A suicidal shut-in. A man at her door. And neither is who they seem. SMALL OF HER BACK is a dark romance about Piper (Nicole Beharie), a troubled young woman who never leaves her apartment, and John (Christopher Domig), who appears one night offering to help. All they have in common is Mollie.

Piper met Mollie online, and Mollie changed everything. She shared Piper’s fascination with language; the lyricism, weight, and wonder of words. She too had a diagnosis – bipolar. She understood the nuances of illness and sanity, the difference between Piper not leaving her cramped studio in Queens, and those who function but are nonetheless not well. Then, tonight, a knock at the door. An intrusion into Piper’s carefully-constructed world. It’s John Sharp, Mollie’s brother. He was sent to talk Piper out of things she’s threatening. But Piper isn’t interested in that. Or in John. She hungers to know more about Mollie. She has only four flat little pictures. And a book. She aches to know what John knows of Mollie, the way she walks, how she smells, anything to expand on those little black characters on a screen. The night unfolds. They circle each other, John frantic to “save” Piper, and Piper desperate to know all there is about a woman she’s never met through a man she hardly knows. But the more she learns of Mollie, the more she learns of John. And truth about John may be more troubling than Piper expected.