Memphis DiAngelis and Seneca Mick in Your Friend, Memphis (David Zucker/SXSW)

Memphis DiAngelis, 24 at the start of this unrestrained documentary’s five-years-long time line, has worked as an actor in an indie film, attended Texas A&M, wants to go back to study film, but has no stable income and a rocky job history. He also has cerebral palsy, and his tough-talking father, Edoardo, braces for the rejection he believes his son will face because of the way he walks and talks, “The world is going to treat him like shit because that’s how we are.”

Like Edoardo, filmmaker David Zucker doesn’t sugarcoat the obstacles facing Memphis. The aspiring artist lacks money (vlogging hasn’t cut it) and lives in Austin, Texas, where state public assistance is meager: he no longer receives Supplemental Security Income after a doctor ruled he could physically work. For a brief time, Memphis finds a possible lifeline working as an Uber driver, yet it goes unstated here that, as a freelancer, he receives no benefits. But his film career takes a higher priority. His mom and main financial supporter, Christine, voices concern that he’s taking advantage of her: he would rather go to an actors’ mixer than take on a night shift.  

Instead of having Memphis serve as a standard bearer for multiple issues—the artist as a stubborn young man or the rights of the disabled—the film turns into a frank and at times discomforting, in-depth portrait of Memphis and his parents. More so than Edoardo, Christine uses the camera as a semi-confessor, frankly sharing her mental health issues: she had a breakdown when Memphis was a year old and left the family to travel the world. Zucker’s access to such moments, both heartwarming and cringeworthy, is remarkable. 

In the documentary’s first half, Memphis frequently travels six hours each way to West Texas to visit 17-year-old Seneca, who acted with him in the indie film, whether she’s performing—she has a promising singing career ahead of her—or graduating from high school. Both Memphis and Christine point out that Seneca is the only person to have maintained a long-term friendship with him. (Memphis admits to the camera that he would be habitually alone if he wasn’t being filmed by the documentary crew.) He has become Seneca’s biggest cheerleader, and she graciously welcomes him into her home for the weekend, but viewers might agree with the assessment of Robert, Memphis’s actor friend and fellow stoner. Apart from his parents, Robert is the only sounding board for Memphis, and he wonders if Memphis’s relationship with Seneca may be one-sided.  

 While the film opens with Memphis as a Bernie Sanders supporter, he and the movie take an alarming turn in the second half, when he turns to the dark web. For a while, Memphis becomes a believer in bogus conspiracy theories and a defender of President Trump, much to his father’s scathing anger. The father-son confrontation may have especially induced squirming in the audience at its SXSW screening when Edoardo, wearing a SXSW volunteer T-shirt, explodes at his son, “You’re not bright enough to figure this out.” 

Unlike the more inspirational films that deal with a range of disabilities—Not Going Quietly and Introducing, Selma Blair, both from last year’s SXSW lineup—Zucker offers a more pragmatic look at a young man with a disability establishing a career and his independence. Yet the closing credits end the documentary on an optimistic note, updating viewers on Memphis’s life up to 2022. Given his age and based on what Zucker has captured before, the film begs for a sequel.