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This new film breathes fresh life into a Long Island legend.
California film director and Ronkonkoma native Maria Capp is set to host a special screening of “The Lady of the Lake,” a cinematic experience surrounding a Native American princess who is believed to have cursed the Lake Ronkonkoma area. The screening will take place on Sunday at 3 p.m. at Sayville Movie Theater. Click here for tickets.
(Keep scrolling for a trailer of the movie.)
For those not familiar, the story goes that Princess Ronkonkoma, the daughter of the Setauket Sachem Tribe’s chief, fell in love with a rival tribe’s chieftain. However, the chief forbade his daughter from being with her lover. Some stories say the couple committed a Romeo and Juliet-style suicide, while others claim that the heartbroken daughter took her own life, and since then, her sorrowful spirit has been responsible for one drowning death each year. There have been over 160 drowning deaths reported at Lake Ronkonkoma since the mid-1800s.
During the pandemic, Capp conducted extensive research to learn as much as she could about the folklore. Her findings, her experiences growing up on Lake Ronkonkoma, and her interest in telling stories of identity formation, along with her personal experience with grief’s effect on a family, inspired her to write the psychological thriller “The Lady of the Lake.”
“I always wanted to write a story about growing up by [Lake Ronkonkoma] and what it was like for me,” Capp previously told GLI on the origins of the film. “I noticed the symbolisms, tributes, and markings throughout the town that pay tribute to ‘The Princess.’”
The film premiered last month at Bellmore’s Long Island International Film Expo. Here’s what one film critic had to say:
“‘The Lady of the Lake’ consists in almost equal parts of coming-of-age and horror movies, while it’s at the same time a character piece about grief and overcoming grief. And since the film moves along at an intentionally laid-back pace and doesn’t give in to spectacle, all these diverse pieces also really fit in with one another,” wrote Mike Haberfelner of Search My Trash.
The movie stars Seth Gilliam (“The Walking Dead”), Emery Kelly (Netflix’s “Alexa & Katie”), Steven Thomas Capp (“Fat Camp”), Veronica Kelly (Pureflix’s “Saved By Grace”), Natasha Capp (“REACH”), Christopher Brian Roach (“Kevin Can Wait”), and Raffaela Capp (“Four Cousins and a Christmas”). The actors and director will be on hand at the Sayville screening. There will also be a live screening event with a Q&A on Aug. 17. Click here for more info.
After a limited theatrical release, the “Lady of the Lake” will be available for streaming on Aug. 27 across the U.S. through Vision Films, which acquired the distribution rights to the project.
“‘The Lady of the Lake’ is an edge-of-your-seat thriller based on legend and lore, but it uniquely also pulls at your heartstrings as it explores a father’s understanding of his fraught teenage daughter in the wake of their family’s tragic loss,” said Lise Romanoff, CEO and managing director of Vision Films.
