MOBILE, Ala. — Most first-time filmmakers spend years getting a feature made. Jesse Starling started writing in the spring and is premiering the finished film this weekend.
“Unsteady,” a drama shot entirely in and around Mobile, gets its first public screenings at the Crescent Theater at 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 23, and 6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 24. Starling, 20, is a film student at the University of South Alabama and directed, wrote and stars in the project.
Where the story came from
Starling said a job working for the Drug Education Council gave him a great deal to think about. He saw firsthand how drug use and mental health struggles can feed one another, often with devastating results.
“It was really a rude awakening, realizing the issue that’s in Mobile,” he said.
The film follows John Griffin, played by Starling, a young man dealing with the loss of his parents who begins taking pain medication for injuries sustained in a car accident. What starts as treatment becomes something else.
“That, number one, kind of introduces some mental illness issues with that, but then also it causes an addiction to the pain medication that over the course of the film spirals out of control into a substance abuse problem,” Starling said.
The film watches its central character lose his grip on reality and his connection to the people around him — a study in friendship, mental health, addiction and the particular fear of no longer being able to trust your own mind.
How it got made
Starling began writing the story and assembling cast and crew in the spring. Filming started May 9 and ran two and a half months, effectively becoming a full-time job over the summer.
“A lot of things really fit together in order for this to work out,” he said. “I can say that for sure.”
The film was produced by Starling Cinematics and Heterize Productions. Actors Ava Willingham and Eric Rehner appear in key roles, with the full cast listed on IMDb.
Deciding how far to go
Starling said the hardest creative decisions were about degree — how graphic to make the material, and how deeply to go into both the mental illness and the substance abuse.
“I’m a Christian. I wanted to make this a film that Christians can relate to. But also can speak to people who are not on the faith side as well,” he said.
The approach he settled on was accuracy.
“One avenue that I went down was, I decided to try to make it as accurate as I could,” Starling said. “I wanted people who have gone through this to relate to this and I wanted them to say, ‘I’ve been through this.'”
The screenings are open to patrons of all ages, but Starling’s own website carries an advisory that the film “contains realistic drug use and is not recommended for younger audiences.”
A local track record
Starling won the 2025 Nappie Award for best local filmmaker and was nominated again in 2026. Several of his shorter films have placed in regional competitions, including a first-place finish at the 2026 Mobile Film Office Holiday Film Scramble with “Seriously Single” and a first-place finish at the 2025 Fairhope 48 Hour Film Scramble with “Frog Paralysis.”
He also runs a YouTube channel about filmmaking. In a recent clip he examined the breakout success of “Obsession,” from fellow Mobile filmmaker Curry Barker — and drew a straightforward conclusion.
“If you work hard enough and bet on yourself, you can become a director,” Starling said.
If you go
The Crescent Theater is at 208 Dauphin St. in downtown Mobile. Tickets are $16.67 and are available through the theater’s website. After the premiere, Starling and his team plan to take “Unsteady” on a film festival run before deciding on wider release.