5 Questions with Anahita Amirshahi ("Dérive")

1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

I was born in Santa Monica, CA, the only child to two Iranian immigrants, who armed me with watercolor paints and crayons. As soon as I learned to read and write, I was creating little stories with illustrations. In the second grade, I decided that I would grow up to be an artist. I developed a more serious writing practice around the age of 13, and got my first beginner DSLR around the same time. When I entered an academically competitive high school with a budding interest in filmmaking, I was being pulled in two different directions: the "practical" and the alternative. For a while I was going to study psychology or law, but both my English teacher and therapist at the time convinced me to do the thing that made me happy. I moved to New York City for film school in 2018.

2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?

I got attached to the image of this liminal dream landscape I called the Blue Space. Everything else was built around this concept. The film was also inspired by the life of my close friend and artistic partner in crime, Jacky Indigo. Jacky and I had regular meetings during the scripting and pre-production process to ensure an authentic portrayal. The process was very collaborative and resulted in a series of scenes that were both exaggerations and reenactments of real moments. The dream sequences are fully fictional and part of an overall representation of my experience craving escapism during COVID stay-at-home orders. I wanted to depict what it’s like to find connection in an increasingly isolating world, whether it is online, with the people we live with, or through dreams.

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?

I created this film with $100 and a crew of two people running sound and lights. The money mostly went to craft services for everyone who was on set. The cast was made up of Jacky, my friend Olivia, my partner Patrick, and myself. It was definitely a challenge to take on most of the responsibilities of producer, writer, assistant director, director of photography etc. while also keeping my mind alert to the directing aspect. I also had difficulty formulating a script that I liked, and ended up rearranging a lot of what I had the night before our first shoot. Jacky, Patrick and I just sat down in my bedroom and tore everything to shreds.

The week we shot was the week of my 21st birthday, and my mother was visiting to help me move some things into my apartment. There was so much happening during the pre-production period and it was constantly high-stress. Once we got on set, nerves were gone, and we got everything done ahead of schedule. I'm always gambling with my schedules, because I like to incorporate improvisation into the process, but in this case everything worked out as well as it could have. My cast/crew of friends were all incredibly optimistic and supportive during the entire process, and I owe it all to them.

4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

I recently watched Bacurau (Dir. Kleber Mendonça & Filho Juliano Dornelles) for the first time. It absolutely blew me away. Halfway through the film, something dramatically shifts and everything devolves into violence (I'm not spoiling it, though). The commentary on Western colonization of smaller/unknown nations is phenomenal. The film explores themes related to colonialism, white supremacist ideology, violence and self-defense in a very focused, effective way. I recommend watching it cold with no prior research.

5) What’s next for you?

I've been helping my lovely and talented friend True film her second feature-length film which is titled !!!$$$!!! QUIT $MOKING T0DAY!!!$$$!!!. It's a super guerilla-style project, and I have a lot of fun running around on set whether it's as a boom operator or assistant director. My experience on her low-budget sets has convinced me to push for production of my own feature this summer, which will be expanded off the concept of Dérive. I've been really inspired by the dream sequences in The Sopranos, and I'm excited to reappropriate David Chase's genius in a new and queer way.

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