Inland Empire is a 2006 film written, directed, shot, edited, and scored by David Lynch, who produced it alongside Mary Sweeney. The film stars Laura Dern as a Hollywood actress who begins to take on the personality of a character she plays in a supposedly cursed film production, causing fragmented and nightmarish events to unfold. It has defied categorization, with its genre being variously interpreted as drama, experimental, fantasy, mystery, neo-noir, psychological thriller, and surrealist.