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Jello Biafra

Samantha, how has your background as an actor helped you move into directing?

Sam: My behind-the-scenes filmmaking career actually started in documentaries. But yes, I love acting and Marie and I both love working with actors, so the move to fiction felt natural and organic. It certainly helps me understand one basic truth: No matter what pressure a director can feel on a set, it’s nothing compared to what is put on an actor’s shoulders between the words “action” and “cut”. That puts things into perspective.

Marie: One of the perks of our partnership for me has always been that Sam brings an actor’s sensibility. I came more from a visual, photography background, and loved internalizing Sam’s approach (and vice versa). Apart from the on-set work with actors, we incorporate an actor’s approach to everything we write. If something looks good on the page, but when we ‘act it out’ we can’t go from Beat A to Beat B, we know something is wrong.

Has this given you a better connection with your actors?

Sam: I hope my years of working with good and bad directors have made me someone whom actors feel free to communicate with and trust. Marie and I both understand that everyone approaches the work from different places and with different methods.

Marie: We respect that and try to create a safe and honest space on set. Our rule is that the acting comes first. If the shot is perfect, but what is happening within the frame isn’t, the movie dies.

Have you always been interested in filmmaking?

Yes. We both took different kinds of detours in our lives, but the passion for cinema and storytelling, in general, was always there. And now, looking back, we can imbue our filmmaking work with everything else we have done, which carves out our specific perspective.

As a filmmaker how important is the collaborative process for you? 

It’s everything. Being a directing and writing team, collaboration is baked into our DNA. You can’t make a film without collaboration, at least not the kind of film we want to make. “A Film By…” rarely tells the whole story. Articulating a vision that your collaborators can find their special access to and empowering everybody to do their best work is what makes directing special.

On Sister Aimee in particular, we met with our DP, Carlos Valdes-Lora, before we even wrote the first draft. We included Carlos and our production designer, Jonathan Rudak, on each pass of the script to make sure what we were writing was something we could achieve (or at least would give them enough time to figure out how to achieve it). Our producer, Bettina Barrow, gave notes on every draft and did everything in her power to make sure we had the right cast. We talked to our casting directors long before we started that process. Our first AD, Hugo Kenzo, knows our work and was instrumental in making sure we made

our days and kept the vision intact. And we wrote this with Anna Margaret in mind, which makes a huge difference in terms of how the character is developed.