Making its world premiere at SIFF on Thursday, May 29, Butterfly Dreaming is a shot in Seattle thriller that ponders the nature of reality. Writer/director Rufus Williams was inspired to create his debut film after being inspired by his own curiousity about the subject.

“I had a dream that I’d killed someone,” says Williams. “Not a fantasy, just a dream.”

Upon waking from the dream he found himself wondering just what reality really is. “How do we know if we’re dreaming? How do we know if we’re not?”

Weaving elements from his own life into the tale, former mathematician Williams concocted the story of a mathematician named Rob who is grieving from the loss of his wife who finds himself trapped in a state of madness where he must continually straddle the line between paranoid reality and anxious dreams. As the line between the two states becomes more and more blurred, Rob struggles to sort out the difference between what he thinks is real and what is “really” real.

“How do you know?” Williams wonders. We define reality in part by how it progresses in time, but “what if our dreams had continuity?”

And what really happened to his wife?

Williams promises to answer that question in Butterfly Dreaming, but the answer, he hopes, will lead to more questions. “I would like the audience to have the ongoing experience,” he says, “Someoen stops a couple days later and says, ‘That was weird’.”

“I hope the audience comes out debating theories,” Williams says. “If that happened, I’d be absolutely delighted,” adding that his own friends and family for whom he has screened the film have ended up arguing their theories as to what “really” happens in the film.

As a first-time filmmaker, Williams was enraptured by every part of the process from the thrill of putting the script together to the “intense” experience of filming, to the pleasure of bringing all of the elements together in post-production.

“I really enjoy films that make me think about something,” he says. If he’s gotten it right, Butterfly Dreaming offers plenty to think about. Check it out for yourself Thursday, May 29, at 9:15 at Harvard Exit and again at Harvard Exit on Saturday, May 31 at 11:00 am.