In “My Dead Friend Zoe,” actor Natalie Morales is stepping into one of her most challenging roles yet. The dark comedy drama follows U.S. Army veteran Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), who keeps seeing her dead friend Zoe (Morales) who died in combat during the Afghanistan war.

Debut filmmaker and Army paratrooper Kyle Hausmann-Stokes tells IndieWire how he assembled a cast of almost entirely former military performers and believes veteran storylines are often misrepresented.

The scenes Martin-Green shares with Harris, of the "suck-it-up" school of processing grief, and Morales, irreverent and irresistible as Zoe's livewire ghost, spark with an energy that also underlines how easy it is to leave the mental challenges of returning soldiers unaddressed.