After a fraught and turbulent childhood in the spotlight, Ruby "RED" Donovan has retreated into hard-edged anonymity. Once a rising star, she quit acting - though not the industry - fueled by disillusionment and unresolved trauma. Now working as a studio teacher, Red serves as a guardian, mentor, and state-appointed keeper of Hollywood’s youngest laborers. When she’s assigned to an unruly child star and crosses paths with a magnetic femme fatale, the ghosts of her past come rushing back, forcing Red to confront long-buried wounds from her own days on screen.
In low-budget Hollywood, new money and power surges into less-regulated filmmaking arenas. It’s a world ripe for the exploitation of workers, creators, and children. But the new landscape is just a fresh backdrop for the same old patterns.
At an industry bar, Red crosses paths with a magnetic femme fatale, HEATHER. The two women engage in a verbal dance -- all at once scary, sexy, and scintillating.
Sparks fly and the two go back to Red’s place. After a night of passion, the ghosts of Red’s past come rushing back.
"As a former child actor, I have always wanted to create a story that brings the audience into the strange world of child actors - one of the few remaining legal child labor industries. This world serves as a natural backdrop for a very personal story born of my obsession with noir and some traumatic incidents that have deeply affected my life. Like Red, I spent a long time doing "detective work" to make sense of and understand what had happened to me. As I worked to heal my own trauma, the characters that became Red and Amy helped guide my path along the way. More important than anything else in making a movie is giving the audience something that they've never seen before. In COLD READ, we invite the audience to ride along with a heroine unlike any other for a journey through the grimy underside of the familiar and glamorous world of Hollywood. Set in the '90s, this is a noir for today unlike any other: sexy, stylized, sympathetic, and unflinching."
- Hayley Bensmiller, Director