Dabney Day brings first film, The Gardener, to Oxford screening

Oxford is getting a special stop on the national run of Dabney Day’s first and only film, and the screening carries a question bigger than one night at the movies: can Lafayette County nurture the filmmakers it produces, showcase them well, and keep them connected to home?

The Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, with the Oxford Film Festival, will host a 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, screening of The Gardener at Malco Oxford Commons Cinema Grill, 206 Commonwealth Blvd. The event is listed as a special showing with laser projection, placing Day’s feature directorial debut in one of Oxford’s most visible public venues just as the film moves through a national theatrical rollout that began April 17.

Day, a Mississippi native from Greenville, wrote and directed the film after beginning the screenplay nearly 30 years ago during a stressful period following her launch of an entertainment marketing company in Hollywood. She started the project at a retreat in the mountains near Yosemite, then kept returning to it over the years, refining the script while preserving its core idea: that people, like gardens, need care, time and the willingness to grow before they can flourish.

That theme gives the Oxford screening a local resonance. The film’s current plot centers on a cosmetics heiress who escapes to a mountain cottage to defend her family’s legacy and forms a transformative bond with an enigmatic gardener. Promotional descriptions frame the story around love, loss, grief, healing and self-discovery, a mix that fits Day’s long, personal path from Hollywood marketing to directing her first film.

The Gardener stars Radha Mitchell and runs 107 minutes. The cast also includes David Andrews, William Miller, Wai Ching Ho, Ellen David, Diana Drez, Ryan Abe, Neala Cohen and Matt Stella. Its PG-13 rating places it in the kind of mainstream lane that can draw both film fans and casual moviegoers back to the theater for a Mississippi-made story with a national footprint.

Oxford clearly matters to Day beyond the billing. She has said the city feels like a second home, and her ties run through the University of Mississippi, where her daughters attended and her grandson is now a freshman. She has also spent quiet mornings on the porch at Square Books, a detail that fits Oxford’s literary and cultural pull and helps explain why this screening feels less like a tour stop than a homecoming.

That homecoming lands with added weight because the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council was founded in 1972 and says its work is to provide arts access and opportunities that reflect the community. Named for William Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, the organization has built its identity around the idea that Oxford should not only consume culture, but help shape it. Day’s return gives that idea a concrete test.