Cinequest. Music is key in ‘Grind Reset Shine’

When we think of music, nuns and the mountains, one movie usually comes to mind. The filmmaker behind “Grind Reset Shine” hopes to add her effort, set for its world premiere screening March 10 at Cinequest, to that short list.

The film centers on Peter, an artist who has lost faith in his talent and ends up in a church in the Polish Carpathian Mountains, where he meets Alicia, a nun who steals away to the forest to sing and paint. The artist, meanwhile, learns how to play the church’s pipe organ.

Margarita Jimeno originally titled her film “My Life as a Soundtrack,” as she was researching pipe organ music at the time and wanted her film to include works for that instrument.

“There is a lot of music, but it’s not something that’s very present,” she says. “I wanted a title that was more image- and feeling-based, like how we relate to social media, (where) we don’t need full sentences to make sense.

“The three words are also melodic, so it has the element of music.”

The film does feature musical moments like a choir of nuns, which Jimeno says connects to Peter’s spiritual quest.

“It’s kind of the story of a friend of mine who had a fallout from the art world,” she adds. “I wanted him to be the main character, but he said he couldn’t go back to that dark place.”

In the film, Peter ends up in Poland by way of Berlin. Jimeno and her line producer Eva Moari, who also plays Alicia, hiked the Carpathian Mountains for 10 days in anticipation of filming there.

“We marked the locations we liked, thinking we would come back soon,” Jimeno says. “In reality, it was two years.”

Jimeno sees her film’s inclusion in the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival as a milestone in her long journey to get it made.

“For me, it means the beginning and ending of a chapter,” she says. “I’m curious to see how it will be received in a place I’ve never been. It’s like the first time I went to the mountains in Poland; I feel a sense of adventure.”