The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of East of Wall.

Kate, as a first-time director, you went out looking for a story. How did you discover these women and this story?
Kate Beecroft: I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I always wanted to be a writer and director, but when you’re a young girl, everyone tells you should be an actress. I went to drama school in London but just to study Shakespeare. I love storytelling, but I don’t like acting. I’m also a production designer for commercials, because I really love world building. When I first met Tabatha and Porshia, I had never seen their kind of world before—how modern they feel in the west. That really guided me.

I was on a road trip with my Cinematographer [Austin Shelton] and I didn’t think that we would be making a feature. We were just getting little things because I had no resume! I thought, maybe I can get something to put on Instagram so I can get hired to direct a music video or something. We took a wrong turn, found a woman and she said, if you want an amazing story, head east of Wall and you’ll find Tabatha. That’s what I did. And I met these two incredible women along with the rest of the teenagers on the ranch. And I just fell in love with them. They were the faces and spirits that I’ve been dying to see in film. I ended up spending about three years living with them before even writing the script. It was important to learn as much as I could from them to collaborate on this project.

she was the key to all the authenticity

Tabatha, what was it like having this woman live with you for three years?
Tabatha Zimiga: I mean, first meeting Kate, I thought she was full of Hollywood, you know?

KB: Well, I was wearing a trucker hat and dirty jeans, and despite living on a truck for two weeks, I did still look Hollywood!

TZ: She did, she did. You can just tell when someone is not from your area.

KB: Not corn fed!

TZ: Exactly. No, it was really awesome to work with Kate. Within a few hours of meeting her, I felt safe with her, I trusted her, and that’s something that I don’t give out easily. Having Kate come out to the ranch, she dug right into everything. She sat on the floor and blow-dried a baby calf in the middle of a storm trying to keep it alive. She’s helped in every aspect. She can ride now.

KB: That’s a compliment coming from you! I’m not good.

TZ: It was awesome to have her immersed into our lifestyle, and she’s taught us a lot about this world.

Porshia Zimiga: When I first saw Kate, I thought she was not going to last here. She didn’t know anything about farm animals, but she fit right in once she learned everything. We can keep her.

Can you talk about how the film was shot? It looks incredible.
KB: My cinematographer Austin, this was his first feature as well. We found the story together. A lot of people who have watched the film have asked, what are your references? And our references are really how we shot them the first five days of meeting them… so much was happening and that’s when we kind of developed this more verité style. I think with South Dakota, a lot of people will lean into Terrence Malick. And it’s funny because I actively tried not to do that. So then, like Indiewire is like “it’s so Terrence Malick” and I’m like, no, we tried not to do that! Because their life feels more Andrea Arnold, more in your face, more chaotic. But if we are ever going to use that Terrence Malick lens or Days of Heaven lens, I need it to just be for very specific moments. I didn’t want to rely on the gorgeous sunsets; I wanted to have both. It was also very important to me to have Tabatha’s lens in it as well. And the girls’ lens. All the TikTok footage, that’s all footage they’ve had for years. They use TikTok in their daily life, and Snapchat, and I knew I wanted their fingerprints on it. I didn’t want it to feel like mine. There were also a lot of conversations I had with Tabby, like, how would you shoot this horse? What do you see when you look at this? I wanted it to be as authentic as possible, and she was the key to all the authenticity.

What was it like consulting on the visuals, Tabatha?
TZ: Oh, I’m always behind the camera at home. I take videos. I probably should have went into photography. My phone is bursting with thousands of pictures of horses and the kids and videos and clips that I’ve done and all that. If I see something that I think needs to be photographed, I will stop in the middle of whatever I’m doing, get down on the ground if I need that angle, and I don’t care about anything else.  It was cool to work with Kate on that, with the respect she gave me and the love and always asking my opinion. Together we made something epic, I think.

I’m glad that you used that word together because this is a collaborative medium and I have to say that I really appreciate many of the production elements of the film, especially the way it’s cut and the way it sounds.
KB: We had an amazing editor, Jen [Vecchiarello], who has cut incredible films. She did this film for like no money because she wanted to help tell the story. And I’m not a precious director. I’m not someone who is going to lie and pretend that I know all the answers. That’s why I love collaborating so much. We were ruthless in the edit—the script was pretty different, but the heart was still the same. If something wasn’t working, I would be the first one to say, get rid of it.

It was fun to collaborate on that, but also Tabby’s life is so overstimulating, constantly. I wanted to capture that. All the music in the film, the entire soundtrack is songs from Tabby’s Spotify playlist that I begged the producers to get me the money for. Two Shaboozey tracks in an indie film! That was intentional to get it to feel like ‘slice of life,’ to feel like verité, to feel like documentary, because I didn’t want to put a Hollywood bow at the end of everyone’s stories. And I think a lot of people are like, well, what happened with Jesse? What happened with this? These kids are still living their lives. Who am I to go in and tie up their stories and put a fake bow on how their life is meant to end? To me, that’s the real doc element to this story. That could be really damaging to someone’s life, especially to a kid, to be like, “this is where I hope you ended up!” No, I’m just going to leave it because it’s still happening. People always ask Tabby what she’s doing now. And she’s like, that shit! Cowboy shit, that stuff you just saw!

The sound design was also super important. I waited a very long time—we even missed certain festivals because I was waiting so long for this guy Sergio Diaz to do our sound design. He’s done Roma, Pans Labyrinth, Into the Wild, all of my favorite films. I just love his sound design. Sound design is one of my favorite things to collaborate on, and their whole life is just full of sound, so it needed to be perfect.

Can you talk about this experience, both shooting and promoting the film, and what it means for girls and young women? The portrayal of them in the film feels special.
TZ: That is exactly what we were going for and I can’t believe the response that we’ve gotten from almost everybody. It’s incredible. I don’t know if I’ve woken up yet, but I’m blown away by people. It was also super scary. I’m still kind of in a little box and I try not to think about the fact that the whole world is looking inside me right now. The response from people has been so beautiful.  

PZ: I love to see people are enjoying watching it as much as we enjoyed filming it. It was remarkable making this.

What was most enjoyable about filming?  
PZ: Working with Kate, obviously, and my horse! I loved riding my horse. All of those scenes of him running across the field, we’d do that daily, and it’s one our favorite things to do. And just filming it was fun, I like making movies.  

KB: I think that every teenage horse girl wants an epic shot of them on their favorite horse. So now she has a bank full of that footage!