Moviefone Editorial

Author: Marya Gates

  • Emily Ting Talks ‘Tall Girl 2’

    Ava Michelle in Netflix's 'Tall Girl 2'
    Ava Michelle in Netflix’s ‘Tall Girl 2’

    Upon its release in 2019, the teen rom-com ‘Tall Girl’ starring ‘Dance Moms’ alumna Ava Michelle became Netflix’s fifth most-watched film of all time. The main cast, along with writer Sam Wolfson have all returned for the sequel, although this time out director Nzingha Stewart has passed the baton on to Emily Ting.

    After finding confidence at the homecoming dance and love with her best friend Jack Dunkleman (Griffin Gluck) in the first film, ‘Tall Girl 2’ follows awkward teenager Jodi through the ups-and-downs of first love, as well as the pressures of pursuing her passion for performance while auditioning for the spring musical.

    Born in Taipei and raised in Los Angeles, director Emily Ting holds a degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. After working for a documentary distribution for several years, Ting founded her own production company, Unbound Feet Productions, and focused her creative energy on documentaries. One of her documentaries, ‘Family, Inc.‘ followed her stint working for her family’s toy manufacturing business in China.

    This experience also inspired her first two narrative films: ‘Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,’ which stars Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenber as two expats in Hong Kong who make an unexpected connection, and ‘Go Back To China’ starring Anna Akana as an American heiress who moves back Shenzhen to learn the family business.

    Ting’s films are colorful, vibrant explorations of lives in transit. While ‘Tall Girl 2’ marks a departure from her writer-director past, her visual style and emotional sensibility can be felt throughout.

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    Here’s what director Emily Ting had to say about making ‘Tall Girl 2.’

    Moviefone: How did you first get involved with ‘Tall Girl 2’?

    Emily Ting: This project came from my agent. I got the script from him. I was so excited, because first of all, I had no idea that they were making a sequel to ‘Tall Girl,’ which was a film that I really enjoyed. I felt really honored that the producers would even think of me, because up until that point, I have only ever been considered for movies with an Asian element.

    I really appreciated that the producers and the studio thought outside the box and could see that my sensibility could really fit in with the ‘Tall Girl’ world’. I tore through the script and I just fell in love with it. I already adored the first one, but I thought the second one was even more emotionally resonant. Just the way that Jodi was dealing with this like negative inner self talk, which I feel everyone could go through.

    MF: What are the challenges of tackling a sequel?

    ET: Nzingha Stewart, the first director, did such a wonderful job, otherwise we wouldn’t be here making a sequel. But unfortunately, she wasn’t unavailable, which gave me this wonderful opportunity. I was a little scared about going in with a sequel because everything’s established. I thought everyone’s gonna treat me like the stepmom coming in. But the studio was very open. They told me I did not have to just do a repeat of the first film. I could take it in my own direction. Come in and pitch your own vision. Because otherwise it just becomes an episode in a television series.

    They let me change the color palette in her bedroom. Because Jodi is going on a different journey with this one, I thought it makes sense for a lot of the colors and the wardrobe and the production design, to be a little poppier and a little bit more colorful. The actors also treated me so well. No one treated me like a stepmom. They all welcomed me into the ‘Tall Girl’ family. It was just a really wonderful experience.

    MF: How did you develop a cinematic language for Jodi’s inner voice and anxiety?

    ET: When my DP Shane Hurlbut and I were shot listing the movie, every time Jodi hears that inner voice there is a visual element attached to it. We explored a lot of different ideas for how to visualize that. Then we came down to two major elements. We use this technique called a cinefade. Every time she hears the voice, you see her background slowly go out of focus while she stays in focus. It’s a subtle way to show that she gets stuck in her head. Later on when the inner voice manifests into a physical reaction when she has the actual anxiety attacks, we wanted the audience to actually feel like they’re having an anxiety attack as well.

    So we shot it with a body cam mounted to her, which we took from ‘Requiem For A Dream’ when Jennifer Connelly is having when she’s sort of o.d.ing and they have the body cam shot when she’s walking down the hallway. That was sort of our inspiration for all of Jodi’s anxiety attacks, because we want the audience to feel like they’re also having an anxiety attack with her. Then it’s just the way the editor edits together the scene coupled with a sound design.

    Our sound designer did a great job when she was having that final anxiety attack. He built in crashing wave sounds, because that’s what having anxiety feels like. You feel like it’s a wave washing over you, so he built that into the sonic design of the anxiety attack sequence. We hope that we are really getting the audience into how Jodi is feeling at that moment.

    MF: Can you talk about the musical element of the film and how you landed on ‘Bye Bye Birdie’?

    ET: I think [screenwriter] Sam Wolfson built in the musical element into the sequel because Ava comes from a singing and dancing background. He really wanted to showcase her talent. With the sequel he wanted Jodi to go after a dream, so why not utilize Ava’s innate talent? When the script was in development there was a different musical attached the entire time. It was going to be ‘Guys and Dolls’ because in the first one, it was set up that that was her favorite musical.

    Up until pre-production, we were still planning for it to be ‘Guys and Dolls’. But then at the last minute we were not able to secure the license. So we had to pivot very quickly. We were already in New Orleans at the time, deep into pre-production, designing sets and costumes. So we very quickly had to pivot. Our music supervisor called all of her contacts saying she needed a musical ASAP.

    When we got a list of available musicals, I was like, it has to be ‘Bye Bye Birdie’. That’s like the perennial high school musical that everyone puts on. In a way I’m glad that it didn’t work out with ‘Guys and Dolls’, because I do feel like ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ ended up being the much better choice.

    MF: What was it like working with Ava Michelle, who is such a talented dancer, to craft her song and dance performance as Jodi, somebody who is so insecure about herself?

    ET: She’s obviously a very talented dancer, but she has to play someone who was very not confident with her dancing and kind of clumsy. That always takes some work, but it came very naturally to her. The whole theme of being insecure and having anxiety came very naturally because I think it is a very universal theme that a lot of people deal with.

    She was able to tap into a lot of her personal experiences. That sequence in the film where she ends up kicking someone in the chin at rehearsal actually happened to Ava in real life! So we worked that into the film because it’s very true to her experience as a very tall dancer.

    MF: Ava and Sabrina Carpenter together are delightful. They have such wonderful chemistry. How do you sort of capture that?

    ET: I was at an advantage because everyone had already worked on the first film together. They all came in with natural chemistry. They were already friends and they already felt like a family. There was no getting to know you stage. Ava and Sabrina already had a very sisterly relationship and bond. I remember at the end of the first week of production, we shot that packing scene with Harper and Jodi, where Harper is about to move away.

    It was a very, very heartfelt scene. All those tears, they were real. We turned on the camera and the waterworks just came out. They just really let that emotion flow. I was so in awe of both ladies by the end of the first week, because they just knocked that scene out of the park.

    MF: Are there any teen films that inspired you on this film in particular or in your work in general?

    ET: Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I made my creative team all watch the entire ‘To All The Boys’ series on Netflix as research. That was definitely very much kind of our model in terms of tone and the visuals, because I think they’re just such charming and heartfelt and sweet films, and that’s really kind of what I wanted to tap into. They’re also visually very much aligned with my sense of style in terms of having everything very color coordinated and really pop on screen.

    In the writing stage the first one is very much an homage to ‘Pretty in Pink’. All of those John Hughes movies from the 80s are influential. I always say, teen rom coms are not just for teenagers. They’re absolutely also for people like us who grew up with John Hughes films. We’ve definitely sprinkled a lot of that sort of John Hughes magic throughout the making of these films.

    MF: How do you hope audiences feel when the film is over?

    ET: I want the audience to feel hopeful at the end of the film and through life. Throughout the film Jodi might have been battered down by her inner voice, just like we all do in life, but just know that there’s also a positive voice inside you that can lift you up instead of breaking you down. If audiences could just feel that little glimmer of hope, then I think our job as filmmakers was successful.

    ‘Tall Girl 2’ will be released globally on Netflix February 11, 2022.

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  • Kat Coiro Talks ‘Marry Me’

    (L to R) Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in 'Marry Me'
    (L to R) Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in ‘Marry Me’

    Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Bobby Crosby, ‘Marry Me’ sees star and producer Jennifer Lopez back in her element. Featuring nearly a dozen original songs – mostly performed in their entirety – Lopez stars as lovestruck superstar Kat Valdez.

    Set to marry her fiance Bastian (Maluma) in front of 40M people on live television, her world comes crashing down when a video surfaces of him cheating on her. Caught up in the moment, she proposes to a stranger in the crowd holding a marry me sign. Is her whirlwind marriage to hapless math teacher Charlie (Owen Wilson) just a publicity stunt, or did she accidentally find something real?

    Director Kat Coiro is no stranger to the romantic comedy genre. Born to bohemian parents in a third floor Manhattan walk-up, Coiro spent much of her childhood living a nomadic existence around the globe. She studied theater and Russian literature at Carnegie Mellon University, and briefly enrolled in the American Film Institute’s MFA program before dropping out to film her first feature ‘L!fe Happens’.

    Co-written by Coiro and star Krysten Ritter, the rom-com was partially inspired by their own friendship, as well as Coiro’s experience as a first time mother. She quickly directed two more romances: ‘And While We Were Here’ and ‘A Case of You’ before pivoting to television. Her TV credits include the pilots for comedies’Girls5Eva’ and ‘Florida Girls,’ and the upcoming Disney+ show ‘She Hulk’.

    After nearly a decade working solely in television, ‘Marry Me’ is not only a delightful return to the romantic comedy genre for the director, but also a showcase for Coiro’s vivid visual flare and skill at capturing the essence of entertainers at their most spectacular.

    Jennifer Lopez at 2015 American Music Awards. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)
    Jennifer Lopez at 2015 American Music Awards. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

    Moviefone: What do you look for in the films that you direct in general, and how did you get involved with ‘Marry Me’ in particular?

    Kat Coiro: It’s funny because I never really subscribed to a specific genre. I just look for a mix of humor and heart and humanity. I had actually moved into the television space. I’d kind of said I’m not going to do features for a while. But when I read this script, it just really spoke to me in terms of its humanity. Even though it’s this larger than life story about a celebrity, there is something so elementally vulnerable and human and interesting in the heart of the story.

    That’s really what drew me to it. Also having Jennifer Lopez play this role that feels like she was born to play. It’s the combination of all of her talents: acting and singing and fashion. She brought so much to it. She was attached when I read the script, so that was really an exciting element, obviously.

    MF: I read that she listened to a hundred songs to narrow down the ones featured in the film.

    KC: More than that! We listened to probably 400 songs. Our partners at Universal, and then Jennifer’s music team, they inundated us with songs that had been banked songs that were originally written for the film. There were a lot of different songs entitled ‘Marry Me’ that we went through. That was a huge process. It was me and Jennifer and Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, who’s the producing partner, and then also Mike Knobloch, and Rachel Levy over at Universal and Benny Medina.

    We would all get these files, and say here are the top ten from that batch. One of the great parts of the process is that we would all hear the same song and go, this is the one! It was so important that the songs not just be good in and of themselves, but that they tie into the emotional arc of the story. Because while it is a rom com, and it is about a relationship, it’s also about the growth and the progression of an artist.

    She starts in this very big, larger than life, spectacle, pop world with songs like “Church’. Slowly as the film goes on, she breaks down to a very simple unproduced version of herself with ‘On My Way’, which ends up being the song that kind of puts her on the map in a new way.

    MF: How did you select which songs to present as a spectacle, via social media, in a recording studio, etc?

    KC: That ties into the selection of the songs. Where she is at the top of the film, she is this big, famous pop star who’s marrying another big famous pop star, and they’re known for this very flashy kind of radio hit, which is ‘Marry Me’, and then when her world explodes, she has to build back up. It was about finding each song in the sequence that went along with that emotional journey.

    One of the most exciting moments for me was during my first time meeting Jennifer. She started singing a song that’s not actually in the movie, but a song called ‘Unlove You’ that had originally been scripted in the film. She was singing along to a Bluetooth and the Bluetooth dropped out and she kept singing and I was four feet away from her. I’ve always known how talented she is and what a good singer she is, but seeing it like that, an acapella Jennifer Lopez in a room singing. It brought tears to my eyes. I got chills. I thought oh my god, if we can bring even a tiny bit of that into the film I think we will have succeeded.

    So I always knew that we were working towards this moment where she sits and sings unaccompanied, and she sings for real in the room and we don’t mess with it. It was all moving towards that point of just stripped down and raw Jennifer Lopez.

    MF: Earlier you mentioned fashion. Her character has a lot of looks, from the stage spectacle to the wedding dress to her casual walking around New York City style. How did you develop them?

    KC: One of the most important things to me was that these concerts feel 100% real. So, to that end, from a lighting standpoint, from a set design standpoint, from a costume standpoint, we actually brought in her concert team for those sequences.

    So when she performs ‘Church,’ that was a collaboration between me and the costume designer, Caroline Duncan, but also Rob Zangardi, who does all her costumes for her shows. It was a real collaboration. When you have Jennifer Lopez and her music team, part of your job is to get out of the way and let them do their thing. Where I would weigh in is when it affected the story emotionally.

    When you look at ‘Church,’ that is when she’s at the height of this very spectacle driven kind of flashy persona. It was really important to capture the authenticity of the concerts. In terms of her fashion throughout, she obviously has such a great sense of what looks good on her, so it was conversations about where she is in the story. How do these costumes reflect the emotional trajectory? Then let her and her team do their thing.

    (L to R) Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in 'Marry Me'
    (L to R) Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson in ‘Marry Me’

    MF: There’s a stark difference visually between her world and Charlie (Owen Wilson)’s world. Can you talk about that?

    KC: One of the motifs that we played with throughout is that she lives in a world that is up high, it’s in the clouds. It’s in the sparkly city lights. You look at her apartment, it’s on the 40th floor. She’s on a private jet. Even when she goes to the press conference, her car is parked on the rooftop. That was something that was scripted in an underground garage, and my cinematographer Florian Ballhaus, and I were like no, we always want her to be up high.

    On the other end of the spectrum, we have Charlie who lives in a ground floor apartment. His classroom is on the ground floor of his Brooklyn school. We were constantly playing with this high-low dynamic. She’s always on a stage and he’s down below. That was a huge part of the visual language of the film, with him always looking up at her and she’s looking down at him.

    Then we flip it at the very end of the film. She comes into the theater and he’s up on the stage for the first time. When she holds up the sign, she’s down below. It’s really about them having influenced each other’s worlds, and changed each other.

    MF: One moment that really struck me because it’s one of my favorite poets, is when we meet Kat she reads from Keats for possible wedding vows, and then later Charlie also loves Keats. Was that always in the script?

    KC: Every film I have made has a sliver of classical poetry because it’s something that I love to sneak in. Especially in popular films, I just like to bring in a little of that poetry and romanticism. Keats was a Romantic poet, so to bring that in was important to me. It wasn’t originally scripted that way. But it was also a way of setting up the difference between Kat Valdez and Bastian (Maluma).

    For her this is a really romantic venture. She is pouring her whole heart and soul into it. But for him, he’s very young. He’s very famous. It seems like a great press opportunity. It’s not that he doesn’t love her, and that he’s callous, but they are coming at it from different times in their life and from different points of view. I think poetry is a very simple and straightforward way of showing that difference between where they are in their lives.

    MF: Both Kat and Charlie have been divorced before. Marriage and remarriage is a classic trope in screwball romantic comedies. Are there any romantic comedies that inspired you while making this film?

    KC: Oh, definitely. You can see throughout the film that instead of shying away from the tropes and the cliches we lean into them. There’s a reason that Michelle Buteau opens and closes the jewelry box when Jennifer reaches for it.

    MF: ‘Pretty Woman’!

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    KC: There’s a reason he’s holding up a sign or she’s running through the airport. It’s funny, I keep getting asked, is the rom com dead? I always say the rom com is the most sustaining genre that exists in cinema. When you look back at Charlie Chaplin. Those are rom coms. When you look at the musicals of the 30s and 40s, and 50s. Those are rom coms.

    When you look at the 80s and 90s, and 2000s. It is a very enduring genre. We wanted to really play into that and say, yes, we’re coming from a tradition of rom com and we embrace it, and we love it. Some of my favorites are ‘When Harry Met Sally. . .’ and ‘Notting Hill’. I think there’s a lot of comparisons between ‘Notting Hill’ and this movie, and I love that and I welcome that.

    MF: Why do you think romantic comedies are so enduring?

    KC: I think they’re hopeful. I think that they make people happy. I’m always a little shocked by the way that they’re spoken of like they’re lesser than. Because the truth is they are geared towards women, but I think men also love them. In my experience, it’s a very universal genre. Then you add the music that we have in this film, and it becomes not just a rom com, but also kind of a concert experience. I’m really hoping that’s part of what brings people to the theaters. The combination of the glamour, the style, and the genre. It’s about love and it is about hope. It’s as simple as that.

    With ‘Marry Me’ you also get to watch songs performed in their entirety, which is something that was also really important to me. A lot of music movies show a snippet, 15 seconds, you just get the sense of the song. I went into it saying no, we have to play out the entire song every single time that we can, because it’s such a fundamental part of who Kat Valdez is, and wanting to draw the audience in that way and really show full performances is something that I think sets this movie apart.

    MF: What do you hope people take away when they’re done watching this film?

    KC: One of the things that always struck me about the film is that we live in a society that is very fixated on being famous, and on getting lots of followers. I would say that there is an obsession with it that is probably a little bit unhealthy. There’s something about this film where we’re peeling back the curtain, and we’re saying you do pay a price for living in the spotlight the way that Kat Valdez does. It was very important to me that we ended the film on the simplest scene of them sitting on a couch in sweatpants, watching TV with their family.

    Originally in the script, it had ended on another big wedding. I really wanted to strip us away from big romantic gestures. Because the truth is life, in its simplicity, is something that we should and can be striving for. It doesn’t all have to be striving to be in the spotlight. So I hope that people walk away and feel like they had a little bit of an escape, but also that they can be happy with a simpler life.

    ‘Marry Me’ debuts in theaters and streaming on Peacock February 11, 2022.

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  • Female Directors: Iuli Gerbase

    Renata de Lélis in 'The Pink Cloud'
    Renata de Lélis in ‘The Pink Cloud’ – Prana Filmes

    Welcome to Female Directors, which features interviews with female directors and recommendations for films directed by women each week. This week, Iuli Gerbase talks about her feature film debut, ‘The Pink Cloud’ and recommends ‘Good Manners’ from fellow Brazilian director Juliana Rojas.

    Born in Brazil, writer-director Iuli Gerbase studied filmmaking and creative writing and started making films at just twenty years old. Her short films have been selected to play at festivals all over the world, including the Toronto International Film Festival and the Havana Film Festival. Her debut feature film ‘The Pink Cloud’ had its world premiere at the 2021 virtual edition of the Sundance Film Festival.

    Written years before the global pandemic put many of us in lockdown, Gerbase’s prescient sci-fi thriller ponders the effects of prolonged quarantine through the lens of two strangers forced to build a life together. Giovana and Yago meet and have what they think will be a one night stand, only to discover the next day a deadly pink cloud has appeared in the sky. It kills people within ten seconds, forcing the world’s population to stay indoors. We follow Giovana and Yago as they change after years in this unbearable situation.

    Despite being conceived in 2017, Gerbase’s psychologically incisive film takes on even deeper layers when viewed in a current semi-quarantined world. As ethereal as it is emotionally raw, ‘The Pink Cloud’ explores our deeply rooted need for interpersonal contact, the limits of internal strength, and what happiness and personal freedom really mean when societal expectations erode.

    ‘The Pink Cloud’ is in select theaters now and will debut on VOD March 1st, 2022.

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    Moviefone: You wrote this film way before the pandemic. Where did the inspiration originally come from and what you were trying to explore?

    Iuli Gerbase: My idea was showing the journey of this couple that had just met, and their idea was having just one night together. Then the next morning, this crazy, toxic pink cloud comes and they have to be in this forced marriage. We see their journey trying to get along, trying to get to know each other, and then dealing with the situation for years.

    I wanted to explore how they react differently to the cloud. How it affects Giovanna and what’s difficult for her, and how it affects Yago differently. I never thought we would have a similar pandemic a year after we filmed it.

    MF: Much of the film’s life has been after the pandemic started. What sort of themes do you think in the film have been heightened by the experiences we’re going through as a global community?

    IG: I’m happy to see many reviews, and also people commenting online, that they can see other layers in the film, because my fear was now it was going to be “The Pink Covid,” because everyone will just think about the pandemic. For me an important layer of the film that people are taking notice of is what the cloud represents to Giovana and the idea that the cloud is pink for a reason. Pink is the color that we as babies tend to wear; boys wear blue and girls wear pink.

    So the idea was that we had this pink cloud suffocating the wishes of Giovana. In the beginning she says, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with this man. I don’t want to have children.” And it’s like the cloud is making her little by little follow the steps that she said she didn’t want to do. It’s this thing suffocating her and it’s a beautiful pink, and it is seductive and it is attractive, but it’s not what she wants. When she starts doing things that she didn’t want to do, she starts suffering a lot.

    MF: As someone who quarantined alone, I related a lot to Giovana’s friend Sara, who was unfortunately completely alone when the cloud arrived. Obviously, you couldn’t imagine that was going to happen , but the way that you characterize that journey for her was really smart and incisive. How did you develop that character?

    IG: I had just started a TV series with many children over a month and when it ended, I went to my house where I lived by myself. For me going from being around forty children to nobody around, it’s a shock. In the film, Sara was a teacher who works with 90 kids per day, every day for years, and then being alone is a total shock. It’s very hard for her. That was our idea when we were talking about the background of Sara, and I love that scene, and I love Kaya Rodrigues who is the actress.

    That scene was in the first week. I think maybe on the second day. I was very emotional in that scene. I think it was so beautiful. And I thought, well, it’s very emotional on the second day of shooting, so I think this film will be good. It’s amazing to see you relate to Sara, and some people relate to Gioavan, and some people relate to Yago. A great part of doing a film is seeing what people can relate to.

    MF: Most of the movie is between Renata de Lélis as Giovana and Eduardo Mendonça as Yago. What were you looking for in casting these characters?

    IG: I knew I needed actors who would trust me, and would be very dedicated to the project, because it is a hard task because the film is 90% them. So both actors I knew before we cast the film. Eduardo was in my first short film ever, that I made when I was 19. Renata has worked with me before too. They were friends who had worked together in theater and movies. So we were always connected.

    We did rehearsals with the children, and we did rehearsals in the apartments. I knew that it was very important for them to be good, and they knew that the film depended a lot on them. They were very dedicated. I’m very proud of them. Also, I think I wrote the script thinking about them, so there is a little Eduardo in Yago and a little Renata in Giovana. They understood that as well during the shooting, like how they related to the situation, and how they related to the children. So it was an amazing process with them.

    (L-R) Gabriel Eringer and Renata de Lélis in 'The Pink Cloud.'
    (L-R) Gabriel Eringer and Renata de Lélis in ‘The Pink Cloud.’ – Prana Filmes

    MF: Most of the film takes place in a two-story apartment. How did you shoot this?

    IG: It was a real apartment, not a studio. I think that that helped the actors too. We shot over four weeks. The first week was the supporting actors and then three weeks with them in the apartment. When we were choosing the crew, it was like, okay, everyone has to be talented and professional, but also a nice person. Because I don’t want to be three weeks in an apartment with someone who’s in a bad mood all the time or, you know, angry or shouting.

    I wanted parts of them to be comfortable so that Yago could be okay with the situation and Giovana not okay. If they were in a small flat, I think they would kill themselves after one year. I needed an apartment that was comfortable and had space, even knowing that is not the reality for most Brazillians. We also discussed how much the apartment would change when Lino is born. There are drawings on the wall and some things are kind of falling apart. Not too much, but you have to think how they would adapt these apartments to children during all the years that go by.

    MF: Early in the film you hear about a character’s boyfriend who is trapped in a bakery, as well as other places where people were stuck. What were you thinking as the filmmaker about the world outside of this apartment, and how did you decide what parts of it would filter in?

    IG: For me, one of the main themes is isolation and how much you choose to be isolated. There is a fight where Giovana tells Yago that he doesn’t want to know about anything and he doesn’t care about what is happening outside the apartment. And he says she’s too paranoid and obsessed with reading the news. A big part for me was exploring how much do you choose to isolate yourself? The supporting characters give us some clues of what’s going on outside.

    We keep imagining how they are, but I think if we were with them all the time it would be even harder to watch than what happens with this couple. If you think about what is happening outside the apartment, it’s darker. So my idea was to create this universe with some clues of what’s going on outside, and if you really think about it, you think, “oh this is terrible.” But if you want, you can also not think about it. I tried to provoke viewers to think about how much they would care about what’s going outside the apartment.

    MF: The scene in the kitchen, where she can barely speak to her son because she knows his future is bleak, and Yago wants her to focus on now is really powerful. It makes you think about what we’re leaving the next generation, and how some people don’t think like that.

    IG: That scene can be related to having kids during this climate change situation, and also now the pandemic. I don’t have children yet. I think that I will, but I’m not 100% sure, and one of the things that makes me hesitant is climate change. If you’ve seen the news from Brazil now, the rains and the floods, it’s scary.

    There’s documentaries about how it’s getting worse. How do you bring a child in this situation? At the same time, many people still want to get pregnant. Some people are hopeful that it will get better and we will do what is necessary for us to survive. But it is difficult, and for me, I relate to Giovnna in that way of thinking, but aren’t things getting kind of crazy?

    MF: What do you hope people take away from the movie when they finish watching it?

    IG: When people ask me what is the message? I’m like, I’m not a priest. There is no message. But I do want people to take away things. I’m happy people are able to relate to it. I would like people to think about what is their notion of freedom and happiness, and that it’s not the same for everyone. Is there something that they’re doing because they feel that they have to?

    Maybe this person who watched the film is being pressured by something that they don’t need to be pressured by. Are they being as free as they can be and they want to be? I think it’s about that. It’s about what makes you happy and what makes you happy to be alive, and what rules are you following that maybe you don’t have to.

    MF: Is there a film directed by a woman that either inspired you to make movies or that you just really love and think people should see?

    IG: I would say ‘Good Manners (As Boas Maneiras)’ by Juliana Rojas. It is fantasy and it is crazy. I love it. I really respect her as a director.

    Brazilian filmmaker Juliana Rojas studied cinema at the School of Communication and Arts of University of São Paulo where she met co-director Marco Dutra. Discovering they both shared a love of horror and musicals, they began co-directing films together. Their short film ‘Lenço Branco’ was selected as part of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival’s Cinéfondation, which is a celebration of student films.

    Their next short film ‘Um Ramo’ was selected as part of the 2007’s Cannes Film Festival, playing during International Critics’ Week. Their first feature film ‘Hard Labor’ played as part of the Un Certain Regard section of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Rojas and Dutra won a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Festival for their 2017 fantasy film ‘Good Manners.’

    ‘Good Manners’ follows a woman named Clara (Isabél Zuaa) who takes a job as a housekeeper and nanny for a rich woman named Ana (Marjorie Estiano), As the film progresses Clara releases that there is a secret behind Ana’s pregnancy that will change her view of the world forever. Equally inspired by traditional horror tropes and local mythology, Rojas and Dutra craft a spellbinding fantasy world that also works as critique of modern Brazilian society.

    (L-R) Marjorie Estiano and Isabél Zuaa in 'Good Manners.'
    (L-R) Marjorie Estiano and Isabél Zuaa in ‘Good Manners.’
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  • Female Directors: Hannah Marks

    Hayley Law and Ben Rosenfield in ‘Mark, Mary + Some Other People’
    Hayley Law and Ben Rosenfield in ‘Mark, Mary + Some Other People’

    ‘Mark, Mary + Some Other People’ – written and directed by Hannah Marks

    Born in Los Angeles and raised in San Luis Obispo, Hannah Marks made her film and television debut in 2005. She was twice nominated for the Young Artist Award, the first was for her work in the 2006 film ‘Accepted’ and then for her work on the television series ‘FlashForward’. In 2017, Rolling Stone Magazine listed her as on their 25 Under 25 Artists Changing the World feature. Since 2016 she had directed or co-directed four short films and two feature films. Her most recent film ‘Mark, Mary + Some Other People’ debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.

    Starring Hayley Law and Ben Rosenfield, ‘Mark, Mary & Some Other People’ is a screwball romantic comedy about a young married couple who decide to try an open relationship. Equal as charming as it is insightful, the film explores the complicated interpersonal dynamics of romantic and sexual relationships. Shot around a pre-quarantine Los Angeles, Marks’ film is also a love letter to the unique diners, bars, and neighbors of LA and the Valley. An authentic look at twenty-something growing pains, ‘Mark, Mary + Some Other People’ marks a fresh new voice in the rom-com genre.

    ‘Mark, Mary + Some Other People’ is now available in select theaters and on demand.

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    Hannah Marks spoke to Moviefone about her latest movie.

    Moviefone: What led you to write a film about open relationships?

    Hannah Marks: I felt like it was being talked about a lot among my friends and my peers. It felt like such a missed opportunity to not have an open relationship rom-com, although I’m sure that there have been some in the past. I just felt like it was time to do it again.

    MF: Lea Thompson’s character plays a slightly older swinger. What kind of research did you do on the subject?

    Marks: Yeah, I talked to a lot of people and I read a ton of articles. The New York Times did a great series on it. So that was incredibly helpful. A lot of that inspired different scenes. The scene when Mark and Mary are taking each other’s dating profile pictures, was inspired by the research. For Lea’s character, I thought it was important to have different generations talk about how it used to be versus how it is today. By no means do I want to preach how I think it should go. I think you can do monogamy, polyamory, ethical non monogamy, and it’s all okay. This relationship to me is not the example of what it’s supposed to be; It’s just one relationship and one experience.

    MF: Did you always plan for Mark and Mary to be a younger married couple?

    Marks: I’m a big fan of stories of young marriages. The first project that I co-directed was also about a young marriage. I think it’s such an interesting topic, when you commit your life to someone when you still have so much life left to give. I think it’s a fascinating topic. But there was a time when I considered making it an older married couple, because that had made more sense in the traditional sense; an older couple wanting to liven things up. So that was an initial draft of it, but it very quickly changed to being more about people in my age group because I wanted to write it as accurately as I could.

    MF: How did you cast Hayley Law and Ben Rosenfield in the leads? Did you do a chemistry test?

    Marks: They’re terrific. We honestly winged it, which is not really my style, but we were moving really, really fast. I place a lot of trust in actors. I had seen both of their work and was a fan, so I offered them the roles, and we did it. They had no chemistry read or anything. So it was a big gamble, but it really paid off. They were so terrific and dedicated and willing to improvise, which not every actor is willing to do. That was really important to me. I had seen Ben Rosenfield in ‘Boardwalk Empire’ and in ‘Six Years’ and I thought he was so versatile and special. Hayley Law had been in a friend’s movie called ‘Spontaneous’ and she was so good. I thought she stole every scene she was in. So it was just kind of a gut thing.

    MF: Did you have the cast watch any specific films to get the screwball comedy vibe?

    Marks: I’m a big fan of mumble core, so we talked about the Lena Dunham ‘Tiny Furniture’ way of working and early Noah Baumbach and Joe Swanberg. Those types of filmmakers. But really it was like let’s have fun with this and figure out where it can go and bring yourself to it. That was a big thing for me. I cast them because I found something about their personalities really compelling. So I wanted everyone to bring their own weird flavor to it.

    MF: Could you talk about the location shooting in Los Angeles?

    Marks: The locations were really difficult to get because we’re in Los Angeles on a shoestring budget. We didn’t have a location manager, so my producer and I were the location managers. There was a lot of begging, but I think we got really lucky. We got some wonderful spots that are unfortunately no longer around since the pandemic, so I’m glad they’re immortalized. There’s this place called Crawford’s which was a pretty iconic bar in the Valley and it’s now since closed. So I’m really glad we were there. We shot at this diner in Van Nuys called Hearts, which I just love the look of that place. I have such a soft spot in my heart for Valley diners. The apartments and the houses were in the Echo Park and Silverlake area. So we got a real mix. It was a real blast, but definitely hard when you don’t have the money to pay for LA locations.

    MF: How did Patrick Stump come on board as composer?

    Marks: There’s a company called Crush Music that also has a brand called Crush Films. They are new to making indies, but they’re really terrific producers. They manage different musical artists, Patrick being one of them. So when I talked with them about making this movie, they said you should meet Patrick. I was thrilled because obviously I knew his work, and he’s so easy to get along with and collaborative. He actually wrote one of the band’s songs, The first one was Courtney Love, but the second one was Patrick Stump. He also helped teach them and coached them. He was just a delight. I can’t believe I got so lucky.

    MF: Did you have kind of a specific vibe you were going for with the music?

    Marks: Yeah, the inspiration was definitely Kathleen Hanna / riot grrrl life. I love you the earlier Courtney Love sound, like that song “Miss Narcissist” was a big inspiration. It fit a lot of the themes that were being discussed in the movie. So I kinda knew that would be the first song if we could get it. And thankfully, she was a Crush Music artist, so that worked out. Then I asked Patrick to go for some Bikini Kill vibes.

    MF: I loved all the different band names. How did you come up with those names?

    Marks: We had so many unused names, I wish they could all make it in. When I first met with Hayley to talk about her playing Mary, the first thing she said to me was she was also obsessed with band names. She had a list on her phone of all these band names, then I showed her my list. We were comparing notes, so that really bonded us right away.

    MF: How you hope audiences sort of feel when the film ends?

    Marks: I hope that they take that this is not everyone’s experience. I really do want it to feel like just the experience of this couple and these characters, and not preaching to whether monogamy is the right thing, or polyamory is the right thing or ethical non monogamy. I think it’s to each their own and I hope that that’s recognized. I hope people see it as a fun character study and something that feels real and maybe close to their own experiences. But really, I just want it to be a good time. Even though it’s silly, I want it to feel authentic to people.

    MF: Could you recommend another film directed by a woman that readers should seek out?

    Marks: I love Andrea Arnold and Marielle Heller and Ava DuVernay. Those are the first women that come to mind. Also, Greta Gerwig and Hannah Fidell. There’s so many terrific women making movies. I was actually really lucky when I did the Sundance lab back in 2012 that two of the filmmakers there were Chloé Zhao and Marielle Heller. It’s been very cool to watch their careers rise since then.

    MF: Do you have a favorite Marielle Hiller film?

    Marks: I think all of her movies have been great. ‘Diary Of A Teenage Girl’ is such a good movie, just really, really wonderful. I think she just innately understands story and understands characters. She started as an actress, which I also really appreciate. A lot of the directors I love started as actresses, because I come from an acting background. So I think she has a really great understanding of story and dialogue and character that you don’t always get. She was also terrific on ‘Queen’s Gambit,’ so I think she’s got that unique perspective of someone that can live it.

    Marielle Heller (center) on the set of 'Diary of a Teenage Girl'
    Marielle Heller (center) on the set of ‘Diary of a Teenage Girl’

    ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ – written and directed by Marielle Heller

    Born and raised in the Bay Area, Marielle Heller began acting at a young age performing in the Alameda Children’s Musical Theater, as well as local community theater productions. After studying theatre at UCLA and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Heller worked at the Magic Theatre, the American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and the La Jolla Playhouse. While living in New York City, her sister gave her a copy of Phoebe Gloeckner’s 2002 graphic novel ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures’. After convincing Gloeckner to option her the rights, Heller made her directing debut with her adaptation. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. Her follow-up film ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ about the literary forger Lee Israel received three Oscar nominations, including for its actors Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. Tom Hanks received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Fred Rogers in her third film, ‘A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood’.

    Starring Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgård, and Bel Powley, ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’ follows 15-year-old aspiring cartoonist Minnie (Powley) as she comes of age in 1976 San Francisco. Living with her free-spirited mom (Wiig) and her younger sister, Minnie begins exploring her budding sexuality, including having an affair with her mother’s older boyfriend (Skarsgård). Notable for its frank, non-judgemental presentation of Minnie as she navigates her sexual coming of age, Heller’s film came at a watershed moment for women directors and films about teenage girls.

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  • Female Directors: Jules Williamson

    ‘Off the Rails’ – directed by Jules Williamson

    Kelly Preston, Jenny Seagrove, Sally Phillips, and Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips in 'Off the Rails'
    Kelly Preston, Jenny Seagrove, Sally Phillips, and Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips in ‘Off the Rails’

    British filmmaker Jules Williamson began working in film as a runner and cites producer David Puttnam (‘The Duellists’, ‘Chariots of Fire’, ‘Local Hero’) as a major influence on her work in both narrative and documentary. Her first short film, 2002’s ‘Tattoo’ was nominated for Best Shot Film at the BAFTAs, and she has since worked mainly in British television. ‘Off the Rails’ is her feature film directorial debut. Inspired by events in her only life, ‘Off the Rails’ is an ensemble comedy about three friends in their 50s who are reunited by the death of a fourth. As soap star Cassie (​​Kelly Preston), journalist Kate (Jenny Seagrove), and doctor Liz (Sally Phillips) have gotten older, and their lives have gotten busier, they’ve put their once close friendships on the back burner. After their friend Anna’s funeral, the three are joined by her daughter Maddie (Elizabeth Dormer-Phillips) on a quest to re-create their trip from twenty years earlier. Although things go a bit awry, they begin to patch up old wounds and find strength in each other as they move towards new beginnings. Set to an all-Blondie soundtrack, ‘Off the Rails’ is a perfect blend of comedy, romance, and fabulous European vistas.

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    Director Jules Williamson spoke to Moviefone about her feature directorial debut.

    Moviefone: How did you first come up with the idea for ‘Off The Rails’?

    Jules Williamson: I originated the idea nearly 19 years ago. It’s based on my own life. The reason that I was drawn to the idea was because I thought it would resonate with many women. I had the idea just after I’d made my first short film. It was nominated for a BAFTA, it was in the Palm Springs Film Festival. I had used the Interrail when I was 19 with my three best friends, and we promised each other we would do the trip again. Then, as I was making the short film, I was in my mid 30s and thinking about what I wanted to do as a feature. It struck me that we probably weren’t going to go interrailing when we were 40 because we were all busy doing other things. We wouldn’t be able to take a month off, let alone a week. So I wondered where would those women be in their lives? The characters are not my real friends; they’re made up. But what would happen if four friends didn’t mean up when they meant to, but then they were forced to? And how would they deal with that? Would it be a good thing? Would it be a bad thing? So I like very much the idea of friendship being an empowering force, so I wanted that to be the thing that kind of propelled them into the next stage of their lives. So while revisiting the physical journey, they also revisit their friendship and by the end of it, they would be ready for a new beginning. Now I’m older, I see that women in their 50s have this very interesting period of their lives where there is this new stage, new beginning open to them. Often they don’t quite know where they’re going to go with that, because society is quite hard on that age group. So it was very important to me that there was a sense at the end of a very positive outcome.

    MF: Do you think because you waited so much longer to make the film that you were able to sort of tap into things that aren’t necessarily shown in most movies?

    Williamson: Definitely. When I was in my mid 30s, I had no idea about menopause. I thought your 40s were when you were middle-aged, but the thing is, society has moved on so fast. Thank God. So now 60s is the new 50s and all that sort of thing. So I think being in your 50s is a really interesting time. Now that I’m in my 50s, I could tap into all of that. I was really keen to talk about menopause in it. ‘Off The Rails’ is a comedy-drama, or in some ways, I would actually say it’s more of a drama-comedy, but I wanted to see women talking about the menopause. I hadn’t seen that. I’ve seen it on TV in a brilliant, brilliant series called ‘Fleabag,’ but I haven’t seen it on film. Sally Phillips and I basically made up that scene. We had discussed it beforehand because Sally hadn’t reached menopause yet, so she hadn’t quite caught on to all the aspects of it. I spent a lot of time telling her about it, which of course she loved. I say very wryly that she loved it because she was a bit horrified. We did have a laugh about it all. I personally feel that age brings all sorts of positive aspects to professions. Certainly with filmmaking. I have enough experience to not be fazed by making a feature film. I did wait a long time, but it was the right time.

    MF: Could you talk about the casting process for your lead roles?

    Williamson: We obviously always knew we wanted women of around that age, so that was fairly straightforward. There are a lot of actresses of that age group, but there aren’t that many roles. The industry is changing, but the fact that it’s taken so long to make female centered films, and there are still so few films that I’m aware of about women in their 50s. It tends to be the ‘Bridesmaids’ age group, or it tends to be the kind of 70s age group, but that midlife is represented. So casting them wasn’t really that difficult, because the actresses were there. What I love about the casting is that they’re all so different. And in real life, all the women were so different. But they were perfect. They just absolutely fitted the bill for each individual woman. They became very, very close while filming. There was this wonderful connection between them. My style of directing helps everybody connect, and I was very keen to kind of allow them to feel that they were those characters and give them room to play, and to own them and to find those moments where they were just being the characters rather than just saying the lines. We did quite a bit of improvising and I think that really helps. They loved it because we had a lot of fun.

    MF: Were the locations you filmed the same places from your actual trip when you were younger?

    Williamson: Over the years, I have come up with many different journeys. I did a lot of research into how we could basically make the journey come off the rails, which obviously makes them in the story, the characters come off the rails. So I had all sorts of journeys, and one where they went to Sarajevo. In this instance, we knew that we wanted to cover those countries in particular – Paris and Italy. We weren’t 100% sure what we were going to end up, but I know Mallorca very well, from having spent holidays there as a child, and then I returned to Mallorca as an adult. One of the producers mentioned the Light of God festival. So we thought, why don’t we make that the ending? So that’s how we came to focus on Palma as the final destination point. So we shot that all in Mallorca, but we also went to Barcelona, where we caught the mainline train. We had different trains. We had a little wooden train in Mallorca, which was supposed to be the Italian train. We had the Main Line train in Spain, which we used for the train from Paris. Then we used a station in Barcelona as Paris, and Kings Cross Station in London, as the security in Paris. The Eurostar stood in for itself. So we shot in Mallorca, Spain, London and Paris, and then we had a day in Surrey, where we filmed the opening church scene. We had 38 locations in 26 days across four countries.

    MF: How did the music of Blondie become part of the film?

    Williamson: The film is very much influenced by ‘The Big Chill’, which is one of my favorite films, which has an iconic soundtrack. I love music. It’s a big part of my sort of creative vision. So when I met Bill Kenwright, the producer – there are two producers Arabella Page Croft, who I originated the story with – and Bill. Bill immediately picked up on ‘The Big Chill’, because he also loves it. I had talked about Blondie in the story because I love Debbie Harry. She’s just, she’s so cool. So when we were talking, just before we started filming, Bill came up with the idea of having a full-blown Blondie soundtrack. He worked tirelessly to get us that music. I think it’s great because the songs really resonate.

    MF: How do you hope people will feel when the film is over?

    Williamson: It’s a film about grief partly, but it’s also a film about hope. Given the last year and a half coming up to two years that the world has had, I feel that it’s incredibly timely. And so that’s, that’s the first thing. The second thing is the power of friendship. Women have got this extraordinary connection to each other, which enables them to do extraordinary things. And I think the third thing is that as we’ve been talking about women in the 50s, it’s a tricky time, and often they’ve felt like society has forgotten about them. So what I love about the ending, which was always my intention, was that women feel like anything is possible. That new beginnings are possible. They can start again, or they don’t have to start again, whatever they want to do. So, really, my most important message is when I suppose or have hope and empowerment.

    MF: Could you recommend another film directed by a woman you think readers should see out?

    Williamson: A filmmaker that I absolutely love is Jane Campion. I’m a massive Jane Campion fan. I really love what she does. A lot of films are very serious, but she also is able to bring some kind of humor into those characters as well. I’m thinking specifically about the series she did, ‘Top of the Lake,’ which I absolutely adored. Particularly the second season. Yeah, I just love her filmmaking. I love how absolutely I am engrossed by her work.

    ‘Top of the Lake’ and ‘Top of the Lake: China Girl’

    Thomas M. Wright and Elisabeth Moss in 'Top of the Lake'
    Thomas M. Wright and Elisabeth Moss in ‘Top of the Lake’

    With this year’s ‘The Power of the Dog’ catapulting Jane Campion back into the spotlight with awards season hype, now is a great time to revisit deeper cuts in her triumphant filmography. Reuniting with Gerard Lee, who co-wrote her debut feature film ‘Sweetie’, Campion’s foray into television was as enigmatic as you’d expect. She shared directing credits on the mystery drama with Garth Davis (‘Lion’) and Ariel Kleiman (‘Yellowjackets’). Starring Elisabeth Moss, the first season follows Detective Robin Griffin (Moss) as she investigates the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl in New Zealand. Holly Hunter also stars as a mysterious spiritual leader. In season two, Detective Griffin returns to Sydney, Australia to investigate the death of an unidentified Asian girl found at the popular suburb Bondi Beach. Like her films, Campion explores themes of physical and emotional abuse, and specifically how toxic masculinity can have deadly effects on women in vulnerable communities.

  • Female Directors: Lauren Hardaway

    ‘The Novice’ – written and directed by Lauren Hadaway

    Isabelle Fuhrman in 'The Novice,' written and directed by Lauren Hadaway.
    Isabelle Fuhrman in ‘The Novice,’ written and directed by Lauren Hadaway.

    Filmmaker Lauren Hadaway graduated Summa Cum Laude with a double major in Business and Film from Southern Methodist University, where she was a competitive rower. She briefly worked as a Dallas-based reality TV editor before moving to Los Angeles in 2012. She has worked for over a decade in post-production sound, with credits that include ‘Whiplash,’ ‘Selma,’ ‘The Hateful Eight,’ and ‘The Army of the Dead’. In 2018, she was an Outfest Screenwriting Lab Fellow. ‘The Novice’ is her feature film debut as both a writer and director.

    Inspired by her experience as a college athlete, ‘The Novice’ follows freshman Alex Dall (Isabelle Fuhrman) as she becomes increasingly obsessed with competitive rowing. Shot like a thriller, this drama follows Alex as she falls in love with the sport, but also allows her competitive drive to overtake every aspect of her life. We see the toll it takes on her body, her mind, and even her relationships with those around her. Featuring a fearless performance from Fuhrman, the film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Best U.S. Narrative Feature Film prize. It was also recently nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Supporting Female (Amy Forsyth), and Best Female Lead (Isabelle Fuhrman).

    ‘The Novice’ is available in theaters and on demand now.

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    Lauren Hadaway spoke to Moviefone about her new film.

    Moviefone: ‘The Novice’ is inspired by your own life as a rower. Did you learn anything about yourself in the process of crafting this film and reflecting on what you were like in college?

    Lauren Hadaway: With this film, I took my four years of experience and compressed it down into a year. When I was getting ready to make the film I asked some of my teammates, one in particular who I’m still in touch with who I based the character of Erin on. I asked what everyone thought about me back then? Because when you’re in it, when you’re in the trenches, when you’re going through something day by day, it feels totally normal to you. You just assume everyone else is thinking like you and acting like you, going through the same things you’re going through. I asked her, and she’s like everyone thought you were fucking psychotic. I was like, oh, okay. I had no idea. So that was interesting. Having done four years of that, in the last semester of my senior year especially, I was just so exhausted because it was four years of waking up six days a week at 5am to practice. We were practicing 20 hours a week. On top of that, I was double majoring. I was taking like 18 hours of classes. I was interning and/or had a part-time job every semester and summer. I was super into the film club. Volunteering. I was in other clubs. I was just extremely overextended and just utterly exhausted. That last semester especially really felt like a test in survival, quite frankly. I would wake up in tears, I was so fucking exhausted. I learned how to have 30-second power naps in the boat when it wasn’t my turn to row. I was just trying to get to the end of it.

    When I came back to writing this script, it was cathartic. Like processing those fears in a way that I hadn’t really done. Looking back, I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. I could never do it again. But it was, as they say, character building. Even trying to create the film visually and sonically, I was trying to capture very much a love/hate relationship with sport. But also trying to capture the beauty of what I felt at the time. I have seen more sunrises already than most people have seen in a lifetime. And that’s a beautiful thing. I don’t feel the desire to see a lot more, but I wanted to capture that and I wanted to capture the pain and the intensity. Now, thinking back, I don’t even know how I did it. Like the amount of pain going through the daily workout. The thought of like doing that now I just, I can’t even, I can’t even fucking mention it.

    MF: How did you work with your cinematographer to bring to life the psychology of Alex?

    Hadaway: I made a pretty extensive look book going into this. I think that was actually what got people paying attention more than the script. In a lot of look books people just put up photos, but I really tried to capture the feral-ness of what I was doing, scrawling like a crazy person by handwriting things and doing a lot of stuff with it. So I had that going into these meetings. Todd Martin, the DP, this is actually his first film as well. As a producer I had worked with him and all his stuff was beautiful. They had this look to it. I looked at a lot of cinematographers and kept coming back to his stuff. We just connected. I don’t have a lot of experience working with different cinematographers, but for whatever reason he and I were just on the same wavelength. He directed the photography very much so, and it was a lot of the process of discovery. I think that’s the beauty of filmmaking: you have to be open to surprises and be willing to go with the flow. We were doing a makeup test with Isabelle Fuhrman at one point before shooting, and she leaned into the camera, this lens that we were trying out, and we noticed that the background of the lens like got all fucked up and kind of like doubled. The lens was actually broken, but Todd and I were like holy fuck like this is a really cool thing. That became our special lens for Alex for when she’s going into a certain headspace. Things like that.

    The first week we shot was Water Week, and that was a clusterfuck. We would sit down every morning and go through shot by shot and figure out exactly what we needed. Because shooting film is so limiting, but being on the water was a nightmare. We shot the final race over three days, and really had to know exactly what we needed to tell the story. The geography of where everyone is and who’s looking where. We got exactly one take on most things, and we didn’t have time to second guess if we got it or not. Editing that scene together was [sighs], but that was the one scene where I didn’t know if we got everything we needed. But we scraped by, and we were able to tell the story of that final race because Todd and I really sat down and worked through exactly what we needed. We had to trust ourselves going through chaos. Iit was just utter chaos, but we had done the prep work.

    MF: The score is incredible. How did you come to work with Alex Weston?

    Hadaway: That was an 11th hour kind of discovery. The score for the film was the one thing that I wasn’t sure about. I knew what the 1960s love songs were. A lot of them were written into the script. I spent a lot of time editing the film, and by the nature of that I was trying out different temp scores. I probably tried three or four different versions of re-temp scoring the whole film, which is a shit ton of work and nothing ever felt right. It was always kind of dark or too droning or on the nose, or, I don’t know. Last year I was learning French as a pandemic hobby and was only allowing myself to watch French films and series and only listen to French music. At this point, it had been like six months, and I was so fucking tired of listening to French that I put on this playlist of random movie soundtracks and this track from ‘The Farewell’ came up – Lulu Wang’s film is nothing like ‘The Novice’. Not even remotely. But I was on one of my pandemic aimless drives and a track from that score came up and suddenly everything clicked in my head. I turned around, drove home and re-temp scored the entire film with a lot of Alex’s tracks and some similar sounding stuff. I even cut like seven minutes out of the film. Then I sent Alex an impassioned email, saying you’ve got to come on board, you’re my 11th hour inspiration. Working with him was during quarantine. He was in New York, and I was in LA, and we would be sending stuff back and forth, working on the roadmap I had put down. He was brilliant, and I would work with him kind of forever.

    MF: You mentioned the 60s love songs were always part of the script. Where did the inspiration to use those songs that way come from?

    Hadaway: That was the same thing as with the Alex Weston track. The inspiration came out of nowhere. The same thing with the 27 millimeter lens. These things come seemingly out of the sky. A song popped up on a Spotify playlist, probably a couple of months after writing the first draft of the script. It was Brenda Lee’s ‘Someday (You’ll Want Me To Want You) or ‘Al Di La’ by Connie Francis, and I just had this image. It was the foggy row. I heard the song ‘Al Di La’ on Spotify randomly somehow, I don’t know how, and I had this image of basically what we shot on the first day of shooting. It was fucking brilliant. We shot exactly as I had it in my head. It went completely perfectly. That scene was in my head that way. That was the foundation, I asked the producers what they thought about using the song that way, and they were totally down. It became the kernel and I built from there.

    The thing about making a film about rowing is I don’t think rowing is actually that cinematic. It’s beautiful in the sense that it’s graceful, but people watch rowing and even though I’m telling you people are about to fucking die in that boat, it looks so peaceful and serene. So the challenge for me became, how do I make the entire film about rowing? David Fincher did a brilliant scene, but that’s one scene. How do you do a whole film? How do you make an audience who 99% of them never rowed or know anything about sport, how do you make them know what it feels like to actually be doing it? So instead of being very literal with it, I really tried to frame the film as a love story. There’s the love B story in it, sure, between Alex and Dani, but the real love story of the film is between Alex and the sport, so I framed it loosely like that. You have first attraction and the clunky beginnings, the first time making love – which is the ‘Someday (You’ll Want Me To Want You) at 500 frames a second. We shot that kind of like a 1990s sex scene. Then the falling in love, which is the foggy row where everything’s blissful. Then slow toxic descent as the relationship crumbles. When you frame it like that, as a relationship, the songs start making more sense. I love subverting them. As the film goes on, really using sound design and fucking up the music and twisting it and pitch shifting it and making it all warbly and muffled and different things. It becomes a story element that you can keep building on and subverts what you’re used to seeing, and then it’s not your average inspirational sports score, you know?

    MF: What were you looking for in an actress to capture the feeling you wanted of falling in love with the sport?

    Hadaway: My background is in post sound. I did a lot of dialogue ADR, so I’ve worked with actors in that regard, but I haven’t done the casting experience before. I took a piece of advice to heart that I heard one time from David Fincher at a Q&A for ‘Gone Girl’. When he casts, he really tries to think of who the actor is as a human being. Because at the end of a 12-hour day, Ben Affleck isn’t this character in this movie, he’s fucking Ben Affleck. He’s tired. So when I was casting, with Isabelle Fuhrman, Amy Forsyth, and Dilone, I was looking at who the actor is really. So the auditions would come in, and I would find whoever does the scene brilliantly, but then I would sort of sleuth and try to figure out what the person was really like. Look at their social media, look at interviews, videos, and different things with them and try to get a sense of who they were.

    With Isabelle in particular, her audition was brilliant. She also did an extra scene. She had props in her audition tapes, and sweat and makeup and everything. Then she wrote this letter about how she ran a relay race to Las Vegas with her friends. It was just very kind of over-eager. She was joking yesterday about how she could have written a better letter, and I’m like it wasn’t what she was writing, it was that she wrote the letter. It wasn’t the content so much as the fact that she did it. Then meeting her in real life, she had a binder and had the look book printed out, the script printed out with all these little tabs and things, and notebooks. She just had this very neurotic, ambitious energy about her, and I thought that those kinds of things were necessary for the character of Alex. Even though Isabelle is very bubbly and full of life and not jaded and destroyed yet like I am, she had something in her. I could sense the energy she had.

    We knew from the beginning there would be no doubles, so whoever got the part, they were going to be doing the rowing and everything. This is not a sport you can pick up in an afternoon. This is an intensive thing and I needed someone who seemed resilient and physically strong and mentally resilient. Isabelle stepped into that and did six weeks of training, doing a shit ton of training right up to the shooting. Then even when we’re shooting the first week Water Week, and they’re out there on the water eight out of the 12 hours of shooting, she would go to the rowing tank before shooting and go to the gym after and even do more on top of that. Fincher’s advice totally worked out.

    MF: Alex’s direct eye contact with the camera at the end of the film is very stirring. What do you hope the audience feels at that moment?

    Hadaway: This is sort of my version of ‘The Graduate’ ending in the sense that at the end of ‘The Graduate,’ when he gets the girl, and then he’s on that bus, and it’s all happy, and then there’s this realization of now the rest of your life is in front of you. Now what? This film is my existentialist anthem in the sense that nihilism, very crudely put, is this idea that life has no meaning period, and existentialism is that idea that life has no meaning, you choose the meaning. That is both liberating and fucking terrifying, depending on how you look at it. I think for Alex, how she finds purpose in life and meaning is through challenges. So she’s gone through this whole thing and done this thing that no one can comprehend why she’s doing it, but it’s giving her purpose meaning, and she gets to the end, and she’s hit this point of satisfaction. I think anyone in our industry, especially as writer, director, creative, whatever, you get to the point you’ve done the thing, and you have that moment of like, I’ve done it, but then what? What’s next? For her, it’s that constant searching. I’ve always thought that half the people watching this will see all that she did and think no fucking way, not for me, not my thing. And the other half of people are gonna feel kind of fired up and want to go out and conquer the world. I think either of those are valid, quite frankly. But for me, it’s really about how you find your meaning in life. Where do you find your purpose? Where do you put your energy and your time? For Alex, she’s going to be on her next journey, figuring out the next thing.

    MF: Could you suggest a film directed by a woman that readers should seek out?

    Hadaway: I would say ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’. That film inspired me to learn French and obsess over French, which led to me finding Alex West as a composer, and moving to France. I’m not a subtle filmmaker, but she’s very subtle. But also, at the same time, there’s this intention in that film. Particularly there are things that are very not subtle for a film that’s very quiet and very slow, there are moments in it that I think are really beautiful. It feels like a two and a half hour joke, like leading up to the last 15 minutes, which are utterly beautiful. The payoff in that is incredible.

    ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ – written and directed by Céline Sciamma

    Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire,' written and directed by Céline Sciamma.
    Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire,’ written and directed by Céline Sciamma.

    Céline Sciamma’s fourth feature film ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, where it won the Queer Palm and Sciamma took home the Best Screenplay award. A powerful voice in French cinema, Sciamma’s films center on gender and sexual fluidity of girls and women. In this love story set in the late 18th century, Noémie Merlant plays Marianne, a painter commissioned to paint the portrait of the strong-willed Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) as a gift to her fiancé in Italy. Defying expectations of gender at the time, the two fall madly in love, yet most learn to live with just the embers of their love to keep them warm later in life. Visually stunning, cinematographer Claire Mathon (‘Spencer’) won the César Award for her work on the film. In 2020, ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ was added to the Criterion Collection. Reteaming with Mathon, Sciamma’s most recent film ‘Petite Maman’ debuted earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival and has been lauded by many critics groups as one of the best films of the year.

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  • Director Valerie Weiss on her Netflix movie ‘Mixtape’

    Gemma Brooke Allen and Julie Bowen in 'Mixtape'
    Gemma Brooke Allen and Julie Bowen in ‘Mixtape’

    ‘Mixtape’ – directed by Valerie Weiss

    Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Valerie Weiss took a long and winding road to filmmaking. She majored in molecular biology at Princeton University, where she also earned a certificate in theater and dance. She then earned a master’s degree in medical sciences from Harvard Medical School, and she earned a Ph.D. in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology from Harvard University. While at Harvard, she founded the Dudley House Film Program where she was the filmmaker-in-residence and festival director. Later, she attended the Catalyst Workshop at the American Film Institute, which aims to help scientists bring their work into the movies. While further attending AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, she made a short film called Transgressions. She met her husband when the two were cast members of a production of ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ while at Princeton University. Together they have founded the production company PhD Productions. Since she began making films in 2003, Weiss has directed a few dozen shorts, television episodes, and feature films.

    Stacey Menear’s script for ‘Mixtape’ won the American Zoetrope screenwriting contest, and it appeared on the Black List in 2009. After a few false starts, the project landed at Netflix, where Alice Wu (‘The Half of It’) polished the script and Weiss came on board to direct. Set in 1999, a few weeks before New Year’s Eve aka Y2K, tween Beverly Moody (Gemma Brooke Allen) lives with her grandmother Gail (Julie Bowen), often begging her for stories about her parents who died when she was a baby. Bev is heading into her teen years and since both Gail and her daughter were teen moms, she’s not having the best time parenting at the moment. When Bev finds a mixtape her parents made in the 80s, she sets out to find each song and listen in order. While on this journey, she makes friends with her new neighbor Ellen (Audrey Hsieh), the coolest girl in school Nicky (Olga Petsa), and a slacker record store owner named Anti (Nick Thune). Featuring a killer soundtrack with deepcut 80s tunes, nostalgic 90s tracks, and a few original tunes, ‘Mixtape’ serves as a lovely reminder of the power of music to connect us both to the past, but also to the present.

    ‘Mixtape’ is now streaming on Netflix.

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    Valerie Weiss talked to Moviefone about her new film.

    Moviefone: How did you first get involved with this project?

    Valerie Weiss: I think it was probably about two years ago when I first got the script from producers Gil Netter and Jennie Lee. I read the script and just instantly fell in love with it. I always look for, and what I like to describe my work as daringly light. Something that has gravitas to it and is about something real, but it’s done in the most delightful, light, fun, funny way. I always say it’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. I mean, I stole that from Mary Poppins, but that’s exactly the kind of work I like to do. This is a movie about grief and loneliness, and trying to find human connections when you’re living sort of in a little bit of a soup of sadness or loss. Really anything that helps people learn how to forge those connections, when they can’t figure out how to do it on their own, is something that really attracts me.

    MF: Could you talk a bit about casting the three main girls?

    Weiss: It was such a fun experience. We had a great casting director, Barbara McCarthy, and Alice Merlin is her casting associate. We saw so many girls for these roles. For me, it’s so important to have excellent acting in anything I do. I feel like acting is something anybody on Earth can judge, and if that’s not working, if we don’t believe the performance, it’s very hard to get lost in a movie or television show and have the actual buy-in so that you can really be as emotionally affected as I want my audiences to be. So we did a really big search for girls who were captivating and authentic. We were so lucky to find these three young women. For Audrey Hsieh who plays Ellen, we saw her audition, and it was unanimous among our group immediately. We felt like it would be impossible to top her. I think this is the first thing Olga Petsa, who plays Nicky, has ever done. She had auditioned for us six months before we had to shut down during the pandemic. We saw her, and I don’t know if she even got a call back. Something happened in those six months where she grew up or just became, you know, more of the character or developed her craft. But instantly seeing her the second time, we were drawn to her. Gemma Brooke Allen, who plays Beverly Moody, was terrific from the first time I saw her. What really clinched it for her was when I actually got to work with her and do chemistry reads. I felt like she was so responsive to directions. Even her mom said she saw her do things with me, she hadn’t seen her do before in auditions. It felt like we had such a strong connection that lasted all through production. She was such a wonderful partner in making this movie.

    MF: Could talk a bit about the songs that appear both on the mixtape, and also you chose to set the mood for 1999?

    Weiss: The music is obviously such a huge part of this. So many of the songs were scripted like “Teacher’s Pet” by The Quick, “Getting Nowhere Fast” by Girls At Our Best!, and “Linda, Linda” by The Blue Hearts. I think we had to swipe out a handful, but not that many. “The Wrong Song” was an original song that Amy Wadge wrote for the movie, and it’s just perfect. It really tells Beverly’s story arc. How when you feel like you’re a mistake, or unwanted, or you’re not finding the connection you want you find out, but really you were actually everything somebody wanted. It was such a beautiful part of the process to have that song be an original song for the film.
    We also had a couple other songs written for us by Joel P West. He wrote both of the songs that Wes Kelly (Jackson Rathbone) sings in the club. It was a really fun experience to think about the script and say, what does the song need to do? Like, what storytelling place does it need to function as a part of and then have them write something up and then communicate directly with an artist and give notes. That experience to be able to like direct singer-songwriters was incredible.

    And then the rest of the music, we had such a palette. It was really important for us to have the movie be cool. That it wasn’t something that thought it catered to little girls, but was just inherently cool music that didn’t talk down to anybody or underestimate the maturity of an audience. We had a great music supervisor and the whole music team at Netflix. Our producer, Gil Netter, has probably like 50,000 records in his home. So it’s just this long process of being unbelievably picky. It was fun because the tape had to be from a certain era, because when the parents were alive, they had to be from like 1986 or before. But what was great with the rest of the soundcheck, we knew it all had to be before 99, but it allowed us to play in various time periods and really get that 90s nostalgia going

    MF: I really liked the line, “A mixtape is a message from the maker to the listener.” Do you think Spotify playlists have the same power as classic mixtapes?

    Weiss: I think the power is inherent in any kind of mix and that they are relevant always, because people are always looking for messages and clues and a deeper understanding, and connection. I think this movie is such a great opportunity to let a younger generation know that playlists are a way to communicate. Everybody now puts everything on shuffle, but I think even in a playlist you can create an order and have to stick to it. I think this is going to open a lot of people’s eyes, and we’re going to see a new birth of digital mixed tapes.

    MF: Can you talk a bit about setting the film around Y2K?

    Weiss: Y2K was such an important symbolic event for the movie and for Gail (Julie Bowen) because losing a child is one of the most horrible experiences a human can go through. So for Gail it was so unpredictable and out of nowhere, then Y2K was an opportunity to try to find a way to control the uncontrollable for her. It let her say this is not going to happen again to me. I’m going to be prepared. I’m going to get batteries. I’m going to listen to the news. I’m going to hoard Spam. This horrible thing had happened once, and it’s not going to happen again. It also shows the direct correlation to how she’s raising Beverly, which is mostly meeting her basic needs. You’ve got clothes, she’s fed, she’s driven to school, she makes sure she does her homework. She does the laundry and looks at her lovingly in bed at night. But what Beverly really needs and what Gail’s unable to do until the end, is really see her, hear her, see the light in her.

    I have two daughters, one is ten and one is thirteen, and this is exactly when they really need a mother or a parent figure – somebody who gets them and knows what it’s like to be this age and need friends and be insecure about whether you have friends. Someone who you feel safe to talk to. Gail is just so busy, Bev doesn’t want to burden her. It’s the idea of whether you can actually fix something that seems too big; it’s like, how do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite. Once you start making the small steps to fix the problem or make that connection, suddenly, it’s not so overwhelming. I feel like Y2K is a big symbol for that. Then at the end, the release of the fireworks and party and celebration and Gail dancing with Beverly really shows that she’s learned something, and has experienced this much needed catharsis that finally healed her.

    MF: Could you recommend another film directed by a woman that readers should seek out?

    Weiss: The one that popped into my head is, it’s pretty obscure. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but I love it. It’s a movie called ‘Italian for Beginners’ by Lone Scherfig. It’s a movie about loneliness and connection. It’s funny and quirky, but grounded and about real humans that weren’t fancy. They weren’t exceptional in any way. They were just people in an Italian class who wanted to change their lives. But in trying to do it in a small way, they really had a huge impact on each other. So I just loved the intimacy of it and the lack of pretension. It clearly resonated with me because it’s what popped in my mind when you’re asked that question, and I haven’t seen it in 20 years.

    ‘Italian For Beginners’ – written and directed by Lone Scherfig

    Anders W. Berthelsen, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, and Anette Støvelbæk in 'Italian for Beginners'
    Anders W. Berthelsen, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, and Anette Støvelbæk in ‘Italian for Beginners’

    Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig worked in advertising before graduating from the National Film School of Denmark in 1984. She then began working in television, directing a TV film called ‘Margrethes elsker’. She followed this up with the 1990 comedy ‘Kaj’s fødselsdag (The Birthday Trip)‘ about a Danish hotdog vendor’s misadventures with his friends as they celebrate his 40th birthday in Poland. Joining up with the Dogme 95 movement, her comedy ‘Italian For Beginners’ won dozens of awards and skyrocketed Scherfig into the international film scene. Her 2009 coming-of-age film ‘An Education’ starring Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for screenwriter Nick Hornby, and Best Actress for Mulligan.

    Adapted from the novel ‘Evening Class’ by Maeve Binchy, ‘Italian For Beginners’ is shot in the low-fi Dogme 95 style, using handheld video cameras, natural lighting, and no post-production sound. The goal of Dogme 95 was to emphasize character and plot over style and filmmaking craft. The result is a high-spirited comedy about a group of lonely people in a small Danish suburb whose lives change in both minor and major ways after they begin taking Italian class. With a charming ensemble of oddball characters, ‘Italian For Beginners’ is filled with the warmth of a crackling fire on a cold winter night. The film went on to win the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

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  • Director Mary Lambert talks ‘A Castle for Christmas’

    A Castle for Christmas – directed by Mary Lambert

    Cary Elwes and Brooke Shields in 'A Castle for Christmas' directed by Mary Lambert
    Cary Elwes and Brooke Shields in ‘A Castle for Christmas’ directed by Mary Lambert

    Born in Helena, Arkansa, director Mary Lambert graduated with a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design before starting a career directing music videos. Her most well known work in the 80s includes Chris Isaak’s first music video ‘Dancin,’ Janet Jackson’s ‘Nasty’, and many of Madonna’s early videos including “Like a Virgin”, “Material Girl”, and “Like a Prayer”. Lambert also worked with music artists like Annie Lennox, Mick Jagger, The Go-Go’s, Whitney Houston, Mötley Crüe, Sting, and Debbie Harry. Her feature film debut ‘Siesta’ starring Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne and Jodie Foster was nominated for Best First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards. Her second feature film was the iconic adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘Pet Sematary.’ Lambert also directed its much darker sequel, ‘Pet Sematary Two.’ In her decades-long career, Lambert has directed dozens of feature and television films, documentaries, music videos and episodes of television.

    ‘A Castle For Christmas’ stars Brooke Shields as Sophie Brown, a wildly successful romance novelist who travels to Scotland after a disastrous appearance on a talk show. Reeling from a divorce, Brown killed off a fan favorite character and her readers – and publisher – are not happy. While in Scotland, she’s tasked with writing her next book, but instead visits the castle where her father lived as a child and slowly finds herself falling for its irascible owner, The Duke of Dunbar (Cary Elwes). A charming addition to the Christmas movie canon, fans of cozy holiday romances should get a cup of hot cocoa ready because they’re sure to fall head over heels themselves.

    ‘A Castle For Christmas’ is now streaming on Netflix.

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    Mary Lambert spoke to Moviefone about her latest film.

    Moviefone: How did you first get involved with making this Christmas movie?

    Mary Lambert: I’ve got the opportunity to direct this because of my friendship and professional, you know, acquaintance with Brad Krevoy, who had brought me the script. I just really fell in love with it. I was super excited about the idea of working with Brooke Shields; she was already attached to it.

    MF: I saw that the film is dedicated to your mother.

    Lambert: My mother was very ill, and we knew she didn’t have very long to live. You never know exactly what that means. Christmas was just a really important holiday for her. I realized when I read the script, and even more strongly when I was making the movie, that what an incredible gift my mother had given me with her joy. The joy of Christmas, my mother just had a lot of joy, and it really expressed itself. It really blossomed. It really overflowed sometimes more than anybody could even handle at Christmastime. She loved Christmas so much. It was a real expression of the joy that she had all year long. When I was making the movie, every day I realized what a gift that she had given me with the memories I had from Christmas. Mostly really simple memories of Christmas trees and Christmas cookies, and Christmas sweaters and family parties. I had lots of cousins, lots of cousins and had a really big, immediate family. She died in April, just as we were finishing the post-production. So she never got to see the movie. But Netflix, Christina Rogers, and Brad honored my request to dedicate it to her. Brad even suggested it, because he knew that I was going through the grief grieving process with my mother. He said, why don’t we dedicate the movie to her. It was just such a perfect suggestion because as I said before, so many times during production I would be overwhelmed by my love for my mother and my family.

    MF: Did you have any traditions growing up that you drew on for the film?

    Lambert: Absolutely. My mother’s mother, my grandmother, used to have a huge Christmas Eve party with all of her grandchildren. She had like 13 grandchildren, so there were a lot of us. And the big double door, she had a really old house, it wasn’t particularly fancy, but it was big, and it was old. And she would shut the doors to the hall where you came in the front door. And we would all be in the living room and in the kitchen and in the dining room. We would have a big dinner. We had to wait till after dinner, and then she would open the doors to the entrance hall where the big giant Christmas tree was. All the presents for all of her grandchildren would be spread out like a Christmas fairy tale. Most of them were handmade. Everybody always got a sweater, or some hat or something that she had knitted for us. So the knitters were in the script already, but we definitely enhanced that. I threw myself into the knitters. I realized that the idea of knitting, making something for somebody else, but particularly knitting it, like every little stitch, you know, is a part of yourself. So I definitely drew on those memories from my grandmother and my great aunts.

    MF: Could talk a little about working with Brooke Shields and Cary Elwes? They had such wonderful chemistry in this film.

    Lambert: They’re both incredible people and incredible actors. And they both really dedicated themselves to making these characters real, not just like, jokey or were you making a Christmas movie it doesn’t matter. Every detail of the characters were important. Some actors don’t particularly like to rehearse, but both Brooke and Cary really threw themselves into finding as much of the heart of these characters as we possibly could in the script. Plus, somewhere in Cary’s past, there was a Duke in Scotland. He has Scottish ancestry. His mother’s British, but he spent a lot of time in Scotland as a young man. He kind of is the Duke of Dunbar. He really brought this knowledge of what it would be like to be a contemporary man living with this heritage. Living with the weight, the glory and the wonder of it, but also the weight of this heritage. He really brought that depth to the role that I don’t think another actor could have done, really. Brooke is just such a joy bug. She’s like, as a person, she’s always in the moment. When you’re with Brooke, there’s like a shining light on you, because it’s just coming from her. She’s not always thinking about something else. She’s there in the moment. She brought that aspect of her own personality to the part. She also has this incredible ability to just throw something back at you. She’s an athlete, you know, and if you say something to her, she just catches it, and then she throws it right back to you. She brought that sort of spontaneity and freedom to the role. Cary was the more introverted, the Duke who isn’t able to be spontaneous. And it just worked. Because they both just embrace your characters, and they were always just lobbing that ball back and forth.

    MF: What was the location shooting in Scotland like?

    Lambert: One of the things we had to do, because of the Covid protocols, was to choose one location and stay there. I had so much fun location scouting. We went to every castle within 100 miles of Edinburgh. They were like aren’t you tired of location scouting? And like, no, I can’t believe I’m being paid to do this. I would come over here and do this for two weeks as a tourist, this is incredible. But initially, I wanted to find the best staircase, the best dining room, the best ballroom, and then put them all together, and you know, move from one to the other, as if it were one castle. But we couldn’t do that. So we had to narrow it down to one property. We ended up on the Dalmeny Estate near Edinburgh, which is still inhabited by the people who’ve lived there for like 300 years, 400 years. People really do live in these castles that have been in the family for 300 or 400 years. Maybe it changed hands 350 years ago, but you know, it’s 600 years old, but we’ve only been here for 300 years, it’s kind of like that. We had these people that lived in the castle as our sort of role models for the duke. So we chose the Dalmeny Estate because it was a very old castle. Barnbougle Castle is right there on the shore. I think it is 600 years old, it goes back to the 1400s. At a certain point, they decided they wanted to modernize, so they built a much bigger estate further inland. It’s a much bigger house. More of a manor house than a castle, actually. So we used them both. We put them together. We used some of the beautiful old rooms in Barnbougle to look really very castle-y. Then we used the exterior of Dalmeny house as our exterior because it was so big. Some of the older castles are really not that big. They were built as keeps. So the walls are eight feet thick, but they want to defend the smallest possible space.

    MF: Could you recommend another film directed by a woman readers should seek out?

    Lambert: I mean, the films of Jane Campion are amazing. Her first film, ‘Sweetie.’ I don’t know that it’s ever gotten as much love as it should. And Patty Jenkins. She’s my dear friend. If you haven’t seen the ‘Wonder Woman’ movies, you should see them. But her first film, ‘Monster’ is a terrifying movie. Don’t see it if you’re easily frightened. It garnered an Academy Award for Charlize Theron. It kind of made Charlize Theron. I would say, ‘Sweetie’ and ‘Monster’ if we’re looking for movies that maybe you haven’t seen or haven’t gotten a lot of press. My sisters! We’ve been making movies. People didn’t always go see them.

    Sweetie – written and directed by Jane Campion

    Karen Colston in 'Sweetie,' directed by Jane Campion
    Karen Colston in ‘Sweetie,’ directed by Jane Campion

    Trailblazer New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards for her 1993 film ‘The Piano,’ for which she became the first woman to receive the Palme d’Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. Her first feature film ‘Sweetie’ played at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and was later released by the Criterion Collection along with three of her early shorts ‘An Exercise in Discipline: Peel’, ‘Passionless Moments’, and ‘A Girl’s Own Story’. Known for her frank depictions of sex and gender dynamics, ‘Sweetie’ stars Karen Colston as Kay, a young woman in her twenties coming into her sexuality while also dealing with her chaotic sister Sweetie (Geneviève Lemon), and the contention relationships they both have with everyone around them.

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    Monster – written and directed by Patty Jenkins

    Charlize Theron in 'Monster,' directed by Patty Jenkins
    Charlize Theron in ‘Monster,’ directed by Patty Jenkins

    Born in Victorville, California, Patty Jenkins moved around a lot during her childhood due to her father’s military career. She received her undergraduate degree from The Cooper Union and a master’s degree in directing from the American Film Institute. Her first short film was a superhero film inspired by the style of Pedro Almodóvar. Her feature film debut ‘Monster’, which was inspired by the real-life story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, premiered at the 54th Berlin International Film Festival, where Charlize Theron won the Silver Bear for Best Actress. ‘Monster’ was a commercial and critical success, making $64.2 million on an $8 million budget. For her complex portrayal of Wuornos, Theron received many awards and nominations, eventually winning the Oscar for Best Actress.

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  • ‘Prayers for the Stolen’ Director Tatiana Huezo Discusses Her New Movie

    'Prayers for the Stolen,' directed by Tatiana Huezo
    ‘Prayers for the Stolen,’ directed by Tatiana Huezo

    Born in El Salvador, Tatiana Huezo moved to Mexico at age four. Originally from the countryside, when her father moved the family to Mexico City, Huezo spent much of her youth at the film center watching the works of David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. She found her calling in the desire to provoke in others the same feeling these filmmakers made her feel. She attended the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica for undergraduate and received a master’s degree in creative documentary at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain. Her documentary work showcases empathy for the plight of everyday people in the wake of organized crime and war. Her feature film debut about the civil war in El Salvador, 2011’s ‘El lugar más pequeño,’ played in over fifty film festivals around the world. Her second feature-length documentary, 2016’s ‘Tempestad,’ is a look at how human trafficking affects two women in Mexico. That year, it won the Fénix Award for Best Documentary. Her latest film ‘Prayers For The Stolen’ competed in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and is her first foray into narrative cinema. It is the Mexican entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards.

    Based on the novel of the same name by Jennifer Clement, ‘Prayers For The Stolen’ tells the story of three girls and their mothers over the course of a few years as they work in the poppy fields of rural Mexico and attempt to keep their children out of the hands of human traffickers. Inspired by her own growing daughter, Huezo fuses magical realism with the grave emotional toll of the mounting violence in parts of Mexico. Featuring six young actresses playing the main girls at two distinct points in their lives, Huezo’s film honors the strength of these girls and their mothers, who despite all the adversity that surrounds them find fortitude to keep going.

    ‘Prayers For The Stolen’ is streaming now on Netflix.

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    Tatiana Huezo talked to Moviefone about her new movie.

    Moviefone: How did you first come across Jennifer Clement’s novel?

    Tatiana Huezo: Nicolás Celis and Jim Stark, the producers of the film, are the ones who first got the novel in my hands. They had already acquired the rights to the novel by Jennifer Clement. They said please read it and let us know what you think about it. It’s a novel that really captured me and I read very quickly. I fell in love with the main character, whose name in the book is Lady D, but I called her Ana, and it’s a child protagonist in the book. There was something that struck me from the novel, which was the fact that the mothers would dig these holes near the homes in order to protect their girls. Then I was also quite fascinated by the almost journalistic view of what it is like to grow poppies in the fields. I never really thought they were going to ask me to direct the film.

    MF: What was the adaptation process like?

    Huezo: They asked if I could write the script and it became a really interesting challenge for me. The only thing that I asked from the producers is that they allowed me to take it to a very personal place, and for me to be able to do a much more liberal adaptation because I already had other primary materials that I was working on alongside the novel. One of the most important things is the fact that I am a mother of a young child who was in the process of discovering the world. To watch her grow, to listen to her doubts, to watch the kind of games she plays, the magic that she involves herself in, was an inspiration for me. There are many pieces of dialogue in the film that actually belong to my daughter. Another of these primary materials that I was working with is that I’ve been working for a long time on these very difficult topics with women who are searching for their daughters. The script writing process was a very solitary process, and I discovered that I really liked it. I found it very fascinating to start to work on a script and to work on fiction. It took me about eight months to come up with a final script.

    MF: What was sort of your biggest challenge shifting from documentaries to a narrative film?

    Huezo: I think the biggest challenge is that fiction demands that you create everything. You have to create the rain, the wind. Every, every setting — the poppy fields for example, every single one of the flowers is a fake flower that has been planted. All the spots on the walls, all the mold on the walls, are things that someone from the art department actually painted on the wall. That set where we have that final party with the cowboys was an abandoned soccer field. So everything comes from zero. You have to imagine everything. The color. The texture. Everything is not there to begin with. Whereas, in documentary, the spaces are there. The people in the circumstances are already there. I still sort of do manipulate a lot of color and even the clothes that the people are wearing in my documentaries. But even so, the context is already there for you. You don’t have build it from scratch. That’s the great difference.

    MF: I found the haircuts on the girls and how the older girls have the same haircuts very effecting. Could talk a bit about the importance of hair on protecting these girls?

    Huezo: That was a really important and very symbolic element for me in the film. The mothers need to extract things that belong to femininity in order to protect their daughters. It’s a very difficult and painful moment in the film where they take something away from her that’s very hers. It is a moment where she also loses some of her innocence. In the teenage years, this was very important for me that this happened with María, who’s the girl who has a cleft palate, which is a makeup effect. That this was a whole new department for me – the art department. They constructed those cleft palates for both the girls. One of the things that I really wanted to come through is that none of the girls who grew up in this context are safe.

    MF: Could you talk about your collaboration with cinematographer Dariela Ludlow?

    Huezo: It was very important that she joined the project. She is a photographer and DP with a lot of experience. She’s also a documentary filmmaker and also has the experience of shooting a lot of TV series and films that are quite ambitious in scope. I knew that she was someone who worked very quickly with light. It was also really important for me that the perspective from the camera was also a female perspective. I looked at a lot of the photographers across Mexico and I watched a lot of the films, because from the very beginning I knew this was going to be a handheld camera. There are very few operators that have the camera skill that I needed for the film. I do think Dariela is one of the best DPs that you can find in Mexico and has an exquisite eye for light. I had asked her to light the set 360 degrees so that the actors had freedom of movement across the set. She said no, you’re really asking me to do something very difficult. But when I arrived on set, she had actually managed to put all the lights behind the doors or the windows, and instead used a lot of the lights that were already present there in the space. I think that Dariela also was a great influence in helping me to find what the color of the film was going to be. She had a very close and very deep relationship with the girls. She’s also a mother, and I thought that was important for the camera’s point of view

    MF: When the film is over, how do you hope audiences feel?

    Huezo: One thing that I want to get across to the audience with the film is what it means to have an irreversible thing happen in your life. What it means to lose someone that you really love. I would also hope that in the emotional memory and mental memory of the spectator that they don’t think of these women as victims, but instead they see these women as strong women. That the girls are going to work like a seed in the life that surrounds them in the future. I do think the characters get this critical view that they acquire at the school about the world in which they live in, and that they question their reality. I would like to imagine that the spectator takes this film home and that the film and things from the film continue to resonate within them. Because I do think it’s a film that asks the spectator to be a participant. The spectator has to imagine this horrible monster that we never actually see. And to feel it.

    MF: Is there a female director whose work inspires you that you could recommend to readers?

    Huezo: There’s a documentary filmmaker who’s both a photographer and a director, who also produces her films. After doing documentaries for many years, she started doing fiction. She has an amazing point of view about the world, and also about childhood and teenagehood. Her films mostly take place during this time. She is a great creator of beautiful images. She’s a Finnish woman. Her name is Pirjo Honkasalo. She has a movie called ‘The 3 Rooms of Melancholia’. It’s incredible.

    The 3 Rooms of Melancholia – written and directed by Pirjo Honkasalo

    Boys pray at the Zihr ceremony in Ingushetia in 'The 3 Rooms of Melancholia,' directed by Pirjo Honkasalo
    Boys pray at the Zihr ceremony
    in Ingushetia in ‘The 3 Rooms of Melancholia,’ directed by Pirjo Honkasalo

    Born in Helsinki in 1947, Pirjo Honkasalo graduated from film school at the age of 21, the same year she shot her first full-length film. After graduating, she studied and worked as an assistant at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1980, she co-directed ‘Tulipää (Flame Top)’, a biopic of Finnish writer and journalist Algot Untola, which competed at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. Best known for her documentary work in the 1990s, her Trilogy of the Sacred and the Satanic included the acclaimed films ‘Mysterion’, ‘Tanjuska and the 7 Devils,’ and ‘Atman’.

    After completing the trilogy, she thought she was finished making documentaries, however Honkasalo later said she was drawn back to the format due to her interest in the poetic and the political. Her 2004 documentary ‘The 3 Rooms of Melancholia’ chronicles the aftermath of the Second Chechen War, specifically the psychological effects it had on the children of Chechnya and Russia. She ends her director’s statement for the film by stating that “grace is illogical and irrational – in other words, a profoundly gratuitous liberation from the compulsion to hate.”

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  • Danis Goulet talks about her dystopian film ‘Night Raiders’

    Night Raiders – directed by Danis Goulet

    Brooklyn Letexier-Hart and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers in 'Night Raiders,' directed by Danis Goulet
    Brooklyn Letexier-Hart and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers in ‘Night Raiders,’ directed by Danis Goulet

    Originally from La Ronge, Saskatchewan, Cree-Métis filmmaker Danis Goulet first appeared in 1998’s made-in-Saskatchewan production Big Bear, an Indigenous-led miniseries directed by Meti filmmaker Gil Cardinal. In the 2000s, she moved to Toronto to work as a casting director, but decided to go back to school for filmmaking after being asked to cast indeginous women in ‘Pocahontas’ type roles. After participating in a film workshop in New York, she directed a seven-minute short called ‘Spin’ that played at the Sundance film festival in 2004. There she met a then little-known Indigenous filmmaker from New Zealand: Taika Waititi, who would later serve as the executive producer on her feature film debut ‘Night Raiders’. Goulet has directed five short films and served as the artistic director of the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival in Toronto for many years. Her next project will be the Netflix thriller ‘Ivy’.

    Set in the near future, ‘Night Raiders’ follows Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), a Cree woman who has lived off the grid in the forest for years with her daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart). When Waseese is injured, Niska must make a decision that could rip their family apart. Using science-fiction as an allegory to comment on the lasting trauma of colonialism, and specifically Canada’s residential school system, Goulet deftly weaves social realism into a grand sci-fi spectacle.

    The sci-fi thriller ‘Night Raiders’ is currently in theaters and available on Digital and On Demand.
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    Danis Goulet sat down with Moviefone to talk about her new film.

    Moviefone: ‘Night Raiders’ is dystopian, what led to creating this world and this conflict?

    Danis Goulet: I’m indigenous. I’m Cree-Métis, originally from northern Saskatchewan, so all of my work deals in some way with my people, our stories, our storytelling. But all of it also deals with the impact of colonization on indigenous families and communities. So I knew I wanted to talk about that. I just made a genre short around the time that I started writing ‘Night Raiders’, and there was something about moving into the genre space that just opened up all of these exciting possibilities, to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, but to do it in this different container.

    MF: Were there any sort of works in the futuristic genre space that inspired the way you framed your story?

    Goulet: I would say ‘Children of Men’ was absolutely a touchstone. Not just because there are no children in the world, but also it’s also set in the near future. So everything in the film feels like it’s just a little beyond where we’re at now. There was something about the realism in the film that felt like that was the space that I wanted to be in. I love how much that movie really makes you feel as an audience member so tethered to the main character’s emotional journey. I felt like that comes across so strongly in the film. Another film that I thought was really amazing was ‘District 9’, but for totally different reasons. Tonally, it’s completely different and has almost like comedic elements at times, too. But it was talking very specifically about the history of apartheid in South Africa. And I just thought it was such a fresh way to talk about all of that and to get into it. I liked the way it used sci-fi as an allegory.

    MF: How did Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers join the cast?

    Goulet: I actually knew Elle-Máijá as more of a filmmaker because she was one of the co-directors behind ‘The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open’. I had followed her since her early short films as a director. So by the time it came around to cast ‘Night Raiders’, I think I’d sort of forgotten that she was also an actor. She sent in a tape to be considered, and I was like oh my God Elle-Máijá. Then by the time we got to the callbacks, she just made me cry in the audition. So I just knew that she was it, and she does such an incredible job of bringing the kind of emotionality, the complexity of this character to the screen, and she really is carrying the movie on her shoulders, and she’s so brilliant.

    MF: How did you cast Brooklyn Letexier-Hart as her daughter? Did you do chemistry reads?

    Goulet: I do know we went through a process of matching people in auditions. By the time Elle-Máijá was cast, we were still looking for someone to play Waseese. So we were looking kind of North America wide. Then I think we did reads with different kids who were on the shortlist. So they were such a great match.

    MF: How did you film the scene where the kids get into a fight at the academy?

    Goulet: That was the first week of shooting. I’d never directed a lot of big action before. We had a number of kids there. We were shooting in a former asylum, actually, that had since closed down in Ontario. It had a very heavy energy. There were seven complexes. It was like an industrial complex for people that would have just been sent away. There was something so horrible about that space that made it really heavy to shoot in. But certainly that scene, and all of the action we were doing, made for a very intense first week of shooting.

    MF: What sort of vibe were you looking for in terms of the forest locations?

    Goulet: I come from the boreal forests. Those are my homelands in northern Saskatchewan. So that is something that really resonates with me. But we were shooting in Ontario, so I was energetically looking for something that felt that way, like when you go into a space, and you immediately feel that it’s like a warm blanket of protection around you and that it’s soothing and soft and protective. Those were sort of the elements I was looking for. To me, the boreal forest just naturally has that kind of energy. But because we were shooting in Ontario, we were actually shooting in Anishinaabe territory, which is a different nation. In their nation, and in Cree, they both regard cedar as a sacred medicine. During scouting we walked into this cedar forest, and it was just – cedars can be almost hundreds of years old – and there was just this like, peace and serenity and all of those characteristics that I was looking for. You just felt like everything would be okay the minute you walked into that cedar forest, and it meant a lot to shoot there for a lot of different reasons.

    MF: Did you build the dilapidated buildings in the shanty town?

    Goulet: We went into a space, which was formerly a cotton factory in Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton is a very industrial town. So there’s factories and all kinds of industrial infrastructure. But so the base of everything was there, but then the shanty-ness of it was totally built from scratch. That was completely by the hands of our brilliant production designers, Zazu Myers. Zazu and Daniel, the cinematographer, and I would walk into a space, and we would just start imagining, we’d be like, this could go there, this could go here, and then she’d throw down a piece of paper, and she’d start sketching what could happen here and there. She just completely built that, and it’s part of why she’s so incredible at what she does.

    MF: Could you talk a bit about developing the robot drones?

    Goulet: So with the robot drones are tied to this story about mosquitoes. We wanted them to look like believable drones. So we obviously took inspiration from drones that already exist in our world, because drones are not science fiction, they already exist. But we just wanted it to have characteristics of something organic, and especially mosquitoes. It was sort of like a marriage of those two things. So its legs, we kind of designed to be sort of similar to the way mosquito legs kind of jump jet out at the bottom. And then also that when you looked at it, that would almost feel like it had a little bit of a face; so there was something organic or lifelike about them. We built a prototype, and then from the prototype, we recreated it digitally, and then built the real thing – we actually built the drone. And she was so beautiful. We had built her from scratch so that we have practical drones to work with. So the drone that the kids kick in the beginning of the movie, that is that was the practical drone. It really did have a light that moved and did all the things. It was super cool.

    MF: Could you talk about the significance of Niska being the prophesied guardian?

    Goulet: The idea of a guardian actually just came from the Cree word “okanaweyimiwew” which is a word in Cree that means keeper or guardian. It has a bunch of different layered meanings. Sometimes it can be someone that is entrusted with looking after others. Sometimes it can be caregivers, but it is generally thought of as someone who is protective, and also someone who is highly regarded. I think in a lot of the action or sci-fi space, it’s not considered to be like the sexiest thing to be like a protector of children. Everyone might think of that as just a glamorous babysitter. So from a values perspective, I thought it was really important that what the community is asking Niska is tasking her to look after children, because what could be a higher honor than to be told you’re entrusted with this? Part of that came from the idea of a guardian and what she was there to do, and how highly regarded it was that you would be entrusted with the lives of children.

    MF: What do you hope people take away from this film when they’ve finished it?

    Goulet: Yeah, I hope that they understand more about the impact of horrible policies, like the residential school system, and what these policies did to indigenous people, and to mothers and daughters and families on a very basic level. Then I also hope that they empathize and understand the humanity of those who survived, but also the love that is so present amongst the people and in the community.

    MF: Could you share some women directors that inspired you or that you think others should seek out?

    Goulet: I mean, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as a director in her own right, definitely seek out her work. There’s another film that was just released prior to mine the year before called ‘Beans’ by an indigenous woman named Tracey Deer. That’s incredible. It’s a coming of age movie about the Oka crisis. There’s another one coming out soon called ‘Slash/Back’ by Nyla Innuksuk. She is Inuit from the far north, and I describe it as like ‘Attack The Block’ in the Arctic. It’s an alien invasion movie. I’m so excited for that. But I’ve been inspired by so many incredible women, I would say early in my career I grew up on the activist documentaries in the indigenous community by the Queen of documentary filmmaking, who’s Alanis Obomsawin, and she’s kind of like all of our grandmother. Social realism continues to be really important to me as a mode of storytelling. So I try to pull from social realism, even when I’m working in the genre space. So directors like Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay, I think, have had a profound effect on what I’m trying to do.

    Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance – written and directed by Alanis Obomsawin

    'Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance,' written and directed by Alanis Obomsawin
    ‘Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance,’ written and directed by Alanis Obomsawin

    Born in New Hampshire but raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin has spent her career uplifting indigeounos voices, stories, and history through her work in documentary cinema. Working as a singer and activist in the 1960s, she came to the attention of the National Film Board of Canada after holding fundraising concerts to build a pool because the children in her community could no longer swim in Saint Francis River but were only able to swim in the white only neighborhood pool. Obomsawin has directed 50 films since directing her first film for the NFB in 1971.

    ‘Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance’ chronicled the 1990 Oka Crisis, which began on July 11, 1990, and lasted 77 days until September 26, 1990. The land dispute between a group of Mohawk people and the town of Oka, Quebec, Canada was the first late 20th century widely-documented violent conflict between First Nations and the Canadian government. Filmed over seventy-eight days, Obomsawin and a cameraman remained embedded in the encampment throughout the dispute, during which time the Canadian government often withheld essentials like food and medical treatment. Before its broadcast, Obomsawin fought with the CBC, who had demanded she remove thirty minutes of footage to accommodate commercials. Backed by her executive producer Colin Neale and due to mounting public interest in the incident, Obomsawin won, and the footage stayed in. ‘Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance’ won Best Canadian Feature Film at the 1993 Toronto International Film Festival, and recently played at a retrospective program of Obomsawin’s films at the 2021 edition of the festival.

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