3 SXSW Filmmakers on Using Stories to Dive Deep

When you watch a movie in a theater, you’re left to interpret the film for yourself. You may sit and digest the movie and come to your own conclusions (or look up what others say on the internet). But at SXSW, audiences have the privilege of hearing from the creatives themselves. After a screening, you’ll never know who may show up to answer audience questions — and you never know what you may glean about what you just watched.

Before and during the TV and film festival, I spoke with three filmmakers about their projects. Each of their films shared very different stories, but at the heart of each one was a desire to explore. Here’s what I learned.

“7 Beats Per Minute”

At first glance, the sport of freediving looks intense and scary. Imagine holding your breath for minutes at a time to dive hundreds of feet into the depths of the ocean. But in Yuqi Kang’s documentary “7 Beats Per Minute,” freediving becomes unexpectedly beautiful, emotional, and healing. “Freediving has a philosophical aspect, where it’s believed that all life originated from the sea, and sea water has a healing property,” Kang explains. “Being underwater feels like a sense of returning home … and freediving is a very stunning sport.” 

When learning to freedive in Thailand, the Mongol Chinese Canadian filmmaker first heard of Jessea Lu, a pharmacologist by day, but best known for her title as a world freediving champion. The two were bonded by age and an experience of migrating to a foreign country as Asian women — and Kang was drawn to Lu’s unconventional path to such an extreme sport.

In 2019, Kang and her crew began following Lu, who only a year before had attempted a world record-setting dive, during which she blacked out and was lifeless for four minutes. For the next five years, Kang would quarantine with Lu and continue documenting the diver’s journey to face the traumas that her near-death experience resurfaced. 

While a documentary director’s role typically remains impartial — a mere observer — Kang’s documentary takes an interesting turn. As the director and subject spend extended time together, Kang ultimately gets pulled into Lu’s story, finding connection in their stories, and opening up about her own wounds. 

“This project was a discovery for me as a nonfiction storyteller, to learn what ethical standards mean to me,” Kang recalls, acknowledging that it’s not usual for directors to get in front of the camera for a documentary. 

In the film, she constantly voices how uncomfortable she is about her ever-evolving role as she and Lu get closer. Eventually, she accepts it. “[My existence in Jessea’s story] raises the question of ‘Why am I the person to tell Jessea’s story?’” Kang clarifies when I ask about it. “Bringing my personal aspects to the film … opens the audience to understand it from my perspective, [too] — why I understand Jessea’s journey to a very deep, emotional core, and can see her journey through in the end.”

Language plays an interesting piece in the documentary, too. Throughout, Kang introduces freediving with voiceover in her native Mandarin, but many interviews with Lu and subject matter experts take place in English. In conversations between Kang and Lu, the two speak in a Mandarin-English hybrid, emphasizing words in the latter when things get heated. 

When asked about the decision to incorporate so many languages, Kang says, “In terms of [Jessea’s] personal history, speaking in English gives [her] almost another person’s perspective,” referring to Lu’s incident that opened up painful memories from her childhood. “A lot of things that we hear in Chinese, the terms and the cruelty doesn’t feel as [strong]. Culturally, there’s a lot of things that felt familiar to the ear, but when she translated a lot of things into English, it stripped down all the cultural aspects and the familiarity.” Because of Kang and Lu’s understanding of both Mandarin and English, the use of language recontextualized the meaning of Lu’s experiences and their impact on her emotional growth.

Through Kang’s lens and the personal connection she adds, we get to see just how stunning freediving can be. Alongside her poetic narration and brilliant shots of the ocean’s bright and dark vastness, we understand the mental capacity it truly takes to undergo a freedive — and how intertwined that can be with divers’ personal lives. It’s heartbreaking when Lu recounts the out-of-body experience of being lifeless, but the realization of her loneliness, borne from her childhood, and Kang’s affirmation with her own experiences, make the film feel universal and relatable — Kang’s ultimate goal.

“Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in 4 Parts”

Before the feature “Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in 4 Parts,” three short films marked a decade-long collaboration between writer and director Shaun Seneviratne and actors Sathya Sridharan and Anastasia Olowin, who play Ben and Suzanne, respectively. While each short focused on different parts of Ben and Suzanne’s relationship, “Ben and Suzanne” the movie follows the couple on vacation in Sri Lanka, where Suzanne works as an American NGO worker. As the two spend time together, Suzanne finds herself under pressure from her boss and, feeling obligated, opts to work as the two travel around the country. 

Ben and Suzanne’s story obviously felt personal to Seneviratne, as the writer who based the films on his own relationship. “Every short got to be a chance to explore something [and was] a reflection of my filmmaking interests and my tastes at the time,” he remembers, rattling off different influences like Wong Kar Wai and Godard, and concepts like filming a home movie. “And then with this film, it’s very much like being observational. Every film gets to channel what it is I’m interested in exploring on an aesthetic and form level to tell that story.” 

But for his actors, finding this partnership and getting to know and shape these characters over time was the real treat. “Truly, it was a selfish thing. We know Shaun is a brilliant filmmaker. He has a brilliant idea, he has great taste,” Sridharan admits. “There was no doubt that once we showed up, it would be an amazing journey.” 

Olowin adds, “It’s so rare in this industry to have that 10-year time to marinate in something, in both the collaboration and a character. It was such a luxury … [to allow] these characters to grow along with us.”

The making of Ben and Suzanne’s story is unique for multiple reasons. Not only does it mark a moment in history as the first narrative feature film to debut in the U.S. with a Sri Lankan director, but the project was independently funded. Seneviratne even used his life savings to make sure the film could happen. Because of the DIY approach to the film, many of the actors outside of Sridharan and Olowin were played by people in Sri Lanka the team met on the way, including Seneviratne’s family. 

As you watch the movie, it’s clear that it’s an indie film, but that’s precisely what gives it its charm. At times, the style and approach to the relationship reminded me of “(500) Days of Summer.” But Seneviratne adds an interesting, yet subtle perspective on what it means to be an outsider in a new country – with Ben as an Indian American man and Suzanne as a white American woman – and outsiders in their relationship, as they reunite after a period of doing long-distance. 

The film is its own honoring of Sri Lanka, too. Up until three years ago, Seneviratne planned to set the movie in India to mirror his real-life relationship. But on a trip to Sri Lanka with his mom, she proposed filming there. That suggestion opened up a new perspective for the director. “It was the most freeing thing,” Seneviratne reflects. “Once I made that switch, that’s when I was really able to separate myself from ‘this is what happened’ to now, these are the ideas I’m interested in exploring and how we could fit it into a totally new context … It helped recontextualize the story in general and [allowed us] to be more free with it.” 

Filming in Sri Lanka was a special experience for Seneviratne, as a Sri Lankan American who would often visit for vacation. He describes it as a proper road trip through the country with the cast and primarily Sri Lankan crew. “There’s a lot of trying to express my experience of what it is being in Sri Lanka, where you’re having tea with aunties, you’re seeing different family members, you’re hitting the road, but with a driver,” he says. And that comes through, with the music that Seneviratne composed using Sri Lankan instruments, to the humor Ben and Suzanne’s driver brings as he shuttles them from place to place. 

In addition to its setting and indie roots, there’s still a lot of comedy and romance. Ben and Suzanne’s dynamic is amusing but self-aware. There are parts that every couple can see themselves in, with recurring bits and references around “vacation smoking,” “Starship Troopers,” and a giant Toblerone Ben carries with him from America. These scenes are balanced with misunderstandings and the culmination of a big argument that sends the couple over the edge. Like every relationship, it’s funny, quirky, and real.

Credit: Charlotte Hornsby

“We Strangers”

In “We Strangers,” director Anu Valia returned to her hometown of Gary, Indiana, to tell the story of Ray Martin (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), a Black woman working as a commercial cleaner. After being hired by Dr. Neeraj Patel (Hari Dhillon) as his housekeeper, Ray is offered a second job cleaning his neighbor Jean Laich’s home. There’s some tension between Ray and Jean at first, but one afternoon, Ray lies about being able to sense and speak to the dead, which opens her up to a new position of power in the neighborhood. 

From the very beginning, the film feels like an intentional, incredibly well thought out, layered, and calculated story about race and assimilation. “Race is so important in [this] film,” Valia reiterates to me the day after her movie premieres. “And to me, if you’re going to tell a story about race in America and it’s not about Black people, you’re not being truthful to what is so entrenched in the history of America.” 

While she comes from an Indian American background, Valia understands that her experiences may be different from her main character’s. “I have similarities with Ray [but] she absolutely goes through a different experience than I do, so it’s up to me as the artist to explore, be curious, [and] include a lot of other people in the storytelling,” she acknowledges. Part of that was collaborating with Howell-Baptiste, who, upon their first meeting, Valia already knew she understood every layer of the film. “It got to the point where even as I was rewriting things on set, I wanted to know, ‘What would [Kirby] do in this situation?’” she remembers. 

From Valia’s decision to show Ray entering a white space, being introduced through an Indian man, to her choice to make the main character a housekeeper, a position that allows her to intimately observe her clients and their secrets, it all makes sense. When Ray tells her first lie, it’s very clear what she’s doing and why she’s doing it. As she embraces her new role, we watch her relationships with her friends and family begin to fall apart. But her clientele isn’t exactly ready to fully accept her either. 

While Valia mainly wanted to capture that code-switching can be draining, “When I say I’m exploring assimilating, it’s not a sob story,” she confirms. “It’s like [Ray] is looking and going, ‘Oh, I’m seeing the rules of this game.’ She’s very powerful. She’s never playing low status.” Ray may be the one we are meant to focus on, but even the people she cleans for are complex, flawed, and searching, to which Valia responds, “Everybody is.” 

Though it’s not a first-person film, Valia’s goal in writing the film was to have the audience observe, but understand what Ray feels throughout — to capture those hard-to-describe feelings. Of course, there may be people that simply don’t get it. But as a person who’s considered part of a marginalized community, I could put myself in Ray’s shoes and appreciate her motivations, actions, and thoughts. And by the end, I could anticipate what would happen. Howell-Baptiste’s expressive acting helped humanize Ray, too. With just a look, you can tell when the wheels are spinning in her head, when she’s stressed, or when she feels like she’s won. 

Throughout the film, Valia uses entire frames of color and a volcano motif to help guide the audience and bring everything full circle, which adds to the visual appeal. The film does feel dark and unsettling at times, but it also ramps up the absurd as Ray continues to take advantage of the Patel and Laich families. However, by the end, everything feels like a piece of a puzzle coming together to construct a story with a strong message.

Cover Headshots: Image of Shaun Seneviratne credit James Andrews, image of Anu Valia credit Sela Shiloni, image of Yuqi Kang courtesy of SXSW.