Alternating between fictional drama and documentary film, EMPATHY explores the tricky intimacy between psychoanalysts and their patients.

EMPATHY consists of three interwoven elements. A fictional narrative about Lia, an actress in psychoanalysis, and her frustrations inside and outside her analyst's office is contrasted with screen tests of actresses auditioning for the role of Lia, which in turn are juxtaposed with documentary interviews with practicing psychoanalysts.

This inventive mosaic of genres looks at power, manipulation and the promise of empathy. The film exposes the types of trust common to each of its cinematic realities: between analyst and patient, interviewers and their subjects, and directors and performers. As the psychoanalysts in the film respond to seemingly simple questions ("do you ever lie to your patients?" - "do your patients ever lie to you?" - "what's the difference between therapy and prostitution?") the complex negotiation between analyst and patient are teased out.

In the second half of EMPATHY, boundaries of all kinds break down: the trust between analyst and patient, the ethics of interviewers; individuals from the documentary scenes cross into the fictional plot; we see fragments of a PBS-style documentary on modernist furniture & psychoanalysis; and the actor playing the fictional psychoanalyst reveals himself to be a real psychoanalyst.

An intriguing deconstruction of psychoanalysis and filmmaking, EMPATHY raises playful and provocative questions about trust, power, and understanding.

"Delightfully quirky... An intriguing deconstruction of psychoanalysis."—Chicago Reader

"Rife with provocative symptoms, poet Amie Siegel's seriously playful essay on the art and craft of psychoanalysis is blatantly several films in one-psychological melodrama, historical essay, and shrink verite."—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

"Flows with a certain grace and smoothness, due largely to the sense of psychic mystery projected by a sweet actress, Gigi Buffington."—The New York Observer

"Laced with humor-and playful evidence of the filmmaker's own shaky integrity - EMPATHY is compelling and unsettling, too. Anyone who has ever undergone therapy will be asking him or herself (and perhaps asking the therapist) what's really going on in those sessions. Behind closed doors, one person bares secrets-and lies-while the other listens, nodding, guiding, sometimes with (yes) empathy, but always with an eye on the clock."—Philadelphia Inquirer

"Wry, intelligent... Sure to delight. The film's avant-garde modes could have felt pretentious in lesser hands, but Siegel's goading of the analysts...provides a steady stream of humorous and illuminating insights into issues of gender and power, filmmaker and subject."—indieWIRE

"The film consistently and deliberately throws its audience off-balance, shifting gears just when we might be finding our footing. A most astonishing, changeable American debut feature... If you miss it, there's probably something wrong with you."—Philadelphia CityPaper

"Playful and delightful... Siegel's remarkable essay on psychoanalysis and its relationship to film tears down wall after wall, then builds them up again, only to see them tumble once more."—Berliner Zeitung