In His Footsteps tells the story of a woman who lost her only child when he was 32. It charts her emotional voyage as she goes from hopeless to hopeful. Organizing pop-up restaurants in peoples’ homes and cooking for her son’s friends, as well as complete strangers, she literally cooks and dances her way out of the darkness.
Filmed over 6 months in three countries, it begins when Shelley Taylor, an American living in London, takes a “road trip,” to visit some of the places her dead son lived and worked: New York becomes Shelley’s new world, Los Angeles is her land of dreams and Silicon Valley represents the spirit of bouncing back. Two and a half years into this new life, the trip becomes the beginning of her healing. In the following months we see her traveling, starting new projects, taking her pop-up restaurant on the road, coming to terms with her losses and beginning to dream.
The film explores one woman’s approach to re-invention after loss and failure. Visiting the places her son once lived she begins to see that having lost her legacy, she must become her son’s. Her son’s one-man show, written when he was 21, strangely foreshadows the journey Shelley must now take. The daughter and grand-daughter of Seattle jazz musicians, Shelley shows how improvisation is life’s greatest art.