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Fest Track On Sirk TV Interview: THE SURRENDER [SXSW 2025] - Part II
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3/25/2025
Writer/Director Julia Max and Actress Colby Minifie talk to Fest Track about perspective, space and reaction in regards to their film "The Surrender" playing the Midnighter section at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
Category
🎥
Short film
Transcript
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00:00
This is Tim Wastbrook from FesTrackOnStreetTV.
00:29
I'm here at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
00:33
Humans are illogical.
00:34
Yes.
00:34
I mean, we do stupid things, but we do very things that sort of defy logic
00:39
in pursuit of something that we think is an altruistic goal.
00:42
Yes, in extreme situations, you know, we do.
00:46
We do irrational things at times because it seems rational in the moment to us.
00:50
And I think that's what was so important to me in this is
00:54
I really did not want anyone in this family to feel like the villain,
01:00
because I don't think there is a villain in this movie.
01:03
You know, it's just like they're all in a very difficult situation and honestly trying their best.
01:24
I didn't know how bad it was.
01:25
You just kept saying he was doing fine.
01:27
There were just like moments where she was just like,
01:30
I feel like I've kind of come to terms with this part of it now.
01:35
And yet in the script, I'm then taking a back step and like almost repeating a beat.
01:41
And I had originally been like, oh, let's play that out in the foyer here.
01:46
And you were like, but there's so much space.
01:49
Why wouldn't I just run away?
01:51
Nobody says those kind of things.
01:53
It's not going to go into every excruciating detail.
01:57
The weight loss, the vomit.
01:58
You should have told me.
01:59
You knew he was sick.
02:01
And you just didn't want to deal with it.
02:03
No, you didn't want to deal with it.
02:04
He wanted to die in peace without the chemo.
02:07
But you forced him into treatment, even though the doctor said it wasn't going to save him.
02:10
Well, here's the thing.
02:11
For that scene, we were planning to shoot it a little further out.
02:15
And this one was like, what if we were in a tighter area so I couldn't escape?
02:21
And I'm like, oh, you mean like the hallway four feet that way?
02:25
And she's like, yeah.
02:25
And I was like, yes, let's read.
02:27
Let's move this over here.
02:29
And I talked to our DP and we're like, oh, yeah, this works much better.
02:33
Let's do that.
02:34
As a crew, everybody had to be in a tiny, like claustrophobic, like on top of each other.
02:39
But it worked.
02:43
Yeah.
02:43
So I think these questions always usually lead to really interesting developments and
02:49
make the film stronger.
02:50
But it didn't matter.
02:51
What he wanted and it didn't matter what I wanted, because the only thing that ever matters
02:56
is what you want.
03:12
I feel like for the film itself, we try we come in this much more from Megan's perspective,
03:17
because she is learning about her mother's plans in a way that we, the audience, are.
03:23
And so she's a really wonderful vehicle for us to kind of experience that through.
03:29
But at the same time, I think it is very important to show Barbara's perspective and make sure that
03:37
we, the audience, believe why she's doing these things.
03:40
And so that's why there are these moments that we do get glimpses into, you know,
03:46
her memories of things, the way she saw, perceived their family and everything.
03:50
Because we all have different perceptions of reality.
03:53
Our shared memories are all different.
03:56
One of my favorite books is The Farway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit.
04:19
And it's the closest thing she has to a memoir.
04:23
And it's about her mother.
04:25
She does not have a good relationship with her mother, and her mother gets dementia.
04:28
And then her mother starts treating her very differently.
04:31
And it's because she starts forgetting the stories she's told herself about who she is.
04:36
And all of a sudden, the relationship like blossoms.
04:40
It's a gorgeous book.
04:53
This is Megan.
05:04
Yeah, this movie reminded me very much of that book.
05:07
And it's one of the reasons I connected so much to the script is that like, you know,
05:12
I go to therapy.
05:13
I talk in therapy a lot about like, this thing and we like create a narrative about what happened.
05:20
Like, understand, understand in order to end.
05:24
And because all of our lives are stories, right?
05:27
And like, we live in these stories in order to move through life and be like,
05:31
Whoa, wow.
05:32
And I will react to that because of the story that I tell myself over here.
05:36
You know, but that also has to do with memory.
05:38
Yeah, yeah.
05:39
And that's what this keys into a lot.
05:41
Yeah, totally.
05:42
And we can change art.
05:44
We can rewrite.
05:45
I mean, every time we retell a story, we write the memory.
05:47
We write these memories in order to support the narrative we're telling ourselves about
05:51
who we are.
05:52
And this movie is like such a great depiction of that, I think.
05:57
And Barbara is like, on a journey with her memory.
06:02
Oh, my God.
06:17
Yeah.
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