by Nilufer Ozmekik for Winter Film Festival
See the romantic comedy feature film Zoe on February 20 @9:00PM at REGAL Union Square (850 Broadway) as part of New York City’s 14th Annual Winter Film Festival. Tickets now on sale!
ZOE is a joyful, messy, romantic ride through three lives, three cities, and one woman’s search for herself—a love letter to second chances and the courage to become.
Some films race toward revelation. ZOE stumbles, giggles, spins in a few reckless twirls—and somehow finds its truth anyway.
Written, directed, and brought vividly to life by Emanuela Galliussi with longtime collaborator Dean Ronalds, this fizzy, emotionally naked fantasy-comedy begins with something painfully familiar: a woman whose life looks perfectly assembled from the outside but feels quietly unbearable on the inside. Zoe is stuck in her family’s business under the weight of a berating, hyper-critical father. She’s drifting through a relationship she no longer wants, suffocated by expectations she never chose, and numbing herself into autopilot.
Then everything collapses.
After a brutal fight with her best friend, a breakup with her cheating boyfriend, and one drink too many, Zoe finds herself wildly drunk in the middle of a Carnival celebration—laughing, dancing, almost celebrating the wreckage of her own life. By the end of the night, she’s alone in a café where she was just dumped… or so she thinks. A little boy dressed as a wizard appears and casually offers her three wishes, like a genie who wandered out of a fairy tale. And somehow—against all logic—it works.
What follows isn’t a fantasy puzzle box or a morality tale. Instead, ZOE becomes a series of emotional experiments—alternate lives Zoe slips into across three cities: Ibiza, London, and Paris. She becomes a yoga instructor, a pregnant musician’s wife, and a bold bisexual artist and photographer. These aren’t rigid timelines so much as emotional realities, shaped by the versions of herself she’s never dared to live.
That structure is deeply intentional. Galliussi envisioned the cities as expressions of Zoe’s inner journey. Ibiza represents the body—self-acceptance and physical freedom. London reflects the mind—dreams, ambition, and fear. Paris becomes the spirit, where Zoe’s true self finally emerges without boundaries. The result is a film that moves less like a plot and more like a heart learning how to speak.
Zoe herself is gloriously messy. Galliussi refuses to sand her down into a tidy romantic-comedy heroine. She is impulsive, careless, magnetic, hopeful, exhausting, and intoxicatingly alive. She moves like someone fueled by triple espressos and unprocessed feelings, chasing fun because standing still might break her. That physicality isn’t just performance—it’s identity. Coming from a background in dance and theatre, Galliussi lets Zoe’s body do as much storytelling as her dialogue. Even in stillness, she vibrates.
And crucially, Zoe is never “fixed.”
Hollywood loves clean arcs. Galliussi rejects them. By the end, Zoe understands herself better—but she is still unfinished, still capable of falling again, still learning. That refusal to spoon-feed a happy ending gives the film its emotional honesty. Life doesn’t resolve. It keeps unfolding.
The film’s magic works the same way. The wizard boy is a spark, not a system. There are no rules, no explanations, no mythology to decode. Galliussi believes magic should feel like childhood: instinctive, irrational, and quietly powerful. Either you believe, or you don’t—and ZOE dares you to decide.
Visually, the film mirrors Zoe’s inner chaos. Ronalds keeps the camera close—sometimes uncomfortably so—creating an intimate, restless energy. The editing rhythm generates a gentle vertigo, pulling us into Zoe’s emotional disorientation as she slips between lives. You don’t just watch her spiral. You feel it.
The supporting cast grounds that whirlwind beautifully. Chanel Victor brings warmth without sentimentality, Michel Rodriguez Carmona delivers perfectly tuned comedic beats, and Jaspal Binning keeps the emotional temperature unpredictable. Each version of Zoe’s life feels real, not decorative.
At its heart, ZOE is about dissatisfaction—the ache of having everything you’re “supposed” to want and still feeling empty. Galliussi sees that as a symptom of modern life itself, where social pressure, performance, and digital noise disconnect us from what actually matters. Beneath all the roles and labels, what we crave is simple: love, empathy, and grace.
The film may not reinvent romantic fantasy, but it doesn’t need to. Its power comes from sincerity, vulnerability, and the courage to leave things unresolved. It’s a story about second—and third—chances, about the people we choose, the places that shape us, and the selves we’re brave enough to become.
Zoe doesn’t find all the answers.
She finds herself starting to ask the right questions.
And by the time the ride ends, you can feel just how much heart went into every wild, stumbling step.
About Winter Film Festival
Winter Film Festival is an all-volunteer women and minority-run organization as part of Winter Film Awards Inc, a 501(c)3 organization founded in 2011 to celebrate emerging talent in local and international filmmaking.
The 14th Annual Winter Film Festival runs February 18-22 2026 includes a diverse mixture of animated films, documentaries, comedies, romances, dramas, horror films, music videos and web series of all lengths. Our five-day event is jam-packed with screenings and Q&A sessions at NYC’s REGAL Union Square, six Education sessions/workshops and a variety of filmmaker networking events all coming to a glittering close on February 22 with our red-carpet gala Awards Ceremony.
Winter Film Festival programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Promotional support provided by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment.
For more information about Winter Film Festival, visit WinterFilmFest.org
email us at info@winterfilmawards.com and visit us at Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
