Oscar-winning writer Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, "one of the best films of the year" (Manohla Dargis, The New York Times), follows the life of regional theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as he struggles with romantic relationships (Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams and Catherine Keener), as well ass the problems of aging, and a mysteriously degenerative medical condition. He develops all this into a monumental theater piece. Building a full-scale replica of New York City inside an impossibly large warehouse and populating it with thousands of actors, Cotard spends the remainder of his life creating a piece so personal and epic in scope, that the line between reality and art collide, and the universe that he has created swallows up everything within it.