What made you look at him and say, "This is Jeremy"?

It was definitely, um, s- like, first of all, just a presence that I felt that is pretty, uh, difficult to describe, but it f- I, I just knew that he had something very special in his spirit.

And then he also really related to the character himself personally.

And I think everyone in the film, all the actors brought something of themselves to the role, but especially Edik.

I felt I actually reshaped the film quite a bit around what he brought to it because I think he was the one who made me understand that trying to recreate a person that existed was going to fail, and that I should instead lean into who this person is, this actor, this, this human being, and, uh, allow him to shape the character and then admit that I was not going to be able to recreate the person that the film is based on.

So it, it actually was pretty profound to, to find him because I think I, I, I initially went into the film thinking I was going to try to cast someone who behaved like my brother, and it was written to be more like my brother, but then Edik brought something that is entirely different.

So it actually removed some of the biographical elements because of that, um, which I think was a positive thing, you know, ultimately.

Tell me about that.

And whilst they've, of course, enabled you to make Blue Heron, which we will inev- eventually talk about, um, I just wanted to know what the most indispensable thing you've learnt from making short films has been?

Yeah, I do.

I totally agree that ...

I, I believe that short films are their own medium and should be treated as such, and I think I really benefited from spending those years focusing on that form because it helped me develop confidence, to be honest.

Like a, a sense of confidence in my own instincts, and that I could communicate things visually quite simply, and just trying different ways to do that and different modes of filmmaking.

Some of them are more fiction, some of them are more hybrid, some of them are ...

I don't know if any of them are truly documentary, but I, I think I just was trying different ways to communicate.

How did you know that she was your Sasha?

Yeah, of course

... no, it's just, it's my, it is one of my, you know, favorite topics to think about because it, it really gets to the root of, like, w- how film is a construction and how, no matter what the approach is, it's always gonna be a construction, and that's how I think about genre.

You know, documentary versus fiction, it's just, they're just different approaches to getting an outcome, um, that you want as a filmmaker.

And for me, I've, I've, because I spent so long making shorts that kind of blended these two, uh, approaches together, I found, okay, so if you give someone who's not an actor the context and sort of a, um, a space to play within, they're gonna feel more at ease than if you are asking them to do these very specific things.

And so, um, for example, the, the social worker, the, the single social worker on the Zoom call-Who has the conversation with, uh, adult Sasha, she was actually my family social worker-

Right, yeah

...

when I was a kid, and she's someone I reconnected with when I was working on the, um, research and, and the script, and it was a very intense and emotional experience to reconnect with her, and we had these very, um, yeah, difficult but also really beautiful conversations.

Um, talk to me a little bit about your, your family.

Sure.

So I, um, I grew up in a very artistic family, much like is represented in the film, where art was very important to my parents.

And I think the film, as much as it's about this family's dynamic and the mental health crisis and the, um, and the grief, it's also very much about my becoming an artist and a filmmaker and how someone becomes a, a filmmaker, I think.

Because the environment that this character grows up around, I think has all the ingredients for someone to go down that path.

You know, with this, um, father who's documenting everything around, um, you know, from a distance, and then this mother who's trying to get to the bottom of something very difficult and nuanced.

I think those two aspects of my very real parents is what lent me the tools to becoming a filmmaker.

... is, is your story.

Mm-hmm.

And then when you're older, you, you're applying the lens of an adult and the perspective of understanding that you didn't actually have all the information, and there's more, there's more empathy.

So I think it was important to show both the child's perspective and the adult's perspective, um, and how those things change over time.

But I-- the character itself is based on my, my family's experience, but the character Jeremy is...

Yeah, I, I think I've spoken about this a lot, but he's so dissimilar from my brother in the sense that my brother was very, um, I don't know, he was just very bizarre, very, um-The way he would speak and the way he would move his body and the way he was, um, he was always kind of clownish and joking around, and you could never tell if he was lying or joking or what was hap- so th-this very complicated person and almost very childlike, like, through his entire life.

And, um, so he was provoking people.

Mm-hmm.

So I was kind of making these films wanting to acknowledge these experiences, and they were still grappling with their own feelings, and so I think there was more of a tension to begin with.