This one was a joy to direct, and probably one of the most intellectually stimulating shoot days I’ve had to date. Yara Shahidi (if you don’t know her, get to know her) and her mother, Keri, are so in sync from their breadth of reading to their guilty pleasure snacks to their vocabularies, that we could be as organic as we liked – even with the limitation of shooting on film. Instead of short takes of scripted dialogue, I gave stimulus on topics like the evolving role of motherhood from generation to generation, followed my personal opinion, off they went: these two well-spoken women of substance and humour, riffing on complex subject matter as a means of demonstrating the reality of their relationship. Not just talking about it. The flipside of such luxury was that I ended up with over 45 minutes of solid, useable dialogue, which I then had to cut down to 2 minutes. So that sucked. In the best possible way.

Director MARGARET ZHANG

DOP RYAN MARIE HELFANT

Producer SAMANTHA OLIVER BENNETTS

Hair NAI’VASHA JOHNSON // Make-up EMILY CHENG

Styling JASON BOLDEN //Sound BEDE BENJAMIN-KORPORAAL