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Michael Tyburski’s second feature film, “Turn Me On,” imagines a seemingly utopian community where people voluntarily take a daily pill that suppresses every positive and negative emotion.

The 99-minute film will screen at the Alexandria Film Festival on Friday, Nov. 7, at the Alexandria History Museum at the Lyceum. Tyburski’s first feature premiered at Sundance in 2019.

In the film, Joy skips her daily “vitamin” and suddenly experiences a full range of feelings. When she shares the discovery with her partner, William, and other members of their group, their comfortable lives are thrown into turmoil.

Tyburski described the story as a satire examining society’s reliance on medication to avoid difficult emotions. Screenwriter Angela Bourassa developed the script during the COVID-19 pandemic, when isolation also raised questions about the decline of physical connection among young people.

The screenplay originally placed the characters in a cosmopolitan city of the future. Budget constraints pushed the filmmakers toward a more distinctive setting: an unidentified rural community surrounded by wilderness, where residents speak English and live close to nature.

Filming took about a month, but Tyburski spent roughly a year bringing the project to the screen. His work included adapting the script, assembling the cast and overseeing months of post-production, sound mixing and color work.

The cast presented a logistical challenge of its own. Tyburski lives in New York, while the leading actress was based in London and the other lead lived in Los Angeles.

Production also took place during the pandemic, bringing required medical personnel, distancing rules and other restrictions to the set. Those safeguards added complications to a process that ordinarily depends on close conversations and work in confined spaces.

Tyburski grew up in rural Vermont, where filmmaking was not a common career path. Fascinated by how things worked, he began experimenting with movies as a child before studying film in Santa Fe. He later spent 15 years directing commercials and short films.

Now in the early stages of writing his third feature, Tyburski believes advances in technology have made filmmaking more accessible, even as the industry remains fiercely competitive. He credits persistence and his determination to continue doing the work he loves.