In Lille, where Hal & Harper was presented at the Series Mania Festival this spring, the show was warmly received by the audience and jury, who awarded its lead actress, Lili Reinhart, the prize for best actress. From the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to the Hauts-de-France region, the series toured from festival to festival in search of a distributor, ultimately finding its home in the catalog of the cinephile platform MUBI. A happy conclusion for this very personal project, which Cooper Raiff financed with the money paid by Apple TV+ for the acquisition of Cha Cha Real Smooth, his second feature film released on the platform—and in US theaters—in 2022.
Under 30 years old and with barely seven years in the industry, the bearded Texan now holds a prominent place in the new wave of American independent cinema. Originally, the son of a lawyer and a psychologist saw himself doing nothing other than acting, ideally for director Cameron Crowe, whose films he deeply admires. However, it was to escape the frustration of auditions that the young man, still in high school, began writing, primarily focusing on themes of family and the relationship between mothers and their sons.