For Los Angeles-based filmmaker Jeanne Spicuzza, the fact that her full-length film, "The Scarapist," will screen at The Oriental Theatre next month is a full-circle dream come true. Spicuzza, who grew up in Shorewood, spent many hours watching art and alternative films in the Landmark theater as a young girl and teenager in the ‘80s.

"I always thought there was something very special about The Oriental," says Spicuzza. "The films I saw there, and the space itself, deeply influenced me."

"The Scarapist" will air on Thursday, Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. The film will be followed by a Q&A session with Spicuzza and local actors who appear in the film including R. Michael Gull and Nathaniel Ross.

"I’m really looking forward to coming home. When you’re from Milwaukee, you’re always from Milwaukee," she says.

The film will also screen in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Spicuzza moved to Los Angeles in 1999. At the time, she was dating musician and former Violent Femmes’ drummer Guy Hoffman, to whom she is married today.

"The Scarapist" – which Spicuzza wrote, produced, co-directed and stars in – is a psychological thriller about her real-life harrowing experience with an abusive therapist in Los Angeles. The film portrays how a novelist named Lana is manipulated by her mentally unstable psychoanalyst.

_{Photo by: Seasons & a Muse, Inc.} 

"It combines mind-bending terror with dark humor," says Spicuzza. "About a third of the movie departs from the true events, but the emotional landscape is 95 percent accurate."

In 2005, Spicuzza went to a therapist who put her under hypnosis and, among other acts of abuse, "planted" tragedies into her mind that never really happened in her life. In doing this, she not only manipulated Spicuzza, but ensured a prolonged, dysfunctional patient-therapist relationship.

"Anyone who knows about assault and shame and humiliation and betrayal and trauma and redemption, will relate. This stuff can kill you or, by some miracle, you survive intact and grow from it," says Spicuzza.

Through the film, Spicuzza hopes to raise awareness about therapist-patient abuse. According to the film’s opening words, there are over one million survivors of therapist patient abuse and more than eighty percent are women.

"It was one of the worst experiences of my life and I am still recovering," says Spicuzza. "When you trust someone to the extent that you trust a therapist, you do not expect them to not only betray you, but use your vulnerabilities against you."

In 2006, Spicuzza took her then former therapist to court and won. The therapist was charged with assault and professional negligence and malpractice.

Spicuzza is also an international, award-winning spoken word artist of over 22 years (nicknamed by critics as "a Sicilian Spitfire") and the founder and CEO of the production company Seasons & a Muse, Inc. She has appeared on Lifetime, BBC and NPR and was nominated by the both Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Vatican Division of Arts and Culture for her screenplay "Breath of God."

_{Photo by: Seasons & a Muse, Inc.} 

The film was shot in Los Angeles and in Wisconsin at numerous locations, including Klode Park in Whitefish Bay, Hubbard Park in Shorewood, Big Bend, Fox Point and Elkorn.

"We started filming in Wisconsin in the fall of 2012 and it was one of the most beautiful autumns I had ever experienced," says Spicuzza. "It was sunny and warm and there were leaves falling everywhere. It turns out Wisconsin autumns make an incredible setting for a film noir."