It’s not easy working in the world of film. But Larkspur’s Chris Madera wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Early on, somebody told me that ‘if you can picture yourself in any other career outside of film, you should probably go do that.’ And I’ve been doing this ever since,” he said and laughed. “It just always felt like the right place.”

While he normally works behind the scenes directing or as director of photography for industrial and commercial projects, he will show off his acting chops to a hometown crowd with “Good Boy,” a short film he’s in by San Francisco filmmaker Colin Russell.

It will be shown at 2:15 p.m. Saturday at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco as part of the Bay Area Tales programming for the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Admission is $17.95. It will also be available to stream online. Get tickets at sfindie2025.eventive.org/schedule.

The 18-minute film, which Madera and the film crew shot last year in Northern California, focuses on an isolated widower named Willie, played by Richard Conti (“Blue Jasmine,” “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody”).

“An isolated widower yearns for the good old days and spends the present trying to bring them back. When reality fails to meet expectations and things come crashing down, he must decide whether to accept a new companion, warts and all,” the short film’s logline says.

“It definitely felt like it was able to hit the emotional points and really blow past them in a lot of ways. What Richard was able to bring to that character was huge. I thought it was an impactful film. I quite enjoyed it and I’m proud to have been a part of that process,” said Madera, who also did coloring work on the short film.

In it, Madera plays a bad-tempered man with an unhealthy relationship with his dog. He’s seen shaking the dog’s cage and throwing a drink at the cage in the back of his truck — things that were done when the dog actor Musik was not on set — which are witnessed by Willie, who eventually sneakily grabs the dog and brings the animal back to his house to care for them.

Working on this short film felt like a reunion of sorts. Madera and Russell have worked together on various projects and other short films for more than 10 years, and two of the crew members, Alec Rodriques and Ross Friedrich, attended Redwood High School with Madera.

“Colin wrote this project and wanted me to come on board and help him out with it,” said Madera, of the short film, which will be shown next month at the Fargo Film Festival. “In this industry, there’s nothing better than getting to work with your friends.”

How it began

Madera was around 5 years old when his grandfather gave him a small video camera. It would plant a seed then and there with Madera, who would spend his childhood in Marin making goofy sketches and short films with his friends and neighbors.

While at Redwood High School, he joined the school’s theater program, Ensemble Production Company (EPiC), and began to perform onstage and do lighting and tech work behind the scenes.

“That theater program, they had a film production class. The man who taught that class, Adam Loften, who’s since become a close friend and colleague of mine, we collaborate on lots of different projects together. We did an extracurricular weekend shoot project for the film production class, and he offered me an internship after that for that summer. And I’ve been working in some capacity in production on shoots ever since,” said Madera, who graduated from Redwood High School in 2010.

But, for this film, it felt nice to return to his roots.

“I spend the vast majority of my time as crew behind the camera, which is actually kind of the opposite of how I got started,” he said. “I did start as an actor and it was fun to return to that. It had been quite a while since I had done anything in front of the camera, but I like them both. I’d be happy to keep doing both, if there’s more roles.”

For Madera, he’s seen the power of film and what it can do for people — and how it can help people feel that they’re not alone in their experiences.

“Art is a great way to reach out and touch somebody and communicate with them in a way that they didn’t know they could be communicated with or feel,” he said. “If ‘Good Boy’ can reach and touch people and make them feel something or realize something about themselves that they might not have otherwise, I think that’s great. It was a really good group to work with and I’m really stoked that it’s able to be shown right here in our backyard.”