Shortly after the end of his parents’ 35-year marriage, writer-director Noah Pritzker found comfort in the written word. What resulted is now known as Ex-Husbands, a drama-comedy about Griffin Dunne’s Peter Pearce, a New York dentist who’s still reeling from his parents’ divorce six years earlier. Peter must now also come to terms with his dying father (Richard Benjamin) and his own impending divorce from Maria (Rosanna Arquette).

Serving as the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s closing night film on Jan. 13, Pritzker’s second feature follows Peter to Tulum, Mexico, where he reluctantly crashes the bachelor party that his youngest son, Mickey (Miles Heizer), organized for his oldest son, Nick (James Norton). Together, the trio must find a way through their own individual problems as their family begins anew. Pritzker recently spoke with THR about working out his own familial struggles on the page and screen and...