Simon, this is an incredible true story. How did you come to write the script?
Simon Farnaby: I was brought up around golf—my father was a greenskeeper at a little club in northeast England. Golf’s a game I love, but I came at it like Maurice [Flitcroft], from a lower-class angle.
What drew you to this material and inspired you to direct the film?
Sian Heder: I came to this because it was originally a studio film, and Lionsgate was looking to do a remake of La famille Bélier, a French film that came out in 2014.
How did you end up bringing it to the screen?
Daniel Pearle: Jim Parsons read the play and he had just started his company, That’s Wonderful.
The scene where you go to see your family is amazing. Can you talk about how that came together?
It was ninety degrees in August, in New York City, in the projects. So you can imagine… just the smell!
Can you take us through the process of making this film? There was a long period of time when you were building toward something like this.
Chloé Zhao: During my third year at NYU, I was thinking about what feature film to make. That’s when I first went out to Pine Ridge.
At what point in the filmmaking process did you realize you were going to structure the movie as you did, shifting perspective from Eden to Victoria?
Gerard Bush: Well, first, since the movie was based on a nightmare that I had, and since that really is what the nightmare showed me, it felt important to both of us that we respect that source material!
The way you build tension throughout the film is incredible. How did you approach that?
n a very organic way, it’s a girl against time. Suspense comes naturally from that premise, by using the DNA of the true story.
The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of A Hero. What was your writing process like, as this idea has been with you for a while? Asghar Farhadi: When I was developing the concept of this idea in my head as a student, I was never thinking about […]
I’d love to hear how you developed the script.
Andrea Pallaoro: Well, it’s a film that I had envisioned as part of a much larger exploration on the traumas and the dynamics of what it means to feel abandoned and the consequences of that.
Can you each talk about your first impression of the painting that inspired this film?
Mbatha-Raw: I first saw a postcard reproduction of it that I bought in a gift shop.
You did almost all of the work on this film— what was that experience like?
Jessica Kingdon: I did have a close cinematographer, Nathan Truesdell, and we shot it together. But, yeah, it was very much a film that was coming out of my own mind.
What was the process like between you two as you developed the screenplay?
Well the the screenplay developed in a really, to use an overused word, organic way. I knew he was a fine writer. I gave him a premise that I had been sitting on for about a decade. He did the writing, but we developed the story and the feel and the texture of it together.
Mr. Kauflin, what was your reaction when you were approached about being in this film?
Kauflin: When Al asked me that, we had already known each other for a few years; he was a good buddy of mine. I knew he was a great drummer, and apparently he’s a good surfer as well.
A.V. Rockwell: I really wanted to tell a story, especially for my first film, that recognized my coming of age experience in New York City…
Scarlett, how long have you been thinking about directing?
Scarlett Johansson: I’ve been thinking about directing since I was a kid, really, but the first time was when I was doing The Horse Whisperer, and I was working with Bob Redford and watching him command the set.