Q&A with Marcela Biven

“Virginia,” by director Marcela Biven, finds a young woman grieving over the loss of her sister and engaging in an elaborate form of therapy. We asked Biven how the idea came to be, withholding expositional information, and grief surrogates…

1) Can you talk a little bit about your background, and how you first got interested in movies?

I grew up in Hawaii, a storied place to its core, and took refuge in the musky, damp seats at Kahala Movie Theaters. As a shy, sensitive kid, movies encouraged empathy and intrigued me on a structural level— like puzzles, the director’s choices were there to tinker with and solve. The first film I saw in NYC was Night of the Hunter. A whole new world of cinematic play opened up from there.

2) How did “Virginia” come to be? What was the original spark, and then how did you get the ball rolling?

Loss can be incredibly isolating, pushing you into places of weariness and naiveté. Having lost a string of loved ones, I became interested in the methods I employed to preserve the departed and to forge forward without. Much of this was done by metering out parts of people I missed into existing friends, recounting stories or retracing conversations. Other times by omitting the grief in the getting to know you of new acquaintances, seeing whether or not I could stand alone. Virginia is the product of remodeling that experience.

3) The film is very measured in how it reveals its information. Can you talk about your approach in determining what to reveal and when? Was everything decided at the script stage, or was there significant alterations made in the edit?

A lot was decided at the script stage. The cinematographer, Bart, wanted to kill me for all the revisions flying into his inbox. It was my first film project, and I was mighty neurotic, as I fought off the comforts of exposition learned from my theater background. There was a lot of support to lean into quiet moments, let actions speak. But the editor, Henry, also helped cull through the dialogue and keep the narrative line taught.

4) Does this form of grief therapy exist? If so, what do you know about it? If not, how did you determine the rules and goals of its application in the writing process?

I don’t believe it exists, but there are people you can hire to mourn at funerals and cultures where people rehearse their death. People need to create their own reality/mythology in response to loss. Writing-wise, I wanted the protagonist, Anna, to be in a place of agency. Sure she is nervous, but she is in control of the exchange with the grief surrogate. She is an adult who, in living out the memory, returns to the language of her pre-teen self. What she says should feel ill fitted and uncomfortable, sort of put upon. Whereas her reflective moments are thoughtful and internalized. The actors, Amandine and Christine, brought alot to this. Starting with the end of the exchange was a gesture toward the cyclical trajectory of grief— the loss, the clarity, the resolve, the loss, etc.

5) What comes next for you?

I recently finished a short named “Like Mother Like,” and shot a second short in Hawaii. Hoping to try new things and hunker down to write a horror film. Keep on learning.

Contact Info:

IG: @zzz.mar