The movie “Fairyland” is about a complicated, loving relationship between a father and daughter. It’s a film adaptation of the memoir by Alysia Abbot. Poet Steve Abbott and his young daughter Alysia move across the country to San Francisco, after his wife is killed in a car accident. He comes to the Bay Area, in part, to live as an openly gay man. Alysia and Steve Abbot’s relationship grows stronger when Alysia returns home from college to care for her dad because he contracted the AIDS virus. The movie begins in the 1970s.
Andrew Durham wrote and directed “Fairyland.” He is originally from Palo Alto. Sophia Coppola is one of the film’s producers. What’s really uncanny is that Andrew and Alysia Abbot had similar experiences with their fathers, around the same era.
Host Jeneé Darden spoke with Andrew in 2025 about these parallels, and how he felt making his first film.
