As far as meet-cutes go, few get more D.C. than the one in Love Dot Com: The Social Experiment, a romantic comedy that hit Netflix last week. Just as the sounds of a go-go remix fade away during the opening credits, our two leads bump into each other at the MOM’s Organic Market on New York Avenue NE in Ivy City.

If the rest of the film feels equally inspired by the District, it’s because its director and writer, Charneice Fox, in part based it on her experiences in D.C. more than a decade ago. Like crunchy vegan coffee shop owner Shelby (portrayed by Baltimore-based actress and singer Brave Williams), Fox was then living in a Brookland apartment that she loved—”before Brookland was all famous and fancy,” the director says. Then the owner sold her building.

“I couldn’t afford to stay there, and I basically felt displaced, because I was trying really hard to be a writer and an artist,” Fox says. She was in the middle of making a documentary, The MLK Streets Project, that explored streets around the country named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She wanted to write about her living situation but thought that another documentary would be too dry.

“I was like, ‘What would happen if I wrote a script that had jokes in it and was kind of funny, but it also had this underlying message about being a small business owner … and all the things that me and my friends talk about?'” recalls Fox.

The story, which she wrote 12 years ago and shelved, ultimately became Love Dot Com. Fox added a You’ve Got Mail-esque love story between Shelby and Greg, a partner at the real estate firm that buys Shelby’s apartment building with plans to flip it into condos. (As another character points out, Greg’s firm is also the one “building condos behind The Big Chair” in Anacostia.)

They clash at first. “I’m into urban development,” Greg (played by Empire alum Tobias Truvillion) tells Shelby on their first date. She’s not impressed. “Oh, so you’re an active participant in gentrification,” she replies. Not convinced they’re right for each other, they turn to a dating website, Love.com, to see if they match up.

Throughout their courtship, Shelby and Greg vent to loved ones — the cast includes R&B musicians Wes Felton and Raheem DeVaughn, longtime TV actor Charles Malik Whitfield, and comedian Kym Whitley. Marvin Bowser, the brother of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, also makes a cameo as a bartender. We won’t spoil anything here, but suffice it to say the couple learns that, in love, emotions are more important than online dating algorithms.

Fox says most of the cast and crew has local ties. Producer Kimberly C. Gaines, for example, is one of the founding members of Parallel Film Collective, a local nonprofit devoted to making independent films about social justice issues. Meanwhile, co-cinematographer Hans Charles, a Howard University graduate, was nominated for an Emmy for his work on filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s 13th, a 2016 documentary about mass incarceration and systemic racism.

Even when Love Dot Com was only a first draft, Fox knew she wanted to film it in the District: Born in West Virginia, she grew up D.C. After winning BET’s annual “Rap It Up” competition in 2005 and producing a short film for the network, she also lived in Los Angeles briefly.

“I think L.A.’s dope, but in this day and age, I feel like you can make a movie anywhere,” says Fox. 

Since then, she’s made her creative home in D.C., helming her own company — Straight, No Chaser Productions — and launching a local high school version of the 48 Hour Film Project competition in 2016. Fox credits the relationships she made with D.C.’s Office of Cable Television, Film, Music, And Entertainment through that project for the relative ease with which she was able to film Love Dot Com.

Like other cities, D.C. offers tax incentives for movies to film here, including smaller indie movies like Fox’s or the latest big-budget political thriller. But all those films have to deal with District-specific regulations, such as the Federal Aviation Administration’s prohibition on flying unauthorized drones. (For Love Dot Com, Fox hired an outside company to get a sweeping shot of the National Museum of African American History and Culture instead of using a drone camera.)

As her fellow D.C. filmmaker George Pelecanos has discussed, Fox says she sees the city’s film market eventually rivaling popular filming destinations like Atlanta. “I think it is up to us as independent artists to continue just insisting that we shoot here,” she says. She’s already executive producing another rom-com, A Love Song, which will also film in the District.

Love Dot Com premiered last summer at the American Black Film Festival in Miami and was released on video on demand last November. Although Fox says she doesn’t know how many people have watched the movie since it was released on Netflix on Feb. 17 (the streaming service is notoriously reluctant to share viewership data), she’s received lots of messages about it from viewers around the world. She’s most appreciated those messages from people telling her the movie reminds them of D.C.

“I’ve been getting a lot of feedback … from people who are really excited to see the city featured the way it was, because that’s how they grew up, too,” Fox explains. “They felt like they knew the people in the movie.”

Love Dot Com: The Social Experiment is now streaming on Netflix.