Ten years ago, Lily Farizon started her first arts courses at Westborough High. Now, she's attending international festivals like Cannes.Ian Dartley, Patch Staff|Updated Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 12:30 pm ETWESTBOROUGH, MA - 7 years ago, Lily Farizon was learning about English, music and theater in Westborough High School.Now, she's attending international film festivals and securing funding for her films. Her first b...
Ten years ago, Lily Farizon started her first arts courses at Westborough High. Now, she's attending international festivals like Cannes.
Ian Dartley, Patch Staff
|Updated Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 12:30 pm ET
WESTBOROUGH, MA - 7 years ago, Lily Farizon was learning about English, music and theater in Westborough High School.
Now, she's attending international film festivals and securing funding for her films. Her first big-budget short film, "Call Me," just wrapped up filming after a grueling fundraising process. She and her team plan to send it to festivals for consideration in the 2025 awards season.
"So much of Westborough has helped me get to this point," Farizon, 25, told Patch. "Before I was getting film jobs, the community here welcomed me once again after college."
Farizon grew up in Westborough and went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst for her undergraduate degree. Though she's worked as a substitute teacher, her passion lies behind the cameras and projected onto the silver screen.
She isn't the first pupil to pass through the Commonwealth seeking Hollywood fortune. Paul Thomas Anderson, renowned director of "There Will Be Blood" and "Licorice Pizza," briefly attended Emerson College in Boston.
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Even Daniel Kwan, co-director of the Oscar-winning film "Everything Everywhere All At Once" hailed from Westborough.
Everyone has to start somewhere, and for Farizon that was in the halls of that high school nearly a decade ago.
"[Westborough] was so good at instilling a real work ethic in people." It's that sort of work ethic that landed Farizon a major role as a script supervisor for the upcoming film "Eephus," a Massachusetts-based sports film about an amateur baseball team. Filmed in Douglas, director Carson Lund's film currently holds a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and was screened at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Farizon in attendance, of course. "Eephus" has now been screened across Massachusetts, and both the Boston Globe and the New York Times have lauded the film as an exemplary sports movie.
It's that combination of a critically acclaimed underdog film and an up-and-coming crowd-funded short that creates a realized body of work that many veterans in the film industry work decades to achieve.
But no matter how far Farizon travels, she's always kept her Westborough roots in mind.
"Even after I came back following college everyone was so supportive," she said. "When I worked there as a substitute teacher I got to see the back end of it, and that gave me a deeper appreciation for my mentors."
While Westborough may barely crack the top quarter of the Commonwealth's most populated cities, its roots have spread to the Cannes Film Festival in France to the Dolby Theater in California. Farizon's artistic spark may have been born in Westborough, but her works are now lining silver screens across the world.
"To people in Westborough High reading this, there's value in the most random classes like modernism or film and literature," Farizon said. "I really, really hope that Westborough continues to be such a great place for people who want to explore their creativity, as well as traditional education."