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The Maumee Film Festival has been a great showcase for emerging filmmakers in the Northeast Ohio, Southwest Michigan, and even the Chicago area. Amy Heller Zimmerman, a Chicago based filmmaker, debuted her film My Little Renaissance Girl at the festival and has set her second film, Primrose Inn, in Maumee. She attended Loyola University in Chicago where she earned a BA in theater. Zimmerman’s freshman year at the college is where she met fellow actress Katie Pettee who gave her the inspiration for Primrose Inn.
From Chicago to Maumee
“We had an acting class,” says Zimmerman, “and we didn’t even keep in touch that much.
During the pandemic I was making my first feature film and Katie was opening The Federal Inn as a bed and breakfast in Maumee. We followed each other on Instagram sharing each other’s posts. We are both about helping small businesses and other artists who are doing cool projects.” In April of 2024, Zimmerman and her friend Clara, who is also in the film, decided to book a room at Pettee’s Inn. On the drive to Maumee, it occurred to them that it had been 12 years since they’d seen each other — what if their somewhat impulsive trip didn’t turn out as planned? They wound up having a fun night discussing the ins and outs of filmmaking including not so glamourous aspects like fund raising and resources. By the end of the trip it was suggested they write a film around The Federal Inn — a smart business decision that offered a great backdrop for a film and advertising for her friend’s new venture.
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Sisterhood and Storytelling
Zimmerman went back to Chicago where she put together ideas for a story and script using their own life experiences. By the summer of 2025 they came back to Maumee ready to begin filming. All three girls realized they were the youngest sisters in their families and talked about the distance between themselves and their older sisters both from an age and life experience standpoint. Do older sisters really know their younger sisters beyond being the baby of the family? There are lots of stories about sisters who are best friends, but what about the sisters who aren’t close, for a variety of reasons, and want to be? It’s also true that siblings can have totally different experiences growing up in the same household. There are a lot of these themes in Zimmerman’s film. The story is essentially about a woman opening her own bed and breakfast and her sisters come to visit and a family heirloom goes missing, causing tension between them and eventually the people living in town.
Zimmerman says she loves writing very flawed female characters who the audience can still root for. While the tone is slightly Gilmore Girls, with lots of realistic dialogue, there’s also a spooky undertone and some mystery. Zimmerman doesn’t like to limit herself too much to the rules of any one genre. She cites Death Becomes Her as an example of a film that can be comedy, horror, and commentary all wrapped into one. “I’m always going to be drawn to anything that’s outside the box,” she says.
Post-Production to Big Screen
Although Zimmerman writes, acts, and directs, post-production is complex, and you need people who really understand editing and sound. She did an enormous amount of work on the film, but she also knows that the key to a good film is also finding people you work well with and have an expertise in very specific areas like sound, which is a huge field of its own. Zimmerman aims to have her film completed by next summer. Although it may or may not be in the Maumee Film Festival, audiences will probably get a chance to see a screening there. “I feel fortunate that my first film played at film festivals, premiered in Chicago, and was picked up to stream on Amazon Prime. I want to push myself to the next level of what is possible with this film.”
