IFH 548: How I Wrote a Sundance Film with Chloe Okuno

Well Sundance 2022 has begun and so has our coverage. Today on the show we have writer/director Chloe Okuno. Chloe is a graduate of UC Berkeley with a masters degree from the American Film Institute Conservatory. There she received the Franklin J. Shaffner Fellow Award, and directed the award-winning horror short film SLUT. Her recent work includes writing a remake of “Audrey Rose” for Orion Pictures and writing and directing a segment of the anthology series V/H/S/94.She's the director of this year's Sundance feature film Watcher. Julia joins her husband when he relocates to his family’s native Romania for a new job. Having recently abandoned her acting career, she finds herself frequently alone and unoccupied. One night, people-watching from her picture window, she spots a vague figure in an adjacent building, who seems to be looking back at her. Soon after, while alone at a local movie theater, Julia’s sense of being watched intensifies, and she becomes certain she’s being followed — could it be the same unknown neighbor? Meanwhile, a serial killer known as The Spider stalks the city.Below iIn making “Watcher,” I wanted to capture a kind of constant, uncomfortable dread that accompanies many women throughout their lives- one that is expressed through the character of Julia. Julia moves into this apartment building with her husband and quickly begins to believe she is being watched.She recognizes that the Watcher is a threat. She feels it very clearly- even if it’s difficult to articulate the extent of that threat to the people around her. It’s a situation that’s probably quite familiar to most women. We experience the world in a different way than men and then when we try to express that experience, we’re often doubted- written off as paranoid, irrational, or overly sensitive… which in turn can make us begin to doubt ourselves. This has always been at the core of a story that in other ways has evolved greatly since I was first hired to direct it in 2017. Initially, the script was set in New York City, but when it became clear that we would be shooting the movie in Romania, I decided to rewrite it to take place in Bucharest.There are times as a filmmaker where practical limitations end up being creatively very freeing- unlocking something great when you’re willing to embrace the unexpected. This was one of those times. Suddenly, Julia’s experience as a foreigner in this new city heightens all her other feelings of unease and uncertainty.She finds herself increasingly isolated- largely unable to speak the language and therefore alienated from everyone around her. There were of course natural (sometimes uncomfortable) parallels shooting the movie on location in Romania: unable to speak the language, oftentimes sequestered in a hotel room amidst the raging pandemic, and occasionally fighting against the doubt that surrounds you as a woman working in a male dominated profession.Fortunately, life didn’t fully imitate art. I finished the movie without any nightmarish descent into Watcher-style darkness, content with the hope that all of the tension found its way on screen. The filmmakers I admire are the ones who are able to create a language for emotion through their craft, translating what they feel into a form that other people can see and experience for themselves.For Watcher I was inspired by the work of David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Satoshi Kon, Roman Polanski, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Mary Harron- filmmakers who have excelled at translating fear, loneliness, and alienation. The hope is always that there will be someone else who can empathize- telling stories so that we can take comfort in the recognition of ourselves in others. As a person filled with seemingly endless anxieties, making films is the best- and possibly the only- way I’ve found to confront them.