Let's go," or was there a little more, more to it?

Yeah, I wish it was that easy.

You know what? I had no idea how to get into film, so I...

What actually happened is I met my now husband, who is a filmmaker, and I was trying to make dance films or something.

And we started Just he was trying to teach me about film and figure out, like, where my voice was to support me.

And actually, one of our early dates was that we went to see Tree of Life, and we stayed up all night talking about it, and we went to see it three times in one week and couldn't stop talking about it, and it blew my mind because in a way, I grew up in the Midwest and grew up on John Hughes movies and, like, Uncle Buck.

And listen, I love those movies still, but Malick was just captured something in me that was just incredible and ch- changed me.

This was so nice talking with you.

learned filmmaking

through my now husband and learned through doing indie film and him just trusting me to be like an art director or, you know, a costume person.

And then I became a production manager for like an ultra low budget film that had like 10 locations and like 20 actors upstate and like a dead body.

deer and kids in a car crash and I was like the only admin person.

So I just drowned and somehow I didn't learn from that.

But, um, so it was like a long journey to sort of figure out what I wanted to make and, um, and what my voice was.

Um, But I tried to make a documentary in 2015 because everyone was so fascinated by my family.

Can you share a little bit about how that unfolded and contributed to you being able to make this in the way that you did?

How did you manage sort of like the duality of being a filmmaker and trying to be objective? But also this is like you're working with your own fear in your family.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Through like really just a deep love.

I love my family for all their imperfections, you know? And I think what's great about Anna is that she is just as dimensional a human being as you and I.

She is stubborn and she is annoying and she's also brilliant and the most loving person and hilarious person.

My goal is always just to capture every character, you know, in that expansiveness.

Now going back for just a second, was there a time where you were at like Video Village or looking at the dailies or looking at the shot where something struck you? What was that moment? What struck you? And what did you walk away thinking? Mm