Lesbian Film Kicks Off L.A. Filmfest

Writer and director Lisa Cholodenko begins the Los Angeles Film Festival with a screening of her Sundance hit The Kids Are All Right.

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening star as Jules and Nic, a lesbian couple who must deal with the reappearance of their sperm donor, played by Mark Ruffalo, decades after their children are born.

While the lesbian story line is important to Cholodenko's movie, she said she did not write the movie solely to be a commentary about gay couples, but to observe the dynamics of any family in a tense situation.

"I always thought we were making a movie about a family, and the threat to the wholeness of the family," Cholodenko told the Los Angeles Times. "It was not about politics. If there was anything calculated, it was how do we make this movie universal -- how do we make this a story about a family?"

Cholodenko was inspired by some of her lesbian friends who wanted to have children; also, she and her partner, film composer Wendy Melvoin, went through the process of finding a donor when they decided to have children. Cholodenko added that she was intrigued about the idea of what might happen if a previously anonymous donor came into a child's life.