After retiring from a long career as an actor and theater director, Bruce Miller begins sharing online videos featuring deeply intimate conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist’s dummies, which range from a Holocaust survivor to a Russian psychiatrist named Dr. Putin. For his daughter Emma, these videos offer an uncomfortable portal into her father’s psyche, making her realize how little she actually knows her dad.
In an attempt to understand Bruce’s motivations and repair a father-daughter relationship fractured by divorce and infidelity, Emma conducts interviews with Bruce’s puppets, digs into home videos, and revisits sites from her childhood. As Emma and Bruce struggle to communicate about their family’s darker chapters, they decide to commission the creation of dummies that resemble themselves. Can their puppet avatars — and the catalyzing power of the camera — help them to forge a new vision for their relationship?
