‘Good Girl Jane’ Director Sarah Elizabeth Mintz Wins Tribeca Festival, Teen Alienation and Mentor Joachim Trier

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz returned to New York this month after seven years in Los Angeles while training. good girl janeHis feature film debut recently won the Tribeca Film Festival for Best Feature Film as well as Best Performance with Star Ryan Spencer.

In an interview with Deadline, Mintz discusses the long road and motivation beyond the teen drama of alienation and addiction that inspired him in his real-life first year of high school. “Substance abuse is a huge embarrassment, a lot of misunderstanding,” he said. “The important thing was to shine a light on the isolation I felt. I know that seeing this kind of isolation on screen will affect me a lot, it will make me feel less alone.”

The film tells the story of Jane (Spencer), a lonely Los Angeles teenager who is bullied at an old school and struggles to get into a new school after her parents recently divorced. She defeats the gang of drug addicts and defeats her charming supplier, James (Patrick Gibson). Jane’s exciting new addictive popularity soon fades and her family finally helps her get out of a world she doesn’t want to leave. Andy McDowell plays Ruth, Jane’s needy mother.

(The answers have been lightly edited for context and clarity.)

TERM: You said good girl jane It started out as a completely different movie. How?

MINT: In 2014, I realized my first feature film project. Call Junk food blog. I submitted it to various writing programs and it arrived at Sundance Writers Intensive in 2017. But I threw away the script I brought to Sundance. The function I entered is the same story but the schema I entered looked very different. It was first and foremost a narrative style, a cinematographic style, it was written. It was a sound from top to bottom. The audio was in the form of a blog, a live diary. It was very sharp and had very fast cuts, and one of the liners is a super stylized version, which is a movie with very few one-sided lines at the end…there is a scene in the closet where Jane uses drugs for the first time since the conflict with Mom. This scene is played for a few minutes without any delay and we see this girl in the most personal moments. You should see. We have edits that we removed too soon, but I couldn’t feel it: I was seeing him sitting there and feeling emotion and relief at the same time. But the context is still the same, Jane and Jamie, and the trajectory is inspired by what I went through in my own struggle with addiction and my own mental illness. I think bringing out my darkest side and being vulnerable because of it can be supportive to someone who has had a similar experience, someone dealing with it, or a child who has it.

TERM: You mentioned you just moved to Brooklyn. ᲡFrom where?

MINT: I lived in New York until 2015 before moving to Los Angeles to shoot this movie for seven years. I’m from Los Angeles, born in Santa Monica, raised in the Pacific. I went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, then woke up in my sophomore year and realized that I was finishing my degree in film and filmmaking. I moved to NYU/Tish for my second year. I didn’t know exactly whether I was going to direct or not. I knew I wanted to dig deeper into the movie. I started thinking about what kind of stories I wanted to tell. I’m interested in age stories, I probably started thinking about this movie in my thesis short film. Transport Johnson and Dakota.

TERM: After school you worked as an assistant to Alejandro González Iñárritu. reborn, joaquin trier stronger than bombsAnd Barley Joji Fukunaga on HBO a true detective. They are a great group. How important were these relationships?

MINT: I can say that all three of them influenced me. They are three writers with three uncompromising visions, and they create works that I truly admire. I worked in my freshman year of college, my first season true detectives. This has given me the confidence and reputation to assist with more challenging projects, and Joachim’s (the worst person in the world) I was looking for an assistant for a movie I made in the state. And helping that has really changed my life. For the first time, I had a real mentor. Film, Strong against bombs! I went to Cannes. I gained a very different experience in this project. It was quite small and intimate. When I won I went with my family, then with Joachim. He is a close friend and mentor. I also started working good girl jane I started working with him exactly that year.

TERM: How did you find Ryan Spencer?

MINT: It rained from the audience. I was very open with everyone, looking for lightning in the bottle, trying to catch something. He didn’t know when to enter the room. I didn’t know how to find it. I saw all the girls, all the actors working when we made these open calls, and it rained only one day. It was really instant for me. I knew you would. I worked with him for a while after that, I called him and the chemistry with Patrick was great and he made a deal for the creative team. This is his first artistic work, his first major work. Such a gift is your knowledge, hand in hand and a great leap forward.

TERM: How did it feel to win?

MINT: I was really surprised when the movie won. I never expected this to happen. I just got out of my show. We had a planned day and I came back for a question and answer session. The month is over, I cried so ugly in front of people. If anyone has a video, I’d love to see it. Or maybe not.

TERM: What are you currently working on?

MINT: Then I wrote another movie. jane In March 2020, Covid is closed within ten days of production. Fortunately, Andy McDowell is nearby. I wrote another feature film from its release March 2020 to March 2021 and I’m working on it with a production company, but I can’t say more. hopefully soon.