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Q&A with James Sweeney and Dylan O’Brien

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

I’m curious about your collaboration process. Did you have a chance to rehearse, or was it more about trading ideas before filming?
Dylan O’Brien: It went on for a while, actually. For years we were getting passed on by financiers, so in the meantime we kept checking in, updating each other, commiserating. That ended up being invaluable, because we built a real relationship before the cameras ever rolled. You can’t predict chemistry, but you can align on taste and life experience. We had so many conversations, not just about the film but about who we are as people. That made the collaboration feel organic once we started.

James Sweeney: We do have different working styles, but they complemented each other. I come from theater and focus heavily on text analysis. I like repetition, I like a lot of takes, and I don’t tire of it. Dylan, on the other hand, is fast and spontaneous: he trained on a breakneck TV schedule. So he thrives on immediacy. We had to find a balance, but those differences actually led to happy accidents! Filmmaking is about creating the right environment so those sparks of honesty can happen.

Writing, for me, is rewriting

Can you talk about the experience of directing while you’re also acting?
JS: On my first microbudget film I didn’t even have playback. Here we had a VTR operator so I could check things technically: camera moves, blocking, stuff like that. But honestly, I didn’t have time to review take after take. And as an actor, when the scene feels good in the moment, you can trust that. The hardest part wasn’t acting and directing, it was producing at the same time… like, the loan was literally in my name. As a producer you’re fighting to stay on time and on budget; as a director you’re fighting for the creative. That tension was brutal.

DO: Normally producers buffer the director from those pressures. But James had to carry it himself, which is a huge emotional burden. What impressed me is how prepared he was. His shot lists were incredibly precise. He knew if something was a single shot, he committed to it. That clarity conserved our energy and maximized our days. I’ve worked with really accomplished filmmakers who still doubt themselves, who shoot coverage “just in case,” and waste hours… James never did that.

JS: I think my acting background helped. I was always conscious of continuity, of what it takes for actors to build a performance. Even in scheduling I was strategic—we shot the rougher scenes before a holiday break, then returned for the more pivotal material so Dylan could make both a physical and emotional transformation. That kind of planning really mattered.

I have to ask about the fight scene. How did you approach performing and shooting that?
JS: Honestly, Dylan did the heavy lifting. We had a great stunt coordinator, and we lucked out with one of our supporting actors, who happened to be a gymnast. That made the choreography flow. We shot it in freezing weather, no stunt doubles, and it all played out practically.

DO: Dancers and gymnasts are perfect for stunt work—it’s choreography. He was incredible. And we leaned on James’ detail-oriented eye. After takes I’d say, “That hit didn’t land, we need another,” and we’d check playback together. It was fascinating to see James apply his meticulousness to something as chaotic as a fight scene.

JS: I also had to push back a little. Our Steadicam operator wanted to shoot it like a typical action sequence, constantly moving. But that wasn’t the film’s visual language. I wanted minimal coverage and wide shots, something more deliberate. The choreography was strong enough to hold. In moments like that, you need the confidence to stick to your vision.

James, the film balances humor and poignancy, and has such careful pacing. It’s a wonderful script. What’s your writing process like?
JS: I wrote the first draft back in 2015, after a breakup. Writing, for me, is rewriting. The structural skeleton of the film, its plants and payoffs, took years to refine. Originally it was entirely from one character’s perspective. Around 2019, I shifted to a dual perspective, which unlocked the story. It let us see one protagonist solely through the other’s eyes before switching. That structural choice was pivotal.

I also believe in doing “character drafts.” I’ll read through the script from just one character’s point of view: does this feel authentic, does this person have agency? That process gave secondary characters real depth. For example, Marcy’s moment of drawing a boundary—“you can’t talk to me like that”—came late, but once I added it, she felt fully realized.

The consistency of perspective mattered too. The film starts from Roman’s POV, then shifts to Dennis, and finally uses split-screen to share perspective. We never deviate from that. For me, grammar in storytelling is as important as grammar in language. Once you set the rules, you follow them. That discipline guided the writing.

Q&A with Giovanni Tortorici

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

What were your conversations with the editor like? In some scenes, you insert shots of things that feel almost violent and expressionistic.
Giovanni Tortorici: I talked about the visual style before the editing began with my editor, Marco Costa, but that was more about the shots that I took. In general, I was very aware of the shots and angles I wanted in the film.  

I heard your first cut was three hours.
It was a little bit more, three hours and thirteen minutes. Because the part where he’s at the University of Siena is very long with a lot of scenes. For that it was very important to work with Marco, because the Siena part didn’t feel very smooth. We cut a lot. It was a bit difficult to calculate the length of the movie because there were a lot of silent scenes in the script. We were calculating from the page, but sometimes there were five scenes on a page because they were all without dialogue, so that complicated the anticipated length. 

he finds a morality that defends him from all these instincts

What was it like working with Luca Guadagnino as a producer, and as a mentor? Did you ever have to defend your choices?
No, it was totally the opposite because as a director, he understood all my artistic needs. He protected me from anything that took away from artistic needs. It was fantastic; he gave me total freedom in my choices.

You shot in the same apartment that you lived in as a student. Did that feel weird, going back there?
Yeah, I remember doing scoutings for an apartment, and of course none of them were exactly the same. At a certain point I thought that maybe we could have tried to reach the old apartment where I lived in Siena and we found it. It felt very weird at the beginning because I was twenty-seven when I was shooting, so it had been like eight years since I was in there. It was very strange to re-live those emotions and feelings in that apartment.

With the writing, do you try to stick close to reality or is there a point where you intentionally try to fictionalize it to create distance?
In general, I love when it’s super close to reality. That was my goal. There were some narrative bits I had to change, but when I felt like we were fulfilling the realism of the original past, I was delighted.

What was the process like casting an actor to essentially play yourself?
It was a long process. I worked with the casting director to audition all around Italy, because I love the realism. I was hoping that we could find a person from Palermo because I’m from Palermo. In the end, the guy we loved the most of all was Manfredi [Marini], and it was lucky that he was from Palermo. So I was very happy. From the first time that we saw him, we knew he was super good, sensitive, and very open-minded. It was a big pleasure to work with him.

As a new actor, how did you get him ready for his first shoot?
He was a little bit shy, and I’m very sensitive to that. But that happened more in the rehearsals. When he was in front of the actual cameras, he worked perfectly. I was trustful and patient and waited until we were on set, and he did very well.

I’m curious as to how you balanced the contemporary music and classical music used in the film?
Again, I really wanted to be realistic. I put in music that I was listening to, and in general, I really liked the idea of this contrast between the classical music that was more in touch with his sensitivity, along with the contemporary music of their era, 2015. I think that there is this contrast even inside himself, because he’s very attracted to the past, but at the same time, even if he’s in denial, he’s also very attracted to the contemporary. I felt the music was reflecting this a bit.

Why do you think he had this obsession with an older time period?
For this character, I think it’s kind of neurosis because he’s a very repressed person, and he’s scared of his instincts and sexuality. In the past, in this literature, he finds a morality that defends him from all these instincts.

I know you studied literature and there are fascinating montages and images and also a lot of visual text in the film. I’m curious about how those were written into the screenplay?
I knew it was going to be a challenge to represent literature in the movie, but I still wanted to be very realistic and I was just thinking about the images that I was having while writing the script. I thought animation would be good to represent that. I worked with this animator and I told her what I was imagining and she reproduced it with these animations. In general, I think it was all planned ahead of time because I knew it would be a little bit tricky.

You spoke before about realism and the importance of realism and that really comes across to the audience. I’m wondering when you were thinking about the film and designing it, were there any shots or particular elements that you thought were really important to evoke that feeling of realism with the audience?
In general, I was imagining a lot of the images of the movie, but I deeply love to go on set and feel free to do whatever I want. I want to be inspired by the location, by the faces, by the light, by the very moment. I don’t like to do storyboards. I deeply love to go on set and rehearse with the actors, see the scenes, and then decide all the shots.

Q&A with Sophie Brooks, Logan Lerman, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Molly Gordon

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Sophie, let’s start with the genesis: how did this project begin?
Sophie Brooks: It really does feel like a miracle when an indie gets made. We almost made this movie in 2020 and thought, “this is easy,” but it ended up taking another four and a half years. It was early COVID, and my agent encouraged me to write something we could shoot in lockdown. Molly and I were already close friends—we were in a pod—and one weekend we decided to develop the story together. I wrote the first draft in a two-and-a-half-week fever dream in my childhood bedroom. Five years later, here …

Molly, you were involved from the beginning. What was the development process like from your side?
Molly Gordon: We’d improvise scenes and then Sophie would write from those. Then we’d give notes and she’d revise. It felt like doing theater in the woods—nobody was working on anything else at the time. It was a gift, especially for me as an actor. I haven’t had many chances to stretch into darker, messier territory, and getting to explore the line between being crazy and being driven mad—especially as a woman—was really fulfilling.

It felt chaotic in the best way

Let’s talk about that first car scene. It’s visually dynamic and layered, and it really sells their chemistry right away.
Logan Lerman: It was so hot that day. I was sweating nonstop, but it was also fun. The whole point of that scene is to have a good time and set up the characters, even though shooting in a car is always tricky. There were subtle choices that helped hint at their dynamic.

MG: That scene felt very personal. I always wear hats (like, even on dates), and Sophie told me to lose it for this one. Our costume designer put me in that dress, and I still tried to sneak in a hat to hide. But then he takes a call, and suddenly I want to be seen. Taking it off and putting in a hair clip while driving is totally chaotic, but also intentional. Sophie was flipping the trope: men are usually the “good drivers” in films, and she wanted to subvert that.

SB: Honestly, we did the least improv in that scene because of all the logistics. We had follow cars, timing, camera choreography. The hat became a storytelling device. We had a nice beat change when she takes it off. And yes, we’re hoping no one’s wondering how she’s steering while her hands are in her hair!

Geraldine, Max has this great arc: comic at first but later grounding. What was your approach?Geraldine Viswanathan: Max is ride-or-die. If Iris is going down, Max is going with her. When Iris says, “Should we kill him?” we were constantly playing with whether she’s serious or not. Max doesn’t judge; she just does what needs doing. That wasn’t hard to tap into.

SB: We leaned into every trope about women—including witches. I was obsessed with Charmed growing up and genuinely believed I’d become a witch after puberty. That never happened, unfortunately. But it felt fun to explore that sincerely. Max and Iris have the kind of friendship where you can throw out “Should we kill him?” and walk it back safely. That trust lets them go full witchy together. It adds texture without turning into parody.

The film is also visually rich and stylized. What went into developing that look?
SB: My DP and I storyboarded everything. The first act is lush and romantic with a lot of handheld and movement. Then act two gets more static: Logan’s character is tied up and Molly’s the only one moving. We worked hard to keep that visually interesting despite the limitations. By the third act, the visual language blends both styles. We also focused on color and warmth. When the audience first arrives at the house, we want them to believe the love story.

MG: Once we were in that room, the claustrophobia kicked in. We used two cameras and let takes run long. Logan and I were just alone in there, reacting in real time. Sophie gave us space to go deep—or go completely off the rails. She’d gently call cut when we drifted too far.

LL: A lot of rehearsal helped. We tried different versions: am I really scared? Am I bluffing? Sophie gave us room to experiment so she could choose the right balance in the edit. Once we were comfortable, we hit a rhythm. We’d shout over each other, get messy; it felt alive. And shooting in chronological order helped. You don’t have to recreate what happened yesterday—you just did it.

GV: I came in partway through filming, which actually helped. That first scene where I arrive, I really was catching up in real time. It brought energy and a sense of discovery. Plus, we kept breaking from laughing… especially with John. It felt chaotic in the best way.

There’s a lot of great music in the film. How did that come together?
SB: I made a playlist while writing and used it when pitching the movie. Some of those tracks made it in. Jillian Ennis, our music supervisor, was amazing… she found great alternatives when rights were too expensive. The score leans into a country vibe, and we wanted the needle drops to feel a little early-2000s throwback. We loved those moments in movies when a great pop song just hits.

Logan, I have to ask: were you really tied up?
LL: I was! And I loved it. The only thing I cared about was the bed frame. Once that was sorted, I was good. People sometimes forgot the keys, so I may have missed a lunch or two. But compared to an action movie? Being in bed all day talking? That’s a dream for an actor.

Q&A with Eva Victor and Lucas Hedges

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Sorry, Baby.

The film feels like you have a lot of trust in the audience to be patient, to wait for explanations, and to understand nuance. Was it that way during development?
Eva Victor: Yes. I was honestly forced to be because I wrote the movie in 2021 and then sent it to my producers a couple months after I wrote it. And then we spent two years developing me as a director because I’d never done anything before. I kept asking, why would they let me do this thing? And then finally I realized, I want to direct. I called them and I said, I want to do it. And they were like, okay. It was like, oh, all I had to was declare it and really be confident enough to say I wanted to do it.

I wanted the first shot to feel like this moment of, okay, I’m going with you to show you how stillness exists in this film and invite you to sit and watch and settle so that we can inhale and exhale and then get started. After coming from the world of making videos online that had to be like 59 seconds or Instagram would cut them off, it was a real balm to make something that decided to take its time. That was what I was craving. I had to walk away from anyone’s reactions to what I was making and focus on, how can I make a film that’s slow but still has energy?

There’s this real lust for life in caring about your work

The structure helps that a lot. We definitely feel the passage of time throughout the film due to the non-linear nature. Was that a part of it early on?
EV: Yeah, I always had the chapter that starts the film be present day. And then we go back to the past and move each year. There were a few reasons for that. My first instinct was that I wanted to do that. The film was about friendship first and foremost, this main relationship between Agnes and Lydie, so I wanted the film to start with joy. So much of my job in setting up the film was letting everyone feel like they could laugh as soon as possible. That’s a part of the experience of watching the film. When things get hard, there’s a world where we can come back to laughter because we’ve already established it at the beginning. Also, I was protective over Agnes, and I wanted you to meet Agnes and not know what happened to her because I think we have a tendency to flatten people who’ve been through this kind of trauma, and paint people as tragic figures, because we’re protecting ourselves from imagining it could happen to us or to people we love. I wanted Agnes to be a full person so that later you can’t look away or dismiss her. I wanted you to fall in love with her and Lydie so that you feel the pain when they aren’t as happy later. You need to feel their love so there’s something to fight for, something to return to.

How did you connect with Lucas [Hedges] for the role of Gavin?
EV: I wrote him a bit of a letter. I wrote him a letter where I gave him basically a million compliments.

Lucas Hedges: There was also a million dollars.

EV: Right! I thought he was amazing. There were all these performances that I’d seen over a time that accumulated into what I was looking for. I didn’t know who he was, but I was right about his energy being so warm and he’s also so funny. He’s an antidote to the pain in the film a bit, energetically. He and Agnes get to live in a fun romcom along the way, one that feels light in moments. It was really nice to weave in romance, and an awkward romance.

LH: I agree! I read the letter. Sometimes I get sent nice letters by people whose scripts I don’t love. That doesn’t usually mean as much. So, I read the letter and I was like, oh, that’s sweet. You know? Sweet. And then I read the script, and the script blew me away. I was reading the script and I thought, I can’t wait to go back and read the letter again! I wanted to be a part of this project. I mean, I probably read the letter a few times, honestly. I was in awe of the fact that I’d been asked to be in this film and then asked in such a generous way. It was a dream come true.

What was it like shooting the bathtub scene? It looked very vulnerable and intimate.
LH: There was real water in the tub, actually! It was warm, then it was cold, then it got warm again.

EV: It was so hard.

LH: It was pretty cold.  

EV: That bathtub was very small and my original script didn’t have a line in it about it, so I added it. And then when Gavin reacts, your improv was so true.

LH: Oh really?

Eva Victor: I say this bathtub is small and you’re like, “what, this tub?” You were so true. The bathroom was so small that we had to shoot the scene in pieces. It was the most challenging thing we had to do because it was a vulnerable scene and I was in the bathtub the entire time, so I was just like monitoring the bathtub.

LH: And then there are crew members who are like hovering with mics.

EV: That scene is very interesting because people are taking different things from it. I think there’s this fantasy that Agnes just had this vulnerable return to pleasure in her body that he was a witness to. He did a really good job of witnessing that by not being a part of it, but by holding that moment for her to do what she needed to do. Then he gets in the tub and that hug is so nice. And then he says, “do you think you want to be a mom?” and “well, people change their minds, people want to be moms eventually.”

LH: He gives her what she needs in their intimate moment. He then does the emotionally wrong thing later. In their initial exchange, he’s able to be the witness, but then in the bathtub he comes in with an angle, with an idea.

EV: Exactly.

LH: It’s a delayed moment.

EV: I’ve heard from men and women who watch that part and guys will sometimes be like, that was so nice when he said that thing about her being mom. And the women who watched it were like, ugh, I can’t believe he said that thing. It’s a thing, when guys see you like a mom, and you’re actually a whole person. But I do think Gavin’s heart is very pure and he is imagining the future in fantasy and so is she. Then there’s a moment when she returns to being like, oh, I guess I am alone again. It’s just the way life moves. But they keep hooking up because he comes to the house later on, chronologically, so they keep it going for a little while.

His reasoning for why she would be a good mom—I think this first thing he says is “you’re nice.”  
EV: So brutal.

LH: That’s so interesting, I was like, it’s such a great scene! He’s such a great guy.

EV: That’s why it works.

LH: No, I’m joking.

EV: You are, but you’re also not. No, Lucas played it perfectly because the character is trying to connect and move into depth.

Eva, there’s been a lot of talk about what a great debut this is with the script and the directing, but it’s also a beautifully honed performance from you, especially the way you delicately portray Agnes before and after the thing that happened. Can you talk about that aspect?
EV: It was helpful because by the time I started my acting prep, I’d written the script like two years before. I actually didn’t know some of the answers to why I made things certain ways in the script. I had to trust my past self that there’s a reason something was the way it was, and find a way to understand that. There was a lot of me and my acting coach mapping things out, like, there are these three scenes before this thing happens. Obviously, this kind of violence is devastating for a bunch of reasons. There’s a sort of divorcing of the body from the mind, without permission. Someone forced that on you. Another thing that came up when we were talking was this person’s life force and creative energy. This person’s in grad school. It’s a gift you give yourself to say, I’m going to spend my time on this thing I’m passionate about. There’s this real lust for life in caring about your work, and he robs her of that joy and excitement for the future. That was something that had to exist in a couple scenes before we see what happens. It was also really important to me that we didn’t undermine her by making him feel evil along the way. Louis [Cancelmi] and I worked really hard to make it feel like there is this vibe, there is this creative alignment. That is sensual, even if it’s platonic; it can be nuanced. She could even have a crush on him—that’s not what happened, but even if she did, that would be okay. She’s a young person who’s dreaming and there’s an energy with this person and he robs her of her ability to dream. Working on those scenes, we really had to show the youth and the hope. It was such a relief to get to do the scene where she is teaching, because that marked for me a moment of not being self-conscious. She’s finally in her purpose again and she has all this stuff to say about the book and the students are engaged. That’s what’s taken from her when a knock comes to the door from Natasha and pulls her back into this whole other thing. 

But also, I come from a more comedic place, and she’s so calm. Her saying, “I think I want to light Decker’s office on fire,” felt like this trap. I had an instinct to ham it up, but I had to remind myself not to do that. Agnes was terrified that she might actually do that. And so Lydie’s the one who gets to be like, “I’ll do it.” She gets to be the more heroic part. For me, there was a constant calibration of what’s true and how does this journey unfold in a way that doesn’t feel like it has a bow on it, because that was what I was most worried about. I didn’t want it to feel like she landed somewhere ever, just that she’s constantly trying to live as best as she can.  

Q&A with Embeth Davidtz

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.

Congratulations on this powerful and sensitive film. When did Alexandra Fuller’s book first come to your attention, and what made you want to adapt it and take on so many roles?
Embeth Davitz: I read the book when it came out in 2003, and it just stayed with me. Though Alexandra grew up in Zimbabwe and I moved to South Africa at eight, there were so many parallels: children growing up surrounded by conflict, absorbing their parents’ beliefs, yet sensing the world was shifting under their feet. The characters, the child’s voice… it all resonated. I knew I wanted to focus on that fragile, electric time when her sister died and the war was ending. The mother’s heartbreak, the land, the loss… it was all so layered. I ended up expanding parts and writing many drafts myself until it felt true.

It wasn’t about me. It was about that child’s fragile, raw spirit.

The casting of Bobo is extraordinary. How did you find this young girl, and how did you work with her to get such a natural performance?
ED: It was probably the biggest challenge. We auditioned lots of kids through casting directors, but they felt too rehearsed, too polished. I needed a wild, unfiltered spirit; someone who hadn’t learned to “act.” So we put out a broad casting call across Southern Africa. A woman saw the post and sent in a photo of her daughter. The moment I saw her face, I thought, “That’s her.” She was seven, turned eight by the end of the shoot, and so alive. I didn’t want to suppress her spark by making her memorize lines. Instead, I fed her lines off-camera, distracted her, threw things at her. It was unpredictable and sometimes chaotic, but it captured that sense of a child who isn’t aware she’s performing. She was like that perfect cat in The Godfather: you couldn’t train it, you just captured it.

The film handles mature, sometimes brutal topics: racism, violence, the mother’s cruelty. And yet you chose not to show graphic violence. How did you navigate that line?
ED: Honestly, budget forced my hand. We didn’t have the money to stage large violent battle scenes. But in hindsight, it was a blessing. The war was horrifying, but you can imply horror more powerfully than showing it outright. So I used the radio a lot. People always had it on for news… and old TVs flickering in the background. You see a child eating a cookie while a man’s brains are blown out on screen. That’s the world she’s absorbing. It’s what’s behind the decaying walls of her family’s farm. I layered in music and sound: something rumbling in the hills, always approaching. That tension of unseen violence felt truer to how children sense danger.

Speaking of sound and music, how did you use them to support Bobo’s perspective?
ED: Sound design became one of the biggest storytelling tools in the edit. Each character has a theme—Bobo’s is light and bright at first, reflecting her innocence. As things unravel, that same tune distorts, drops a key, takes on an unsettling edge. Sarah has a beautiful, haunting theme. Sound works on the unconscious. It’s memory, it’s grief, it’s the voice of the land. I also layered in Zimbabwean poetry and the sounds of nature. The world felt alive that way… like the hills themselves were whispering.

The mother is such a difficult character… Racist, bitter, at times monstrous. Was it hard, as an actress, to make yourself so unlikeable?
ED: Incredibly hard. There’s always that ego voice saying, “Can’t we soften her just a bit?” But I had to stay true. There’s a moment you glimpse her grief: her children are buried on that land. She clings to it like it’s all she has left. But that doesn’t excuse her. I wanted Sarah, the black housekeeper, to rise as the quiet hero. That final shot (Bobo turning back to see Sarah as queen) was my way of showing what stays with her. What matters isn’t the mother’s bitterness: it’s the woman who rooted her to the earth and helped her survive.

You bought the rights hoping to play the mother. Did you always plan to direct too?
ED: Not at all. I spent years writing draft after draft, hoping to find a director who would understand the layers: the politics, the grief, the complicated point of view of a white child raised with deep-seated racism yet beginning to see through it. I couldn’t find that match, so I stepped in. It felt terrifying but necessary. By then, honestly, I didn’t want to act in it anymore. But in the end, it made me keep the focus on Bobo. It wasn’t about me. It was about that child’s fragile, raw spirit.

The title is so unusual. What does it mean?
ED: It comes from a British humorist: “Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight, for mother will be there.” In England, you say something’s “gone to the dogs” when it’s fallen apart. So it’s like: let’s not go there, because we know who we’ll find at the bottom: Mother. Alexandra Fuller’s memoir is really about her broken mother at its heart. And yes, there were always dogs—chaotic, loyal, half-wild. Her mother still lives on a farm in Zambia with ten dogs. The chaos of it just seemed right.