Moviefone Editorial

Author: Marya Gates

  • Director Augustine Frizzell on ‘Last Letter From Your Lover’

    Director Augustine Frizzell on ‘Last Letter From Your Lover’

    The Last Letter From Your Lover – directed by Augustine Frizzell

    Shailene Woodley and director Augustine Frizzell on the set of 'The Last Letter From Your Lover'
    Shailene Woodley and director Augustine Frizzell on the set of ‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’

    Augustine Frizzell grew up in Garland, Texas and made her directorial debut with the the hot and sticky ‘Never Goin’ Back,’ which follows teenage high school dropouts turned waitresses Angela (Maia Mitchell) and Jessie (Camila Morrone) who just want to take a vacation to beach in Galveston. It had its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival before being released that summer by A24. Frizzell directed the pilot for HBO’s controversial teen drama ‘Euphoria’ starring Zendaya.

    Based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Jojo Moyes, Augustine Frizzell’s sophomore feature ‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ is a cozy romance that spans from the 1960s to present day, and trots the globe from London to the French Riviera. Shailene Woodley stars as Jennifer Stirling, an amnesiac 1960s socialite who after returning home to her stern husband Laurence (Joe Alwyn) begins to piece her life back together. In present-day London journalist Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones) finds a love letter in an archive she discovers was written by Jennifer’s secret lover Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner). What tore these star-crossed lovers apart? You’ll just have to watch to find out!

    ‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ is now streaming on Netflix in the United States.

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    Augustine Frizzell talked to Moviefone about her new movie.

    Moviefone: How did you first get involved with this project? Were you familiar with Jojo Moyes book?

    Augustine Frizzell: I had never even heard of Jojo, sadly. I was talking with my producer, Peter Czernin at Blueprint Pictures, and he was asking me what kind of project I wanted to do next. I told them I wanted to do something that was like comfort food. You know, cozy. I call this my hot cup of tea movie; it’s warm and British. I wanted something that felt like a Sunday afternoon cozy watch. He said he had just the thing and sent me the script. I just cried my eyes out and called him back and said I have to do this. After that I found out who Jojo is and read the book, which I loved, and now I’ve dug deep into her catalogue of books and have become a huge fan.

    MF: Once you’ve gotten into the story and know the emotional beat, how did you find your cast?

    Frizzell: I had been such a huge fan of Felicity Jones since ‘Like Crazy.’ I just thought she was so incredible in that movie and really broke my heart. She’s so in touch with her emotions. So she was the first person we sent it to. When she read it she clicked with Ellie right away. We just sent it to her and said take a look and she said she just loved the Ellie character and was dying to play her. It was an interesting prospect because she hadn’t done anything so comedic in awhile. It was exciting to see her do something that was out of her norm. Then Shailene Woodley and I, we had actually met months earlier, way before I had even started work on this project, and just really hit it off. My producer says she was the first one that I brought up and then she was booked on something. We talked to a couple of other people and then found out her schedule had opened up. So we immediately asked if she wanted to do it. Shailene was all in. The thing about Shailene that was interesting is that she and I share such a fondness for romance, and just love in general. Love stories. We both love ‘Dirty Dancing.’ It’s one of our top favorite films. With the guys, I had seen Callum Turner in a movie ages ago as well. It was a tiny indie film and I thought he was so interesting and unique. He didn’t audition. We just met and he was so Anthony. He felt perfect for the role. Joe Alwyn and I met and he wasn’t really the age of the character in the book, but he is the nicest person in the world with this mischievous side and I thought it would be interesting to veer off what was expected with the age and go younger. He was down and he was perfect. Nabhaan Rizwan auditioned for my casting director Fiona Weir and he had the comedic timing and was charming and funny and I knew the minute I saw his tape he was perfect for Rory.

    MF: In the scene where Ellie first goes into the archive, did Felicity Jones really eat that whole croissant in one go?

    Frizzell: She ate more than one! She ate several. We set out to do it all in one take from the start. I didn’t want to cut. She was just eating them and she tells me now that she was thrilled at the opportunity to just eat a bunch of croissants because they’re so good. After the first two she was like, “Maybe a spit bucket is a good idea.”

    MF: So you have four people playing two characters at different ages. What was your philosophy on having them meet while filming?

    Frizzell: We had them meet. We all got together. They started their own conversations and started talking about diction and the cadence of their voices and hoping we could match that to some extent. They also talked about character, and the choices they would make when they were younger versus older. We definitely got together and read through it as a group. I thought it would help to bring out the energetics of the young, since those are the people we are with most of the movie, and help imprint that on to the older actors.

    MF: I loved the structure of the film. Can you talk about the editing and how you kept the emotional throughline along with the mystery?

    Frizzell: Hats off to my editor Melanie Oliver and everyone who gave feedback on the cuts, because it was not easy. I went into this movie thinking it’s all here in the script. I formulated transitions as we were filming, and I knew in my head this is probably going to shift a little when we get to the edit. But the amount that is shifted, I don’t think I could have planned for that. It really was a matter of just trial and error. Between my editor and I we watched this film over a hundred times, because you couldn’t just watch a section, you had to watch the whole thing start to finish to make sure it was evenly weighted throughout. You had to make sure that the beats were hitting at the right moments, that the music was carrying us from one minute to the next. It was really just trial and error, and watching and feeling, and trying to clear your mind with every viewing to make sure it was all working. It wasn’t easy at all.

    MF: Why do you think people find epistolary romances so intriguing? What is it about love letters?

    Frizzell: My husband [‘The Green Knight’ director David Lowery] and I fell in love over writing each other. It was partly online and it was partly via handwritten letters. By the mail we’d send these packages and letters to each other in our courtship phase. But there was something about the anticipation of getting the letter from him. There’s a level of vulnerability that you can express when you’re writing that is so much deeper than you can have when you’re talking. I know that’s true for him. He’s not someone who easily shares his feelings in a conversation. But give him a pen and paper and he’ll pour his heart out and it’s so poetic. You have time to formulate what you’re saying, so when you’re reading you can feel that time and it feels very energetically connected to the person who did it. I don’t know why they go over so well on screen, but they are some of my favorite movies as well.

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

    Frizzell: I hope they leave feeling good. I hope they leave feeling a renewed belief in love at any point of time in your life. I think it’s so easy to say I’m too old for this or my time has passed. I don’t think it’s ever too late, and I hope that they get a sense of that when they watch the film.

    MF: Can you recommend another film directed by women for our readers to seek out?

    Frizzell: I have to start with the first film that I ever
    realized was directed by a woman that I didn’t know, and that is ‘Point Break’ by Kathryn Bigelow. I watched it obsessively when I was younger. I don’t know why I was just completely obsessed with that movie. I still like it, don’t get me wrong, but that’s the first movie that I ever looked up and was like “Oh wow. A woman made this.” which was pretty cool. Then one of my favorite filmmakers, she is kind of risque and older, her name is Lina Wertmüller. She did the original version of ‘Swept Away’. All of her films are so weird and offbeat and interesting. That movie is such an interesting dissection of class and male/female dynamics. It’s such an interesting film and I love her style. Chantal Akerman was a big moment in my life. When I saw ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ it was just such a crazy exercise in anticipation and diverting expectations and dropping clues along the way.

    MF: That would be a great triple feature: ‘Point Break,’ ‘Swept Away,’ and ‘Jeanne Dielman.’

    Frizzell: If you want to throw in one more, you could throw in Claire Denis’ ‘Trouble Every Day.’

    MF: Yes! Okay, we have to program this now. This is important. My favorite Lina Wertmüller film is ‘The Seduction of Mimi.’

    Frizzell: Oh I love it!

    MF: It’s such a weird movie. Weird is such a perfect way to describe her films. She’s such a unique, bizarre filmmaker.

    Frizzell: Totally, and every time I watch her movies I’m struck by how she has such a way of creating great plots. They all have really good plots. You could just write them out and be like “man, that is such a good idea for a movie” and if you were to look at it in a traditional way, the movie based on that plot would be nothing like the movies that she makes out of them. So different and unexpected. I love that at the heart of all of them, they have a classic Hollywood plot. I just love her.

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    Kathryn Bigelow’s surfing crime flick ‘Point Break’ starring ​​Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, though firmly an action movie, broke boundaries in its tender depiction of male friendship, and since its release in 1991 has gained a cult following. Nearly two decades later she became the first female director to win Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Award for her 2009 film ‘The Hurt Locker.’

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    Chantal Akerman directed ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,’ which is considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, when she was just 24 years old. The New York Times called it “the first masterpiece of the feminine in the history of the cinema.”

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    One of the most influential Italian directors, Lina Wertmüller was the first woman nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards for her 1975 film ‘Seven Beauties.’ Her most infamous film, ‘Swept Away’ tackles gender, class and politics with highly charged sexual satire.

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    One of the most acclaimed contemporary French directors, Claire Denis’ film ‘Trouble Every Day’ is an erotic thriller with a cannibalistic twist starring the iconoclastic filmmaker/actor/model/artist Vincent Gallo.

  • Director Leigh Janiak on Fear Street, Lauds Kathryn Bigelow

    Director Leigh Janiak on Fear Street, Lauds Kathryn Bigelow

    Fear Street directed by Leigh Janiak

    (L to R) Actors Ted Sutherland, Sadie Sink, and Leigh Janiak on the set of 'Fear Street Part 3: 1666'
    (L to R) Actors Ted Sutherland, Sadie Sink, and Leigh Janiak on the set of ‘Fear Street Part 3: 1666’

    A graduate of NYU and the University of Chicago, Leigh Janiak made her feature film debut in 2014 with the horror film ‘Honeymoon’ starring Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway as a newlywed couple whose lakeside getaway quickly takes a sinister turn. Janiak has also directed episodes of the ‘Scream’ television series, and developed the original pilot for the Amazon YA show ‘Panic.’

    Inspired by the YA horror book series of the same name by R.L. Stine, the ‘Fear Street Trilogy’ consists of three films: Fear Street 1994, Fear Street 1978, and Fear Street 1666 all set in the towns of Shadyside and Sunnyvale. As lore has it, a witch named Sarah Fier put a curse on the town of Shadyside and every decade or so, a normal citizen goes on a killing spree.

    1994 is set on the eve of the most recent massacre, 1978 looks back at a summer camp tragedy, and 1666 takes viewers back to where it all began. With odes to slasher cinema, as well as America’s penchant for witch hunts and systematic economic inequality, Janiak’s take on the material adds a subversive, queer spin to familiar horror beats. The films also serve up plenty of gore sure to satisfy fans of slasher cinema and the book series alike.

    All three parts of the ‘Fear Street Trilogy’ are now streaming on Netflix.

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    Leigh Janiak spoke to us about her new movie trilogy. Warning: this interview contains mild spoilers for the entire trilogy.

    Moviefone: Were you a fan of the ‘Fear Street’ books growing up?

    Leigh Janiak: I was a teenager in the 90s, so reading Fear Street was very much part of my teenagedom. I was a big fan. I remember going to the public library, and they were on a carousel. I loved the fun of the covers, and there was always this insane shit happening in them.

    MF: My brother had a million of these books. I’m wondering how you distilled them into a cohesive story for the trilogy?

    Janiak: We ultimately looked at this giant breadth of work that R. L. Stine had created and said, how do we do this? Because we were making the three movies and doing it at once, we felt like we needed a connected mythology narrative more so than the books live in. So what we decided to do was try to be true to the spirit of the books, the sort of fun, subversive, edgy nature of them. That we tried to infuse into every scene and the whole vibe of the narrative.

    MF: Did you always know you were going to make them hard R?

    Janiak: Yeah, definitely. That was something from the very beginning. I felt like if you are doing slasher movies, you need to live in an R-rated world. I think there is a lot of good horror that lives in that PG-13 space, but slashers, to me, you’ve got to see blood, you’ve got to see guts, you have to see lots of dead people. So that was important to me generally for the tone of a slasher movie. I was also thinking about my experience reading the Fear Street books as a teenager. They felt crazy to me. They felt R-rated. I actually don’t think they are. It’s funny. I was just re-reading one of them a couple of weeks ago and realized these are not as insanely violent as I remember. They are, but my point is, I was living in this world of the memory and experience of how intense they felt to me, and then trying to be true to the sub-genre of slashers.

    MF: I loved the gruesome sequence at the end of 1994. How did you come up with the head in the bread slicer? That was disgusting in the best sense.

    Janiak: One of the fun parts of making 1994 across the board was thinking about, for me, taking this image of suburbia and destroying it. Making it rotten. When we were choosing where our locations and different set pieces would be, we let the kills grow from there. So the grocery store was a really important set piece. When I was a teenager, one of my first jobs was I worked third shift at a Super K-Mart. So, I was working from like 10pm until 7am. This was over the summer, not when I was in school – and it’s crazy that my parents let me do this. So I had this image of these late nights at the grocery store, and I was so excited when it felt like it could work into our final showdown set piece of 1994. We looked around and were like it makes sense that you would go to a grocery store, and they need drugs, which was what they were doing there. But when that plan goes wrong, what other things can we use? And what is the most insane thing? Like you, I love a good gross kill, and we started thinking about the bakery and that area and were like, can a human head do this? What would that be like? That’s where that came from.

    MF: I was expecting Kate to be saved and when she wasn’t, I was like, “oh my god!”

    Janiak: It was hard to kill her and to kill Simon because I think we ended up really loving them. I felt like we loved them on the page, but Julia (Rehwald) and Fred (Hechinger) did such a good job making us care for these characters. Ultimately it was like, okay we’re killing characters who will hopefully be beloved, but we also need to have real stakes, and real reminders to the audience that brutal shit is happening in Shadyside and there is emotion behind this, and we’re only in the first act of our bigger movie. We’re at the end of movie one, but we’re in the first act of the trilogy. It made sense to do it, but it was shocking to a lot of people.

    MF: I love the credit at the end for the CGI flies. I was wondering where the names came from?

    Janiak: So Paul was my VFX supervisor and Christina is my VFX producer. Guillermo is for Guillermo del Toro. Guillermo was so kind and watched early cuts of the first and second movie. I hadn’t yet done a director’s cut of the third movie. It was funny because he was like, “I feel like you need this unifying thing you see every time you see the killers.” We had played around with versions of what that could be in prep and in development. We had flies that were built into movie three, just kind of reflecting the rot of the world and what was happening. He was like, “maybe like a fly or something like that.” and I thought, yes, perfect. So he gave us this brilliant idea and is fully responsible for introducing that idea. So I thought it would be cool to name the fly after him.

    MF: I love that the trilogy is centered on two queer women. I read that you had wanted to center this on the kind of character who would normally die in these movies. Where did that idea come from?

    Janiak: Part of that I had asked myself when I was approached by the producers to do the project was why should we be revisiting the slasher subgenre? For me, it was about wanting to make something that wasn’t just home and wasn’t just nostalgia. I wanted that to be part of it, for sure. Part of the fun of making the three movies in three different time periods is to be able to send a love letter to those films that I grew up watching and that I love. But also I wanted to be able to justify the experiment. To do something new. To me, there was this world of Shadyside and Sunnyvale we ended up creating of the haves and have-nots. Shadyside is full of characters that have been marginalized and told by society that they are other and felt like they were never going to get out of this world. So that to me was what became special about ‘Fear Street’. That we could have characters that usually would die much sooner in movies and give them a place in the sun as protagonists and as heroes of the story.

    MF: How did you find your cast? Did you do any chemistry reads?

    Janiak: Obviously there are like a million characters across the three movies, and I worked with my amazing casting director, Carmen Cuba. She introduced me to a ton of new people and new faces that I hadn’t seen before. Olivia (Welch) who plays Sam and Kiana (Madeira) who plays Deena I had come across when I was working on a pilot a year before.

    MF: For ‘Panic’?

    Janiak: Yeah. I had cast Olivia in ‘Panic’ and I had come across Kiana also in that audition process. Kiana ultimately wasn’t right for one of the roles in the pilot, but when I saw her read I was like, “if ‘Fear Street’ gets off the ground…” because we were still in the prep/development phase. But I thought if we got the green light she is Deena. I felt that. So when we started casting again, they were the ones for me. We had a lot of talented actresses and we had chemistry reads with other women as well, but it was this funny thing because you see them separately, but it’s not until they get into a room together and you’re like “oh, they are so cute.” They actually have this very sweet, organic, sexy vibe between them. It was really exciting when they came together.

    MF: How did you decide on 1994 and 1978 for the two slasher entries in the trilogy?

    Janiak: When we first were coming up with what era each film would be in, we knew we wanted something in the 90s. Originally there was a discussion of should it be earlier in the 90s? I think my first pitch actually called it ‘Fear Street 1990’ and then as me and my fellow writers started building the world, we realized 1990 is a weird year for that. It’s straddling the classic heyday slasher films of the 80s and then the 90s, but we’re not really living in a here nor there world. So by putting it in 94 we felt like we could be revisiting the 90s slashers like ‘Scream,’ ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,’ ‘The Faculty,’ with kind of more self-aware, sarcastic characters. Then we thought by shifting into the 70s, the filmmaking could also be different. That way we could be in very distinct eras of slasher.

    MF: I really loved the way that you used covers of songs from the 70s in 1994, and then you had the original versions in 1978. I thought that was a really smart way to show the way that all those characters are connected through history, and so are the songs.

    Janiak: I love that you are talking about that. No one has asked me about that. The Nirvana version of ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ and the Bowie version were both built into the script for movie two from the first draft. One of the things I like personally is the idea of generational trauma and people reliving mistakes and this idea of fate and soulmates and how do we fix our past and these cycles of time. So being able to look for music that could round out those themes and show this is what it was like here and this is what it was here was just so cool. The Bowie version and Nirvana one, obviously, that song ends up holding thematically a bigger place of importance in the trilogy. Once we started getting into it, we thought that ‘Sweet Jane’ would be amazing to use for the 1994 because the Cowboy Junkies version is awesome, and then when we got to 1978 I was like, “Oh fuck we’ve got to do Velvet Underground.” I think those are the only ones that we did, but I kept thinking there’s got to be more. I’m happy you brought that up.

    MF: What is your favorite Easter egg for fans of the book you put in the films?

    Janiak: There’s endless little things here and there throughout. My favorite nod at the books was more meta. It’s not even something direct. I love that we start the whole movie with a comment on horror novels. Then that the book ‘First Evil’ – which uses the actual covers from one of the cheerleader ‘Fear Street’ ones – saves Heather (Maya Hawke) in that first moment when she gets stabbed, and then those books are what Deena ultimately creates for her bulletproof vest in movie three and that ultimately saves her. That’s my favorite way of saying yes these books are amazing and I love them and horror will save us all.

    MF: I love that the bookstore was B. Dalton. That was the bookstore in the mall where my grampa lived when I visited in the 90s. Why did you choose that bookstore instead of any of the other chains?

    Janiak: I grew up in a suburb outside of Cleveland, and B. Dalton was the bookstore in the local mall. It was that and a Spencer’s Gifts, which was ultimately what Wheeler’s was taking inspiration from. It was very fun. I got to relive my childhood and create this world, which was more fucked up than my actual teenagedom was. It was so surreal walking into that set.

    MF: Can you recommend another film directed by women for our readers to seek out?

    Janiak: It’s interesting. I think back to being a kid and even frankly much later into being a teenager than I care to admit, that I wasn’t really aware of female directors. I think that that’s one of the things that it is so important and cool about the strides that Hollywood is making now, to be more inclusive and to have more women directing, specifically in the genre space. I think that opens up the world to young women. For me, my favorite female filmmaker is Kathryn Bigelow. I watched all of her movies as they came out. ‘Near Dark.’ ‘Point Break,’ which I think is one of the most brilliant movies ever made. ‘Strange Days.’ I love all of them. ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’ ‘The Hurt Locker.’ Those early ones that she was doing, because they live so much in what was a more traditionally masciucline space of action and genre, she was and continues to be super inspirational to me.

    The Hurt Locker directed by Kathryn Bigelow

    Anthony Mackie (L) and Jeremy Renner (R) in 'The Hurt Locker,' directed by Kathryn Bigelow
    Anthony Mackie (L) and Jeremy Renner (R) in ‘The Hurt Locker,’ directed by Kathryn Bigelow

    Kathryn Bigelow has directed ten feature films and countless episodes of television. She made history when her 2009 film ‘The Hurt Locker’ won Best Director and Best Picture at the Academy Awards – the first time a film directed by a woman had won either top prize. This feat was not repeated until Chloé Zhao’s film ‘Nomadland’ took both prizes earlier this year.

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  • Shahad Ameen on Her Movie ‘Scales’ & Recommends Julie Delpy

    Shahad Ameen on Her Movie ‘Scales’ & Recommends Julie Delpy

    Scales directed by Shahad Ameen

    (L) 'Scales' director Shaheed Ameen. (R) Basima Hajjar as Hayat
    (L) ‘Scales’ director Shahad Ameen. (R) Basima Hajjar as Hayat

    Shahad Ameen was born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. She earned a degree in Video Production and Film Studies from the University of West London, as well as a degree in Screenwriting. Her short films have played in numerous festivals around the world.

    Her feature film debut ‘Scales’ had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 as part of the Critics’ Week sidebar. The dystopian feminist film was selected by Saudi Arabia as its selection for the 93rd Academy Awards, although it was not nominated.

    The film follows a young girl named Hayat (Basima Hajjar) whose fishing village is governed by a dark tradition: each family must give one of their daughters to the creatures that live in the sea. Hayat becomes an outcast when her father saves her from her fate as a baby.

    When she hits puberty, she notices changes in her body and finds herself drawn back towards the sea. A stark condemnation of the ways in which society teaches girls to hate their own bodies, ‘Scales’ is sure to linger in the minds of viewers long after it concludes it’s brisk 74-minute runtime.

    ‘Scales’ is in theaters in New York and Los Angeles now.

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    Ameen sat down with Moviefone to talk about her new movie.

    Moviefone: What was the inspiration behind this story?

    Shahad Ameen: The story came to me a long time ago. It was first a short. It’s so funny because I never thought I would write my first feature about mermaids. I just had this image of this mermaid being chopped in half on screen and a girl seeing a creature that looks exactly like her being harmed by her father.

    After I finished the short film, I felt that it was such a missed opportunity. In the short film, the father is the one who kills the sea creature or the mermaid, and the daughter is the one who is watching. I wished it had been the daughter who did that. I wished it had been the daughter who hates on her body, on herself.

    From that I decided I would do a feature. That was not the end of the story. So I wrote the story of the feature for it to be a journey between Hayat and her body, a journey between Hayat and herself, her accepting her body.

    MF: Do you think Hayat was suppressing her true nature in order to be more like the men?

    SA: I remember when we were little girls, if I were into sports or if I were into certain things that girls are not supposed to be into, our solution for it, me and my friends when we were like 12, was that we wished we were boys. It’s much easier to be a boy in this society. Why would you want to be a girl when all the fun things boys get to do. From that the idea stemmed.

    The idea that you know when you get your period suddenly your muscles are weaker, and you don’t understand how to deal with that and your only solution is to suppress all of these emotions and not understand what is happening within you. And you say to yourself, “someone else has it easier, why can’t I be like them?”

    That’s what Hayat does. Her body is telling her she doesn’t belong here, to go somewhere else. But she keeps refusing that message and refusing the idea that she has to be at peace with her body, and unlearn what society had taught her about her body.

    MF: Can you talk about the relationship between Hayat and her father, and why you focused on a daughter and a father rather than a daughter and a mother?

    SA: I wanted the mother to be programmed. As soon as she lost Hayat as a baby, for her that baby died. Sometimes I feel that women are the ones that hold on to traditions of a society. They hold so tight to it because, I feel, that they gave more for it, and they sacrificed more of their life for it, so why should they give up when they’re already older, and they’ve already believed in and already sacrificed for it.

    That’s how I wanted to show the women in the village. They’ve already sacrificed, they’ve already given kids to the cause, so they will fight for it the most. I thought that the only one who can rebel against it is the father.

    For me, I always wanted the film to start with a father calling out to his daughter Hayat, meaning life in Arabic. And I wanted it to end with that. It was always about a father choosing love over tradition, choosing life over death, and choosing his daughter over his village.

    MF: What do you think is so alluring about mermaids?

    SA: I had never really thought of mermaids until I wrote these stories. I was writing something about a mermaid and was like, “what is a mermaid?” Doing research, I found out that in Middle Eastern mythology they believe that it’s an Assyrian goddess. She’s the goddess of fertility who had fallen in love with a human person, and then she had killed him by mistake, so she had committed suicided.

    To preserve her beauty and her wisdom, the gods made her into a mermaid. I was like, what’s up with those gods? She didn’t ask for that! They forced her.

    You’re not allowed to die on your own terms. In a way I felt it was kind of a punishment for her being free and that’s where the idea came to be. Even though she was alone in the water and isolated, she’s free. From there, I thought maybe I could create a society where all the free women are out in the water.

    MF: I was struck by the black and white cinematography. It’s a stunning shade of gray. How did you achieve that look?

    SA: We didn’t shoot in black and white, actually. We shot in color and in the editing process and post-production process, when we got to the final cut we decided what if we turned the film into black and white.

    The colors were still not giving me the impact I wanted, which was a very harsh contrast. A very harsh contrast between men and women. A very harsh contrast between the sea and the land. Once we switched the film to black and white it gave us that dryness, it gave us that timeless quality that the story of the film is set in.

    MF: How did you scout the locations?

    SA: I love that you’re asking that. So we shot in Oman near the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a place filled with mountains and immediately on the water. It took us a while to find it.

    For a while we thought of the Dead Sea, so we thought we’d shoot in Jordan in the actual Dead Sea. What is beautiful about it is there is a lot of salt left on the sand. But the problem in Jordan is because there are no fish, there are no fishing communities. So we went to the Gulf region of the Arab world and thought maybe Oman. When I went to the location we shot in, I was so mesmerized.

    We kept going back for almost two years to that same location, just making friends in the community. What you see in the film, all the extras are the actual people in the community there. The fishermen are actually fishermen. That was amazing just being able to shoot in Oman in that location.

    MF: In particular, I loved that cracked sand towards the end.

    SA: There was a place where someone was building something and it had this very small area where there was cracked earth. We thought, fantastic, we will shoot there. It was small, but it was going to get that effect. Then on our last day to shoot we were supposed to shoot that scene and then the AD comes to me and says they’ve destroyed it, they’ve covered it. A panic came to me. I thought maybe we could do it with VFX.

    Then our location guy went on a ride, he found the biggest cracked up earth, better than what we had originally had. It had just rained, and the water had dried. It’s not a sea. It’s not a lake. We don’t know why it’s there. It was just put for us. It spiritually knew that we wanted to shoot there.

    MF: How did you cast Basima Hajjar as Hayat? Her eyes in particular I thought were really piercing.

    SA: Right? Oh my god. Basima, I’ve known since she was very young. When I came back to Saudia Arabia, she was acting in commercials and stuff.

    I knew her through ADing a couple of commercials. I became friends with her mom and I wrote a short film called ‘Leila’s Window’ and I asked her to act in it. It was five minutes long, and she did a fantastic job, and I couldn’t get over her eyes. All actors’ eyes move at normal speed. Basima’s move in slow motion. I don’t know how, maybe it’s very vague, but she has such a soul.

    From the first film I did with her, she was definitely my muse. I did with her the short films ‘Leila’s Window’ and ‘Eye & Mermaid’, so for the feature film of course it was her from the beginning. We were going to lose her two weeks before the shoot for exams. They kept sending me other girls, but I kept thinking, “they don’t have Basima’s eyes!” I’m very thankful you mentioned her eyes, because that was my argument to keep her.

    MF: What do you hope people take away from the movie in the end?

    SA: It’s a story about life, about the sanctity of life and how it’s more important than tradition or culture. When you have to choose, you have to choose life.

    MF: Can you recommend another film directed by women for our readers to seek out?

    SA: The person who came to my mind is Julie Delpy. She’s a French director I really like.

    MF: What’s your favorite from her?

    SA: I think ‘2 Days in Paris.’

    2 Days in Paris – directed by Julie Delpy

    Director and star Julie Delpy in '2 Days in Paris'
    Director and star Julie Delpy in ‘2 Days in Paris’

    Perhaps best known for her three decades of acting in film, including generation-defining turns as Celine in Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Trilogy’ – for which she’s also received two co-writing Oscar nominations – Julie Delpy is also an accomplished director.

    After the completion of a few short films, Delpy made her debut with the comical romantic farce ‘2 Days In Paris’, for which she received a Best First Feature nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards.

    She followed that up with five more feature films, including ‘My Zoe,’ which was just released earlier this year. Currently, Delpy is developing a television show for Netflix called ‘On The Verge’. Set in Los Angeles, the show will follow a group of women navigating life in their forties.

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  • How ‘American Honey’ Hinted at Riley Keough’s Work in ‘Zola’

    How ‘American Honey’ Hinted at Riley Keough’s Work in ‘Zola’

    Zola – directed by Janicza Bravo

    'Zola' stars Taylour Paige and Riley Keough on set with director Janicza Bravo
    ‘Zola’ stars Taylour Paige and Riley Keough on set with director Janicza Bravo

    Director of one of this year’s most buzzed titles, Janicza Bravo is poised for a breakout year. I wrote about her debut film ‘Lemon’ a few weeks back, but there is never enough space to praise Bravo’s singular artistic vision.

    Along with ‘Lemon’ and a cadre of short films, she also directed the much-lauded ‘Juneteenth’ episode of Donald Glover’s FX show ‘Atlanta’. Bravo was brought on to direct ‘Zola’ after James Franco exited the project amidst a sex misconduct scandal. The film had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, but its release was pushed back a year due to the ongoing pandemic.

    The original 148-tweet thread from Aziah “Zola” King was turned into an article by Rolling Stone’s David Kushner in 2015. This was then used as the basis for the first draft of the screenplay by Andrew Neel and Mike Roberts. After Bravo signed on to direct, she re-wrote the script with playwright Jeremy O. Harris.

    Bravo described King’s original tweets as “like the intersection of Cardi B’s ‘Bodak Yellow’ and David Lynch‘s ‘Blue Velvet.’ The text was enigmatic, energized, raw and unfiltered. It seemed to exist on a planet that was just next to ours, somewhere larger than life and deeply saturated.”

    The opening of the thread was instantly iconic: “Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out???? It’s kind of long, but full of suspense.” What unfolded was a harrowing yet hilarious story that included pole dancing, strip clubs, seedy motels, drugs, attempted suicide, and eventually sex trafficking, all told through King’s sharp sense of humor.

    King told Kushner, “The humor made [readers] want to dig deeper into the story, and they realized it’s something that could happen in their backyard — I was their waitress. I was the girl they walked past in the grocery store or hotel lobby.”

    Bravo’s take on the story stars Taylour Paige as the titular Zola who meets a sex worker named Stefani (Riley Keough) at the diner where she works. The two immediately hit it off, and Stefani invites Zola on a trip to Tampa to make stacks of cash at a swanky strip joint. When Stefani arrives at Zola’s home at the start of their trip, a man named X (Colman Domingo) is at the wheel.

    Despite her own better judgment, Zola goes off with this motley crew of relative strangers and finds herself deeply entrenched in some serious drama. Shot on 16 mm, Bravo captures the garishness and glamour of Florida at night. Paige is masterful as Zola, her face capable of every emotion in the book. For every crazy thing that comes out of Keough’s mouth, Paige’s reactions say more than words ever could.

    Keough herself has proven time and again an actress of immense range, often walking a tightrope between genius and bad taste. Domingo is as ominous as he is hilarious, adding layers to X beyond that of a clichéd pimp. ‘Zola’ proves that even when truth is stranger than fiction, when a story is this good it works in any medium.

    ‘Zola’ is in theaters now.

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    American Honey – directed by Andrea Arnold

    Riley Keough and Shia LaBeouf in 'American Honey'
    Riley Keough and Shia LaBeouf in ‘American Honey’

    Riley Keough, granddaughter of the King himself, Elvis Presley, is no stranger to road trip movies. One of her early breakout roles was in director Andrea Arnold’s 2016 epic ‘American Honey’. Arnold first broke out with her short film ‘Wasp’ for which she won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2005.

    Three of her four feature films have premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival: ‘Red Road’, ‘Fish Tank’, and ‘American Honey,’ where all three went on to win the Jury Prize. Most recently, Arnold directed all seven episodes of the second season of HBO’s ‘Big Little Lies’.

    Shot by Robbie Ryan in a tight 4:3 aspect ratio, ‘American Honey’ follows teenager Star (Sasha Lane) as she meets charismatic Jake (Shia LaBeouf) one day in a Kmart. Star is stuck in a dead end town in Oklahoma, caring for her younger siblings and fending off the abusive advances of her father.

    Jake offers her an escape in the form of a magazine crew. Jake and several other young people travel together in a van selling subscriptions to magazines, a mysterious and somewhat dubious enterprise. The crew is run by the domineering Krystal (Riley Keough), and what starts out as a freewheeling adventure eventually devolves into its own kind of drama.

    Inspired by a New York Times investigative piece she read about magazine crews, Arnold impulsively took a road trip from California to Miami, Florida before starting work on the script. Most of the cast was found in parking lots, construction sites, streets, and state fairs in order to capture the authentic makeup of these magazine crews.

    Scouted while on spring break, Sasha Lane told The Guardian she “felt Arnold’s vibe and decided to trust Arnold for an audition.” Landing the lead role, Lane has since starred in several films, including Desiree Akhavan’s ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post,’ and she’s recently appeared in ‘Loki’ on Disney +.

    Since making her debut in Floria Sigismondi’s ‘The Runaways (2010), Riley Keough has acted in 25 films, six of which were directed by women. For her beguiling turn as Krystal in ‘American Honey’ she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards.

    This year, Andrea Arnold is returning to Cannes, though not with a film. She will serve as the President of Un Certain Regard, which runs parallel to the main competition. In contrast to the Palme d’Or, which tends to favor more established filmmakers, the Prix Un Certain Regard was introduced to the festival in 1998 to recognize younger talent and encourage innovative and daring works.

    Seven out of the 20 films competing for the Prix Un Certain Regard this year are directed by women, as opposed to the mere 4 out of 24 that are competing for the Palme d’Or. Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano’ remains the only film directed by a woman to win the top award at the festival.

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  • Director Heidi Ewing: “Hold Really Tightly to Your Vision”

    Director Heidi Ewing: “Hold Really Tightly to Your Vision”

    Left: Christian Vázquez & Armando Espitia in 'I Carry You With Me.' Right: Director Heidi Ewing (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)
    Left: Christian Vázquez & Armando Espitia in ‘I Carry You With Me.’ Right: Director Heidi Ewing (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

    Director Heidi Ewing made her directorial debut co-directing ‘The Boys of Baraka’ with Rachel Grady in 2005. The two followed up that doc the next year with ‘Jesus Camp,’ which earned the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

    The pair has since directed seven more documentary features, including 2010’s ‘Freakonomics’ and ‘One of Us.’ At the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, Ewing made her solo narrative directorial debut with the romantic drama ‘I Carry You With Me.’ Inspired by the true story of her friends, Ewing’s film is an incredibly empathetic look at the human side of immigration.

    Ewing spoke to Moviefone about the genesis of her film, the importance of telling these kinds of stories, and gives some advice for aspiring filmmakers.

    Moviefone: You have said this was inspired by the story of your two friends – did you interview them before starting on your screenplay?

    Heidi Ewing: I did a lot of interviews with them, with their mothers, with their brothers. I was also shooting cinéma vérité. All those scenes with the real guys are not scripted, they were just observational, cinéma vérité moments that I captured. So I filmed them over a long period of time while I was writing the script, before I was writing the script, because it was initially conceived as a documentary, and then I decided it would be better served by a narrative treatment. It was a ton of research, like going to Mexico and talking to the real drag queen that the character Cucusa is based on, getting what it was like to live in Puebla City as a gay man in 1994. It was a lot of research, but that was something that came natural to me as a documentary filmmaker.

    MF: The editing is so seamless, like a memory, where it goes in and out, and you’re never really sure what year it is.

    Ewing: My editor Enat Sidi is a genius. She’s edited all of my documentaries. She and I and the cinematographer developed this language, this cinematic language of memories that get triggered, and flash forwards and flashbacks. Like how your brain rushes through time into a specific moment and then spits you back out into the present day. We did a lot of trial and error in the edit to develop that language.

    MF: In working with cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez, did you seek out someone who could really capture the feeling of both Mexico?

    Ewing: The whole crew, the whole cast is Mexican. I was the only American on set. Cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez is incredible, you have not heard the last of him. I wanted to have solely Mexican talent working on the movie. He is just extremely versatile and a very tender-hearted person, and I think you can feel that in the shooting.

    MF: The shots during magic hour and dawn are really stunning. Were there any specific lenses you used to capture that?

    Ewing: We shot every magic hour. We made a deal that we would never miss a magic hour. Dawn in Mexico City at the time we were shooting was like seven minutes long. You could only get like one take before it was full sun. We actually shot that rooftop scene – when they have their first kiss – that is actually a sunrise. That was not shooting dusk for dawn. That was actually dawn. We got about one and a half takes and that’s what we got, so that’s what you see in the movie. We used Panchro/i Classic lenses from the 1960s with a lot of character in them. We also shot with Bausch-Lomb Baltar lenses, which are really hard to use. They take a tiny refraction of light, and they create this halo effect, so it’s hard to use those, but it was interesting. ‘The Birds’ was shot on Baltar lenses, and ‘Margot At The Wedding.’ They’re tricky lenses, but we used those as our back-up. We were looking for a nostalgic, but not corny, visual sense.

    MF: Can you talk about how Alan Page Arriaga came on board as a writing collaborator?

    Ewing: I was a couple of drafts in, and I realized I needed help and I wanted to have a Mexican voice help me write the movie even though I was basing it on my friends. I thought that was really important. So I asked around. My producers in Mexico City recommended Alan Page Arriaga, who was living in Mexico City at the time. We wrote the subsequent drafts remotely because he was in Mexico City, and I was in New York. Now he lives in Los Angeles, and he’s got a big writing career there. Together we crafted the movie. We would take turns, like I would write scenes that were Gerardo scenes, and he would write scenes that were Iván, and then we would switch. We really wanted the characters to be written in different voices, and it’s very hard to do that sometimes, to differentiate how people talk. So he became my good friend and writing partner on this movie.

    MF: You spoke at Sundance about the difficulty in finding funding for the film. Why do you think there was so much resistance?

    Ewing: I think it’s really hard to get funding for a foreign language film. Even though ‘Parasite’ won the Oscar and Americans have shown that they will read subtitles. ‘Minari’ is a great example as well. But you still have to go through the same rigmarole every time. Everyone asks you, “can you guarantee me it’ll be 50% or 60% in English?” and I’m like, “No. I can’t do that. These men speak Spanish.” That I think was the number one issue. But also it’s a gay subject matter, and it’s in Spanish, so you’ve got two areas that are considered “niche,” which I don’t think is the right way to look at it. That combination made it a little more daunting. But I will say that Black Bear Pictures and Sony Worldwide were crazy about the script, and I had full creative control on every aspect. In the end it worked out well, and I had really good partners.

    MF: How do you think your work in documentary shaped your approach to narrative filmmaking?

    Ewing: As a documentary filmmaker, I have an ear for how people really talk. Nobody ever finishes a sentence. People tend to interrupt each other. I can definitely hear bad dialogue and false dialogue because I spend my life listening to real people. That was helpful. I’m also partial to naturalism and the camera having to find the action, so we didn’t do a lot of blocking. I didn’t want the camera to be anticipating the action of the actors. So you’ll see in the cameras a searching and refocusing and looking for the action, and that was really happening. He was looking, we’re moving, we’re on the Easyrig, I don’t use tripods. We didn’t do a lot of static shooting or master shots, over the shoulder reserve. Like those traditional shots I would leave to the end. We were really trying to live moment to moment, intensely with each character. That is something I borrowed from my documentary work.

    MF: How did you cast the younger version of your leads?

    Ewing: I had a casting director in Mexico called Isabel Cortázar, and she knew what I was looking for. I wasn’t really looking for lookalikes of Iván and Gerardo. I found some guys who looked just like them, but they weren’t the right performers. I was looking for an essence of the real Iván because I knew he’d appear in the movie. Those soulful eyes, that deep nostalgia in the face. Also, paramount to the process was finding two actors who had actual chemistry together. So I cast Armando Espitia as Iván first, and then I went in search of his mate, his boyfriend, his partner. So I put Armando in the room with many different actors until we found Christian Vázquez for Gerardo. Christian and Armando just had a real natural, exciting chemistry together. So I cast based on that when it came to the two lovers.

    MF: Did they meet with their real life counterparts?

    Ewing: They wanted to talk to the real guys, but I asked them not to because I didn’t want them to be doing an imitation of the older version of the men they’re playing. Because they’re playing innocent, young men in their twenties in the throes of their very first relationship. I didn’t think that they could gain a lot from talking to a lived-in couple 25 years later. I asked them to refrain from doing that and stick with the script, and then when they came to New York to film the final scenes, they all met. They’ve become great friends. They’re very, very close. It’s a wonderful thing. It worked out for the best that they had a clean slate.

    MF: Can you talk a bit about the importance of the dish Chiles en Nogada?

    Ewing: Iván is really well known for his restaurants. He’s got two restaurants in Brooklyn. You can go to them in Williamsburg: Mesa Coyoacan and Zona Rosa. Chiles en Nogada is one of his signature dishes. It’s very hard to make. It takes days of marinating, and you’ve got to get the pears and the peaches and the pork. It’s a really complicated dish. It’s seasonal in Mexico, but he’s been able to find the ingredients year round, so he makes it year round. It’s just such a beautiful dish. The colors of the Mexican flag are in the dish because it was supposed to be a gift for the King of Spain who was visiting, so they wanted to invent a dish for him with the Mexican colors. It’s got a lot of historical resonance for Mexico, and it’s his signature dish. How he came upon the recipe in the film is a story Iván told me. When he told me that story, it was actually just before I left to start shooting in Mexico, so I added it to the script because I thought it was such a great story. So specific. You see the dish come up many times in the film because it represents his love of cooking and his homesickness for Mexico.

    MF: What do you hope people take away from this film? What do you hope they’ll feel?

    Ewing: I hope people feel uplifted by this story. It really is a love conquers all story. It’s a movie about the great sacrifice that people make for their families in order to create better lives for themselves and other people. I feel like the immigrant experience has become in so many ways a cliché and it’s a narrative that has been taken over by political figures, it’s become a partisan conversation. But this is just a human film, the human side of immigration. The accessible, real side of just people trying to do the best they can. People with ambitions and dreams and hopes. I feel like it’s a really emotional, touching ride, and hopefully it’s a different way we can talk about the immigrant experience than what we’ve been seeing in the last few years.

    MF: Do you have any advice for women in the industry or who want to break in?

    Ewing: I think you have to hold really tightly to your vision. If you have a vision for something, do not back down, do not let other people intimidate you and talk you out of your vision. The more specific your vision is, the more special the movie will be, and the more valuable you’ll be as a director. The moment you try to do it the way everyone else does it, or mimic a show that is popular, then your value, your currency as a creator goes down. It’s a long way of saying stick to your guns. You can push your vision though, but you have to have a strong stomach and be able to look people in the eye and defend that vision. Many people along the way, especially as a woman, will try to talk you out of what you know is best for your own film.

    ‘I Carry You With Me’ is in select theaters now.

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  • Kimmy Gatewood discusses ‘Good on Paper’ & Recommends Varda

    Kimmy Gatewood discusses ‘Good on Paper’ & Recommends Varda

    Good on Paper (directed by Kimmy Gatewood)

    Kimmy Gatewood and Iliza Shlesinger on the set of 'Good on Paper'
    Kimmy Gatewood and Iliza Shlesinger on the set of ‘Good on Paper’

    Inspired by a true story that happened to writer-star Iliza Shlesinger, ‘Good On Paper’ is Kimmy Gatewood‘s feature film directorial debut, although she has had her hand in directing theater, comedy, short films, and television for over a decade.

    The romantic comedy follows stand-up comic and would-be actress Andrea (Shlesinger) who meets a man who is too good to be true on a flight between New York and Los Angeles. Dennis (Ryan Hansen) claims he is a Yale graduate, works in finance and has a home in Beverly Hills.

    At first Andrea feels only friendship for him, but as she begins to fall for him, she discovers all is not as it seems. Gatewood understands the world of comedy and presents us with a very specific slice of Los Angeles not often shown in LA movies.

    Shlesinger proves herself a capable comedic lead, though she shines brightest when she’s doing her stand-up routine. The supporting cast is peppered with faces comedy fans will recognize, including icon Margaret Cho who steals the spotlight every chance she gets.

    ‘Good On Paper’ is available on Netflix now.
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    Moviefone spoke to Kimmy Gatewood about her new film.

    Moviefone: What was the collaboration process like with writer-star Iliza Shlesinger?

    Kimmy Gatewood: It was our first time working together, and we really bonded over the sheer amount of work we like to do. She was doing a television show at the time and doing re-writes on this script. It was quite amazing to watch. I came in and had some thoughts on the script. I come from a background of improv and storytelling and I work with a lot of writer-performers in getting their stories from a story to a show, or sometimes a script. So a lot of the process was finding the truths and translating them into the movie that you see.

    MF: How does your work as an actor affect your work as a director?

    KG: I do a lot of stage stuff and I come from a comedy background. As a comedian you have no money, and you usually have a black box stage, and you have to act, direct, write, produce, and market. You’re out there handing out flyers on the street to get people to come to your show. I think I really appreciate what an actor goes through, as well as writers. The process of it and how important it is to make a space that feels comfortable and safe for actors to explore. Having been an actor on a set, from my amazing experience on ‘GLOW’ and also on stage, I took from the good experiences and also the bad experience and made sure to create a stage where an actor can do their best work. I think every director has a different approach to it, but I really think that creating a space where the actors can totally explore and give their best performances make the best movies, because chemistry pops off the screen and performances pop off the screen more than anything else.

    MF: How did you cast Ryan Hansen as Dennis?

    KG: Ryan and I actually met on a show called ‘Bad Judge’ with Kate Walsh back in the day. I played Kiki the bartender. We had met back then, and what we were looking for in this character was someone who was unassuming. I think this is a departure for Ryan because he normally plays very lovable, goofy characters that would never do anything to anyone. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. So this was really fun because you wouldn’t really see it coming from someone like him. I think the very important part about the casting is that you really like him when you first meet him. Ryan is extremely loveable from the minute that you see him on screen or in person. What was fun about him was that the real life Dennis – which was not his real name – he is not supposed to be terribly conventionally handsome, and Ryan Hansen is very handsome. We made a few alterations. Glasses. Teeth. Bad hair cut.

    MF: Was that a real bad haircut you had on him?

    KG: Yeah! We dyed his hair. He is truly such a great sport with everything he does. He will just dive right in. So it was his idea to get teeth. He knew a guy named Gary The Toothfairy, who did Adam Sandler’s teeth in ‘Uncut Gems’. We were like, great! And we really dyed his hair and cut his hair. It’s funny when you’re working with professionals in this business because you’re like, “No no no, give him a bad haircut.” [laughs] The skill in which to give a bad haircut is sometimes higher than a good one.

    MF: Can you talk a bit about working with Margaret Cho?

    KG: Margaret Cho is an incredibly gifted actor-comedian-storyteller-human person. I felt very lucky that she was on board to do this role. She brought so much of herself to it. It’s truly amazing, especially because she comes from the stand-up world just like Iliza and has seen a completely different side of it. I think that her presence on screen really brings a lot of authority and authenticity. We were so lucky that she wanted to do it because this character needs to feel authentic to the world, needs to feel like somebody who could boss Andrea (Shlesinger) around, and I was very happy that she said yes.

    MF: This was filmed on location in Los Angeles, right?

    KG: It’s funny because this movie almost had to shoot in Chicago, which would have provided a lot of challenges for me as a director, being that it’s a Los Angeles set film. So we really fought for it to be shot in Los Angeles because it’s truly a Los Angeles story. Obviously, we had locations like The Comedy Store, which we were so lucky to get that space. It’s where Iliza has spent so many of her years hustling, and that was through her connections. Franklin Village, we had a great location manager, we were thinking about showing a new side of LA. We’ve kind of seen the ‘Swingers’ side of LA. The Duplass Brothers brought in Eagle Rock. Our film feels to me very much through the lens of comedy and just a different side of where people actually live. So, Franklin Village where Dennis lives, he says he lives in Beverly Hills and that couldn’t be further. It’s closer to Beverly Hills than Atwater Village, but… that house was amazing. It was owned by an artist couple who I think have a history in porn, which is very authentic to LA.

    MF: Was the film always structured with the stand-up set as narrative bookends?

    KG: When I was given the script it didn’t have the stand-up element to it and while we were developing this script and talking through it, Andrea was originally an actress in the script. As we were talking more about it and the authenticity of the story, it just started to make sense to bring her back to what Iliza is known for, to what she does best. It’s based on a true story, so we leaned hard into that. She’s such an amazing stand-up and storyteller and she’s very compelling when she’s on stage. We agreed there’s no better way to tell this story without including a very large part of her life, which is her career on the road. Stand-up is so specific. You’re alone on stage, sharing your truth, making fun of yourself. But then you have to do it again for another audience, or go on the road and not see your friends for months at a time. Stand-up can be so grueling, but becomes her platform and ultimately where she gets her power from when she is telling the story to an audience.

    MF: What do you hope people take away from this film in the end?

    KG: I hope there is a lot of debate about Dennis and their relationship. There are some themes in there about perception. How we perceive ourselves, how we perceive others. Really, I hope that people walk away remembering their own stories, having fun and laughing. I have been desperate to laugh for the last year and a half. I hope everyone can get together with their best friends and can laugh and decide whose side that they’re on, and this can be a fun conversation starter about their old relationships and the times that they may have been hoodwinked. We’ve all been there.

    MF: Yes. I can relate, thinking back on some people I’ve dated.

    KG: This story really spoke to me because she’s a smart, funny woman who is very in charge of her career. How does a woman like that fall for a guy like that? I think that some people might think she was dumb for falling for it, but it’s much more complicated for that. Especially if you’ve been in the dating scene in the last ten-fifteen years. We’ve all made some stupid mistakes. This just happens to be the ultimate mistake.

    MF: Can you recommend another film directed by a woman for our readers?

    KG: I’m a part of a collective called Film Fatales. I got behind the camera because as an actor I was getting a lot of roles like prostitute or girlfriend with no real description and I thought that if I was going to make a change in this industry I needed to get behind the camera. It was a long, hard fought battle, but I’m so happy to be here and to hopefully start adding to and shifting the conversation, with stories like this about complicated women who make mistakes and triumphs, and we can still laugh at them. I’m constantly inspired by other women. Kay Cannon has been a huge inspiration. Lynn Shelton. Claire Scanlon. One of the first movies that I saw that was directed by a woman was from a French filmmaker named Agnès Varda, who I’m sure you know about, called ‘Clèo from 5 to 7.’ It’s a really interesting, beautiful, black and white film about a woman who is dying from cancer, but is also funny and strange. It really inspired me to see that people want to see complicated female characters on screen. It was made in 1962, so we have to honor the women who were fighting before us and hopefully carry the line and force the industry to listen.

    MF: I think the Film Fatales are an unsung, amazing group of women.

    KG: They’ve been incredibly supportive. It’s nice to be able to have a collective of people, in all stages, with shared stories and understand the struggle and also celebrate the triumphs. The Directors Guild has a women’s steering committee that will be announcing a bunch of mentorships soon, so they’re doing good work. I’m very excited. It’s really hard to get a movie made. It’s so hard. I’ve seen so many movies come and go. It’s very satisfying that this one got through with an amazing time of producers, crew, and actors. You have to be bullheaded to get these stories out there. For any young female directors out there, just be bullheaded and don’t stop!

    Cléo from 5 to 7 (directed by Agnès Varda)

    Agnès Varda (center, sitting) on the set of 'Cleo from 5 to 7'
    Agnès Varda (center, sitting) on the set of ‘Cléo from 5 to 7’

    Alternatively anointed the grandmother *and* mother of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda’s work actually pre-dates the movement, and she was not involved in film criticism before getting behind the camera like many of its members.

    Varda had only seen a handful of films before she made her feature debut, ‘La Pointe-Courte’ in 1954. Her 1961 film ‘Cléo from 5 to 7’ proved to be her international breakthrough, and has been lauded as one of the greatest films ever made. In her long career, Varda directed nearly 50 feature films, short films, and television specials.

    In 2017, she received an Honorary Academy Award for her unique contributions to cinema, telling Variety that she was “much more interested in the rebels, the people who fight for their own life.” The next year, she received her first and only competitive Oscar nomination, for her documentary ‘Faces Places.’ As Martin Scorsese once said, she is cinema.

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  • A look at female filmmakers Mariem Pérez Riera, Susan Lacy & their docs about Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda

    A look at female filmmakers Mariem Pérez Riera, Susan Lacy & their docs about Rita Moreno, Jane Fonda

    Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (directed by Mariem Pérez Riera)

    Rita Moreno as seen in ‘Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It’

    Beginning her career at the age of 9 playing the lead in Jane Morrison’s ‘Los dos Mundos de Angelita,’ Mariem Pérez Riera decided early on that she wanted to become a film director. In 2005, she founded her own production company, Maramara Films. Riera has directed episodes of the television show ‘Chamacas,’ plus several documentary features and shorts, as well as co-directing the 2007 romantic comedy ‘Maldeamores’ starring Luis Guzmán.

    Riera finished the final cut of this new documentary on March 13th, 2020, just as the world was headed into quarantine. Post-production took place during the following year, and the film had its debut at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Originally conceived by long-time television creative Norman Lear and Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, Riera was brought on board as a producer, editor and director in 2019.

    Using archival footage, film clips, and new interviewers with Rita Moreno and those she inspired, the documentary traces her career in Hollywood over seven decades. Ultimately a story about persistence in the face of discrimination, the film exposes the festering wounds of Hollywood’s racist past to show the systematic issues, like colorism, that are still in play today. Moreno is frank about her early days in the biz, being relegated to bit parts – mostly in brown face and with stereotypical accents.

    Even in her Oscar-winning role as Anita in West Side Story, Moreno wore dark makeup and, as an immigrant character, once again a stereotypical accent. She is incredibly open and vulnerable about her struggles with insecurity, with sexual harassment, and with her tumultuous (and ultimately toxic) relationship with Marlon Brando. While the film does not shy away from the lows of Moreno’s career, it really shines when she shines, showcasing the work she did that made her an EGOT – Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony winner – so early in her career.

    The title of the doc comes from a t-shirt bedazzled with the phrase JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT that Moreno had picked up in Boston and decided to wear to the Television Critics Association Gala, in which she received a lifetime achievement award. Like the shirt itself, Moreno is now able to be inarguably her brassy self at all times. Something to which we can all aspire.
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    ‘Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It’ is in theaters now and will air on PBS’s American Masters some time in the future.

    Jane Fonda In Five Acts (directed by Susan Lacy)

    Jane Fonda as seen in ‘Jane Fonda in Five Acts’

    In 1986, filmmaker Susan Lacy created the PBS documentary series known as American Masters. Over the last 35 years, the program has helped produce some of the greatest documentaries about American artists and creators. Titles include ‘Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise,’ ‘James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket,’ ‘Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool,’ ‘No Direction Home: Bob Dylan,’ and more. Lacy served as executive producer of the series until 2012. She said the concept for the series began with her Master’s degree in American Studies, her belief that American culture should be looked at through the broadest context, and the lack of a true biography series on PBS at the time.

    In 2012, Jane Fonda attended the premiere of ‘Inventing David Geffen’. It blew her mind, and she knew exactly who she wanted to tell her story. She sought out Lacy to work on the project that eventually became ‘Jane Fonda In Five Acts.’ Debuting at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, the documentary landed on HBO, rather than American Masters. It was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, although it did not win.

    Lacy immediately knew she wanted to take Fonda’s incredibly complicated life story and look at it through the lens of a five act play. Lacy stated she feels that Jane’s final act is as exciting as her first, and you can feel that vision in the documentary itself.

    The first four acts are named after influential men in her life: ‘Henry’ for her father Henry Fonda, ‘Roger’ for her first husband Roger Vadim, ‘Tom’ for her second husband Tom Hayden, and ‘Ted’ for her third husband Ted Turner. Early on in the first act she describes having an aversion to her mother, who on the surface was a perfect mid-century housewife, but like many women who are stifled, was riddled with anxiety and mental illness.

    Fonda recalls as a youth that she felt closer to her dad, stating, “My team is the winning team, my team is the winning team, my dad.” In exploring the ways in which each of these men affected her personal and professional growth, the film highlights her pattern of modeling herself to be whatever the men in her life wanted her to be.

    Handled deftly with the privilege of hindsight, these sections not only illuminate Fonda’s life, but in a way also explore similar struggles many women of her generation felt in a country that was rapidly changing. The final act, entitled ‘Jane,’ looks at where she is now, and the all-too-human contradiction of how each of these men both impeded her and helped her grow.

    A stunning profile of a complex person, ‘Jane Fonda In Five Acts’ excels at capturing all the intricacies that make us who we are and inspires us to keep working on our own unfinished self-portraits.

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    ‘Jane Fonda In Five Acts’ is available now on HBOMax.

  • Female Filmmakers in Focus: Manjari & Vinati Makijany discuss their film ‘Skater Girl’ & recommend ‘Mustang’

    Female Filmmakers in Focus: Manjari & Vinati Makijany discuss their film ‘Skater Girl’ & recommend ‘Mustang’

    Rachel Saanchita Gupta (center) in 'Skater Girl'
    Rachel Saanchita Gupta (center) in ‘Skater Girl’

    Sisters Manjari Makijany and Vinati Makijany have always had filmmaking in their blood. Their father Mac Mohan appeared in over 200 Bollywood films. In 2016, Manjari Makijany became only the 2nd Indian woman ever to participate in the AFI Conservatory’s Directing Workshop for Women. She has also completed UCLA’s Professional Screenwriters Program in 2015, the inaugural Universal Pictures Directors Intensive program and the inaugural Fox Filmmakers Lab in 2017. Co-written and co-produced with her sister Vinati Makijany, ‘Skater Girl’ is her first feature film. The film stars Rachel Sanchita Gupta as Prerna, a young girl living in a rural Indian village whose life is altered when she learns to skateboard. Fans of films like Haifaa al-Mansour’s ‘Wadjda’ will be moved by this delightful coming of age film’s heart and the way it captures the spirit of young women determined to forge their own path in life.

    ‘Skater Girl’ is available on Netflix now.

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    Moviefone spoke to Manjari & Vanati Makijany about their new film.

    Moviefone: What inspired you two to write this story?
    Manjari Makijany: In 2017 I was sitting in LA and I had finished the AFI Directing Workshop for Women program, and I stumbled upon skateboarding in India and that blew me away because I had no idea that skateboarding was actually a thing in India. That fascinated me, so I did a deep dive, and discovered that there are a few skate communities in India. At the time, there were about 17 skate parks around the country. Also what skateboarding was doing in India, breaking through social norms, societal barriers and sort of age-old traditions, and really uplifting the communities where these skate parks were built.

    MF: What was the co-writing process like?
    MM: Vinati and I have been doing stuff together since we were in school. We would be putting on skits together, and on the drama team in college. We would host radio shows and competitions in our university. So we’ve always had a short hand at working together and that sort of organically translated into co-writing this project. We took a deep dive, journalistic search into how we could take this germ of an idea about skateboarding creating social impact in India and turn that into an entertaining while still being attentive to the subculture. We did a lot of back and forth. She was in India and I was in LA. She would write a scene and send it to me and I’d write a scene and send it to her. It was quite a process.
    Vinati Makijany: Our co-writing process goes way back in time because I used to complete a lot of homework books for Manjari. That’s where it goes back to. I figured we’re good at writing together. We really enjoy telling stories together. As kids we used to love making up stories. This process of writing was super organic and so much fun. Of course there are deadlines. When you’re chasing a deadline you’ve set for yourself you have to be really honest with each other and that was really good that we could be brutally honest and say this is not working, let’s scrap it. Between Manjari being in LA and me being in India we could work 24 hours a day. When you find a really good scene it would make both of us happy. It was a very satisfying process.

    MF: What do you think is so freeing about skateboarding and the subculture?
    MM: This is a question we had for every skater we met in the US and in India. What is it that you like about skateboarding? Very few people could articulate what it was. It’s so visceral. That was a challenge to put into words. They would say, “I don’t know. . .we forget about our worries, you know? It’s just freeing. There are no rules. It’s like you’re flying.” Everybody was echoing the same thing, whether it was somebody in Venice Beach or whether it was somebody in Kovalam or Delhi or Bombay. How do you take this freedom and make it visceral on screen?

    MF: Was there a specific kind of direction you gave the kids to get them to express that feeling?
    MM: The younger the kids the more natural they are. They just take to it and enjoy it. We had a skate coach and trained all the kids for about five months because a lot of them you see in the film you see step on a board for the first time. The challenge was Rachel (Sanchita Gupta) who plays Prerna, her first time on the board she was really scared of skateboarding. So how do you take someone who is really scared of skateboarding and translate that and make it believable that they’re actually totally enjoying the freedom? It was a process, because not only is the character coming of age, but Rachel was coming of age herself through the process of finding freedom in skating. That was quite exciting.

    MF: How did you find the kids for the cast?
    VM: We were very clear about the faces that we wanted, the ensemble needed to feel real and not planted into this story. I went out and started workshopping with children in NGOs and government aided schools. Then we found casting director Sanjeev Maurya who was in Delhi. Together we were workshopping pan-India with 3,500-4,000 children. From that we found our actor kids who were brought to the skate park and trained in skateboarding. Then there were about 35-40 local children from that village who became a part of the movie as well.

    MF: How did you find the main village location?
    MM: We knew we wanted to set it in Rajasthan because it’s beautiful and it’s vibrant. The village we wanted to set it in needed three prerequisites: it had to have a lot of kids in and around the village because we were planning to leave the skate park as a community free public skate park. Then it had to have concrete roads in and outside the village so that the kids could skate if we gave them skateboards. Then the third thing was that it had to have that sort of rustic, rural vibe. Khempur checked all of these three boxes. This was the only village in Rajasthan that actually had makeshift skateboards. They never knew anything about skateboards before this, but they had these little bearing cars with a wooden flat and steel bearings that they would place with. They were really creative kids and we thought it was a sign that this was the place.

    MF: Can you talk a bit about the film’s exploration of the caste system?
    MM: We wanted to explore that without it being too on the nose, to find a very subtle way to do it. What we realized was that when we brought skateboards to Rajasthan, Vinati and I took my first skateboard around the place and had people step on it. That was quite eye-opening because it had such a novelty value. If you asked them to step on the board, the first time they just sort of beam this huge smile and they forget about things, these social norms they’d been following for a long time. Before people can figure out what are the rules around skateboarding, it’s just too late because they’ve already found their freedom.
    VM: The caste system is still very prevalent in rural spaces, and sometimes we think, “oh stuff like that doesn’t happen.” But we experienced it first hand by people who don’t necessarily realize that it’s a bias. When we were constructing the skate park and I was staying there for a long time, people would just come in and ask me, “So, what is your caste?”
    MM: They would just ask you straight up. “What’s your caste?” because they couldn’t figure out our background.
    VM: So it had to come into the film in that very subtle fashion, but it also needed to be there. It was hard to not include such a reality.

    MF: I love the older woman who helps them. When she says “Someday I’ll tell you my story” that was heartbreaking. Can you talk a bit about the importance of generations of women helping each other?
    MM: We toyed a lot in the editing about if we should keep that line. We decided it should be there without us really knowing her story because that leaves it to the viewers imagination. I think that it was important to show that it’s a story about Prena, her skating and coming of age, but it’s also about all these different women who connect with each other and understand each other’s struggles. I think we are more similar than we think. It’s not about how different we are. Even from all the walks of life there is so much that we can connect to in each other.

    MF: Can you name another film directed by a woman that readers should seek out?
    MM: I love ‘Mustang’ (directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven). It was such a beautiful story and so well told and completely real. Go watch ‘Mustang.’ This is such a perfect example of not just on the screen, but also behind the scenes of a gang of women who just had a ball creating this film. You can see that bond when you watch the Q&As after you watch the film.
    VM: ‘Mustang’ is also one of my favorite films. In fact, it was very inspiring for me. When I saw it I felt that this is the kind of film I would want to make.

    Elit Iscan, Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, and Ilayda Akdogan in 'Mustang'
    Elit Iscan, Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, and Ilayda Akdogan in ‘Mustang’

    Premiering at the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s ‘Mustang’ was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards. The drama focuses on five sisters growing up in conservative rural Turkey. They find their lives more constricted after their favorite teacher moves to Istanbul and they must find strength in each other to rebel against their increasingly restrictive family. Bubbling with the same righteous anger as Sofia Coppola’s ‘The Virgin Suicides,’ Ergüven’s film is a lament for lost childhoods and an ode to female resilience.

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  • Female Filmmakers in Focus: Director Zaida Bergroth on ‘Tove’ & ‘Holiday’

    Female Filmmakers in Focus: Director Zaida Bergroth on ‘Tove’ & ‘Holiday’

    Tove (directed by Zaida Bergroth)

    Alma Pöysti in 'Tove'
    Alma Pöysti in ‘Tove’

    Zaida Bergroth graduated from the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2004. Her debut film ‘Last Cowboy Standing’ played in festivals around the world. Her fifth feature film ‘Tove’ is a look at the early life of artist and author Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins. For those unfamiliar with the Moomins, they are a family of trolls (who resemble hippos) that are the central characters of nine books, five picture books and a long-running comic strip. These characters have been featured in numerous television series, films and there is even a theme park called Moomin World!

    ‘Tove’ is the second most expensive film ever produced in Finland and was selected as the country’s entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, although it was not nominated. Finnish theater actress Alma Pöysti plays the titular artist as she navigates the art world in post-WWII Finland and struggles with the success of Moomins at the expense of her fine art work. The film also explores her relationships with left wing journalist and prominent intellectual Atos Wirtanen and theater director Vivica Bandler.

    ‘Tove’ is playing in select theaters now.

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    Moviefone spoke to Zaida Bergroth about her new film.

    Moviefone: What drew you to a project about Tove Jansson?
    Zaida Bergroth: I was asked to this, and I think that was really good because I wouldn’t have dared to suggest this myself. That happened in 2017 in the springtime when producer Aleksi Bardy asked me to join this project.

    MF: Was it always focused on this early part of her career and life?
    ZB: No. We did speculate about that. We had many discussions with the screenwriters and producers, but quite early on decided we wanted to focus on this part because Tove Jansson is very, very famous in Finland, probably the most loved artist that there is, and we wanted to tell a new kind of story about her, and we wanted to focus especially on this period when she was a bit younger, before she became famous. We wanted to shine a new light on her.

    MF: She calls herself a “bleak shadow” of her father’s genius. How do you think that tension with father drove her as an artist?
    ZB: We could have made a movie about that relationship because it was so interesting. The thing is they loved each other very much, and I believe they understood each other on a very deep level because they were both artists, and they were both very ambitious, and they were both very talented. I think that Tove really admired her father. His opinion meant the world to her, so everything he said she really took it to heart. Her father didn’t really appreciate the Moomins, so I can understand the frustrations that Tove must have felt, that she’s getting recognition for something that she, at the time, considered to be children’s stories. And there were a lot of political arguments also. I remember I read from a letter that Tove sent to a friend that she got so angry with arguing with her father that she had to throw up. So they were very dramatic, their arguments. But they respected each other.

    MF: When she first sleeps with Vivica Bandler, she describes it as “a new room in the house of the soul”. Where did that phrase come from?
    ZB: Yes, that was from her writing. That’s how she described it, and we thought it was a very nice and poetic way to put it. It was a good idea to have that dialogue in a scene, where she tried to explain in a beautiful way the situation to Atos [Wirtanen], whom she also loved. So yeah, that came from Tove’s actual description of her lovers.

    MF: In doing research, what kind of written material did you uncover?
    ZB: There are two really good biographies written about her, so I read those. Of course, she wrote a lot of letters to her friends and to her family members. They were wonderful, very revealing. There were documentaries made about her. There was so much material about her, you couldn’t ask for more. It was almost overwhelming, but it was lovely also. After you have studied as much as you can, I felt free to do our version of the story.

    MF: What was the atmosphere in Finland like for the LGBTQ community at that time?
    ZB: It was illegal to have same-sex relationships. You could go to prison for that. I know it was more dangerous for men. Women were a bit more safe. You could easier live with your female partner as friends or whatever. But it was illegal, so of course the society didn’t look at it in a nice way. I think in artistic circles they were more safe, and the circles that Tove and Vivica lived in were pretty bohemian. It was very life affirming, they really wanted to celebrate life after the second world war, so there was this freedom, at least in their circles.

    MF: She insists that her paintings are really her, and the Moomins are a distraction. Can you talk about mining that tension to show Tove’s interiority?
    ZB: I felt it was one of the most interesting things for me. I can relate to an artist who is afraid of failing, and I think it was so interesting that she didn’t really appreciate the thing that came the most from her heart. That is what I really believe. I think that she was a very good painter, but she was more exceptional as an illustrator and as an author. I could relate to that problem of getting recognition for something that you are not prepared for. At that time, after the second world war, I think she tried to impress some people. There was something very conventional in her paintings, and I think the Moomin stories and those political cartoons that she made were bolder, and they had humor, and they were wilder in every way. Maybe there was something holding her back when it came to her paintings. Maybe the thing that was holding her back was the opinion of her father. Perhaps. It was interesting to think about these things and to speculate. Of course, the movie hints towards some directions, but we can’t really know.

    MF: Can you talk about casting Alma Pöysti as Tove?
    ZB: She’s a great actress. She has been mainly on the stage. I had seen her many times in the theater. We had a pretty massive casting process, but she was on my mind very early on. I’m glad that she accepted the part.

    MF: Tuulikki Pietilä is only introduced at the end of the film even though she was Tove’s longest partner, and the film sort of indicated that Vivica was who she loved the deepest. What led to that choice?
    ZB: I think Tuuliki was definitely a big love in her life. That relationship lasted for so many decades, and they were so important to each other. But Vivica was the first woman she fell in love with, and I felt it was so essential to show that it was a new beginning for her. She never looked back. She loved Atos dearly, but she never had a relationship with men after that. So, I call this genre of film a coming of middle age. She is still learning so many things about herself. I think it was a life changing thing to fall in love with Vivica and learn about herself. She had to learn to respect her own needs. She thought she could control her emotional life before that, and I think it was a big learning experience for her. With Tuuliki, they were so happy, it wouldn’t make for a lot of drama.

    MF: What do you hope people take from the film?
    ZB: It’s wonderful to lead people to Tove’s works. It’s wonderful to let people know this kind of exceptional artist exists, and excited and her works are wonderful. I hope that we were able to create an honest portrait of a young, female artist. I hope that people connect with her and her experiences.

    MF: Can you recommend another film directed by a woman for our readers to seek out?
    ZB: I love works by Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold and the Argentine film director Lucrecia Martel. I would recommend to get to know those filmmakers and getting to know their work. Also, I recommend Isabella Eklöf’s ‘Holiday’. It is delicate and violent at the same time. It’s bold in the way that is made that makes me respect the filmmaker herself. I think it touched me and it disturbed me.

    Holiday (directed by Isabella Eklöf)

    Victoria Carmen Sonne in 'Holiday'
    Victoria Carmen Sonne in ‘Holiday’

    Isabella Eklöf attended the National Film School of Denmark and made her feature screenwriting debut co-writing the acclaimed fantasy film ‘Border’ with director Ali Abbasi. Her feature film directorial debut ‘Holiday’ screened at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival in World Cinema Dramatic Competition section. It won two awards at Fantastic Fest later that year, as well as four Bodil Awards, which is the highest film honor in Denmark. ‘Holiday’ follows a young woman named Sascha as she embarks on a vacation to the Turkish Riviera with her drug dealer boyfriend. Unflinching in its depiction of violence against women, it also asks viewers to question what they think they know about certain women. A warning for viewers: there is an extremely graphic rape scene in this film.

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  • Female Filmmakers in Focus: Danielle Lessovitz on ‘Port Authority’ & ‘Ratcatcher’

    Female Filmmakers in Focus: Danielle Lessovitz on ‘Port Authority’ & ‘Ratcatcher’

    Port Authority (directed by Danielle Lessovitz)

    Leyna Bloom and Fionn Whitehead in 'Port Authority'
    Leyna Bloom and Fionn Whitehead in ‘Port Authority’

    Danielle Lessovitz has a degree in documentary film from Northwestern University, and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She is part of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, which is a community of filmmakers who support each other with peer workshops. She has directed numerous short documentaries and narrative films.

    Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, ‘Port Authority’ debuted at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. It follows 20-year-old Paul (Fionn Whitehead), whose sister fails to meet him at New York City’s Port Authority terminal. After nearly being robbed on the subway, he meets Lee (McCaul Lombardi), who helps him find a spot in a homeless shelter and work on an eviction crew. One night Paul finds himself drawn to the kiki ballroom scene, where he meets Wye (Leyna Bloom) and falls hard for her. Shot on location in NYC and featuring luminous cinematography by Jomo Fray, Lessovitz’s film effortlessly explores chosen family, toxic masculinity, acceptance, and desire, while also capturing the tender feelings of young love.

    ‘Port Authority’ is available in select theaters May 28th and on demand and digital June 1st.
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    Moviefone spoke to Danielle Lessovitz about her new film.

    Moviefone: What drew you to the subject of ball culture?
    Danielle Lessovitz: I had just experienced with my father, who I hadn’t met until I was 19 but developed a close relationship with, he had just taken his life. I was then invited to a ball, and while there I had this incredible experience. It’s really hard to explain those moments, but you see someone who is in front of you and it’s as if their spirit is lifted out of their body, and that spirit is not bound to the normal rules or laws that we think of bodies being bound to. So, no gender or gender that can be fluid between one or the other, and an expressiveness that was overwhelming to me. So there was that moment, and then afterwards I was talking to people and really became aware of how active still, at least in the kiki ballroom scene, the idea of family and chosen family and those lineages and intergenerational lineages. How active they are, how supportive they are. People having brothers and sisters and aunts and cousins that are not genetically linked to them.

    As someone who is queer, I had always wanted to play on what that falling in love process is like. Because, at least for me, I’m not really aware of gender when I’m falling in love with someone. I usually realize after, like oh that person is that gender. When I was younger, I grew up in Kansas City in the 90s in a very evangelical – even though I’m not evangelical – community, it was a really shameful experience. So I began to understand that there are a lot of men in the world, who love, who are attracted to women of trans experience, but their experience of that in terms of social roles might have something to do with my experience being queer in the sense that there is a real social shaming that happens. Like, are you gay are you not gay? Especially at the time when this was being developed, there wasn’t a lot of discourse around these subjects, and so you have a lot of women of trans experience and [cis] men who fall in love and have thise attraction and they can’t be out with their love, they have to kind of hide still.

    So I wanted to kind of put all of these influences together, my own grieving process, my understanding of toxic masculinity, internalized homophobia, tons of tons of research with trans women of color, years of going into the kiki ballroom scene and talking to everyone, and sort of put it together in one experience for the characters in the film.

    MF: I thought it was really interesting that you present two different looks at chosen families. While in the ballroom family, Paul is able to open up, but in the shelter family, he becomes closed off. How did you develop that dichotomy?
    DL: I feel like it’s difficult in general, but especially for men to be vulnerable in certain spaces, especially in the U.S. where competition and ideas of exceptionalism are so popular. That to show vulnerability is to show weakness, and to show weakness is to invite a kind of judgement or pain or humiliation or social exile. So I wanted to contrast these two communities. One with Lee and Paul in the homeless shelter where things have to be dominant and being exploitative is a badge of honor. And the other culture, that has developed the most incredible responses to an exploitative dominant culture, and being able to resist that culture. Being able to reclaim their humanity. To experience joy, to experience connection, to experience togetherness. To celebrate their differences, but also to celebrate their common dignity. I wanted to put those two ways of being in contrast with each other, sort of juxtaposing them to suggest where we are in some ways as a society, and the choices a lot of us have to make in terms of who we want to be. Do we want to participate, do we want to consent to a culture that is very harmful, very oppressive, or do we want to find our own way of being in the world that understands that that is there and finds ways of saying no to it.

    MF: How did you wind up casting Leyna Bloom as Wye?
    DL: Immediately I felt like this was someone who was generous, very generous in bringing themselves to the role, very generous in saying what felt good for them, and honoring their own lived experience. I think she is very gifted in bringing nuance and subtlety and bringing herself in a fresh, present way to every moment of performance. It was shocking and striking and unbelievably exciting to watch someone who had no acting experience, suddenly blossom in front of the camera.

    MF: I love the locations around New York and the beautiful color story of the cinematography. What kind of lenses and cameras did you use to achieve that?
    DL: We shot on an Alexa Mini, with these new lenses that had never been used before. It was like glass, but they weren’t coated. Normally the coating prevents these big lens flares from happening, or controls the light in a certain way. The DP Jomo Fray wanted something that felt controlled, but wild in ways we hadn’t seen before in terms of an image. Also, trying to find ways where the image fights against itself, to mirror the way that Paul internally fights against himself.

    MF: How did you choose the night locations to get that beautiful neon glow?
    DL: That pizza place was a total accident. We went on a whole tech scout and I didn’t have a location for that. So the whole crew, about fifteen of us, we just walked randomly. At some point the gaffer was eating a piece of pizza, and I looked at him and thought: always follow the gaffers. So I asked him where he got the pizza, and he was like “it’s just over there!” So we went to the pizza place and we found that there was this just beautiful red light, and I was like, of course the gaffer’s going to be naturally drawn to a place with nice lighting.

    MF: What do you hope people take away from this film?
    DL: I’m hoping that people transcend, or find a moment or space to transcend what they know about themselves, to go beyond the labels that we attach to ourselves, be it race or gender or economic status. To understand that it’s possible to connect to other human beings beyond pain, beyond shared pain. What did you take away from it?

    MF: I love any movie that’s about chosen family because I think there’s still a stigma in this country about blood relatives versus who is actually good for you. My best family member is my chosen sister, so I felt validated by the film.
    DL: That’s a good one. For people to choose who it is they love and who they want to be a family with.

    Ratcatcher (directed by Lynne Ramsay)

    William Eadie in 'Ratcatcher'
    William Eadie in ‘Ratcatcher’

    MF: Can you recommend another film directed by a woman for readers to seek out?
    DL: Lynne Ramsey’s ‘Ratcatcher’ was like the biggest influence on me. It manages to deal with character interiority in a totally radical way. We’re watching the film, and we understand where our main character is emotionally, and sensorially the entire time. And she manages to use these small moments to evoke really big feelings. There’s a moment where he plays with the hole in his mom’s sock, and it’s just so small, but you’re like yeah this is what it’s like to love a parent, you know? Of just like playing with this hole and wanting this hole to not be there. I think she is a genius. It’s such a profoundly advanced film, directorially.

    Lynne Ramsay graduated from National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, England in 1995. She has directed seven shorts, and four feature films, nearly all of them award winners. Her latest film, ‘You Were Never Really Here’ saw her win the award for Best Screenplay, while star Joaquin Phoenix won the award for Best Actor at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Set in Glasgow in 1973 during a nation-wide garbage strike, her evocative debut feature film ‘Ratcatcher’ follows a young boy named James (William Eadie) as he grows up among this chaos.

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