When Julia Coulter was a young child, she underwent three open-heart surgeries related to pulmonary atresia, a congenital heart defect.
An actor, writer and director hailing from Hanover, Coulter long wondered how she could use her craft to explore her condition.
It took time for the thread of a story to present itself. After her surgeries, the symptoms of her condition — dizziness, shortness of breath — subsided, allowing Coulter, now 34, to live a relatively normal life. But in her late 20s, the symptoms returned, forcing Coulter to face the lasting presence the condition has in her life.
“Suddenly it was like, ‘Oh, this is something you still live with,’” Coulter said in a recent interview with the Valley News.
That experience became the seed of Coulter’s new film, “Road to L’Etape du Tour,” which follows a 29-year-old woman with pulmonary atresia as she trains to cycle a mountainous, 105-mile stretch of the Tour de France that’s open to amateur riders.
Shot mainly in the Twin States, the film will screen this week at the New Hampshire Film Festival in Portsmouth. Another screening is set for Oct. 21 at Hanover’s Nugget Theaters, with proceeds going to the CHaD Hero, the annual race that benefits Dartmouth Health Children’s and the Golisano Children’s Hospital.
The upcoming screenings feel “particularly special not only because I am from New Hampshire, but because we filmed there,” Coulter said.
A Hanover High School grad, Coulter’s love of performing started at a young age. She acted in school plays and community theater programs such as North Country Community Theatre, where she played Betty Rizzo in a production of “Grease.”
Before her big part in “Grease,” Coulter wondered if she had what it takes to pursue acting professionally. But landing the part “gave me the confidence to be like, okay, this is actually something that I really want to do, and I feel like I have the chops for it,” she said.
While in high school, Coulter also became obsessed with indie filmmakers like Drake Doremus and Jay and Mark Duplass, whose low-budget movies became hallmarks of the “mumblecore” genre of the early 2000s.
Doremus’ film “Like Crazy,” a coming-of-age story about a British college student who falls in love with her American classmate, was especially impactful.
“It was one of the first films I saw that I was like, ‘Oh, I feel like not only is this story something I deeply connect to, but, like I could see myself in a film like this, and making a film like this,” Coulter said.
When it came time to apply for college, Coulter set her sights on the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, Wales. She discovered the school during one of her many cinematic deep-dives, this time on movies with Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley in the “Harry Potter” films. Grint, it turned out, performed opposite an actor who attended the school in a tiny indie film called “Cherrybomb.”
By senior year, Coulter was itching to get as far away from the Upper Valley as possible, and to cut her teeth as an actor and filmmaker. After graduating from Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, she wrote and directed “Brothers,” a short film about two grief-stricken brothers who lost their father. Her second short film “Habit,” which Coulter wrote and starred in, came out in 2022.
Working on those short films prepared Coulter for the juggling act that was directing and acting in “Road to L’Etape du Tour,” she said.
Acting in the film, she said, came from the desire to cast someone who had lived experience with a congenital heart defect.
Coulter made the film for under $1 million with a crew of about 25 people filming in Upper Valley locations such as Cedar Circle Farm and Education Center in Thetford. The area’s hilly roads become the training ground for the film’s protagonist, Amy, as she prepares for L’Etape du Tour.
“That landscape was so much of a character” in the film, said Coulter, now a Connecticut resident whose appreciation for New England has redoubled since her adolescence.
Coulter, for her part, has never cycled L’Etape du Tour — though she’s completed other long rides — but her dad has done it.
She chose to frame the film around that cycling event specifically because “I want[ed] it to feel like something that was possible,” that regular people participated in, she said.
Lived experience has taught Coulter how difficult it is to pinpoint the effects of her heart condition. Most days she can push herself athletically, but there’s always a limit.
The fact that her condition is largely invisible can make it even harder to articulate what it’s like to live with it. Films like “Road to L’Etape du Tour” make that experience a little less opaque.
Julia Coulter’s film “Road to L’Etape du Tour” will be screened at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 15, and 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17, at the New Hampshire Film Festival in Portsmouth, N.H. To purchase passes to the festival, go to nhfilmfestival.com. Another screening is slated for 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at the Nugget Theaters in Hanover. The event is free with a suggested donation of $15. Learn more at https://tinyurl.com/453y5y3j.