In 2020 Karen Knox got a nose job and saw an opportunity for comedy…...dark comedy. Co directors Karen Knox and Matt Eastman filmed The Year of Staring at Noses over the course of three years chronicling the surgery and Knox's alter ego "Samantha's" quest to find love on a reality television show. A lot of it is real. Some of it isn’t. The film is about the contemporary thought poison that we will only find love through self modification in its most shallow expression. In this instance, plastic surgery and reality television. It’s about the digital age brain rot that has lead us to the equation that looksmaxing + capitalism = happiness. This film was made with four people, a girl, a gun, and a camera.