Self-funded and self-produced, co-directors Anna Sandilands and Ewan McNicol premiered their feature length cinematic debut Uncertain at Tribeca Film Festival in New York City on April 16. The extremely talented Anna and Ewan took home the Festival’s Albert Maysles Award for New Documentary Director and recently announced a partnership with Ridley Scott Associates who will be representing them in future commercial work.

 

Their new documentary is a very thorough study and portrayal of life in a small lake-side town of the same name, “Uncertain” on the border of Texas and Louisiana. I got the chance to sit down with Anna and Ewan who revealed some truly impressive life stories of Henry Lewis, an aging fishing guide at Johnson’s Ranch Marina reluctant to let go of his youth, Wayne Smith, a convicted felon with an obsession for hunting wild boar, and Zach Warren, a young diabetic struggling to stay on own two feet. In the film the audience follows these men on their fascinating journeys in search of forgiveness and redemption, while the entire community balances on the brink of extinction. An invasive aquatic weed, salvinia, threatens to overgrow the beautiful and mystical Caddo Lake – the livelihood of both people and animals.

 

I had an opportunity to see the film and to sit down with Anna and Ewan for a candid discussion shortly after the premiere, to learn about the initial idea behind the documentary, the evolution of their creative process over many years of filming, and tricks involved in making the big leap from a short film to shooting a feature length work. Sit back and enjoy the interview!

 

Ivan Petrov: Congratulations on the world premiere of your film! How do you feel about your very first feature length documentary film and its grand premiere? 

 

Ewan McNicol: It feels amazing. For the premiere we brought the three main characters of the film: Henry, Wayne and Zach. That made it a really special evening. When we started filming, none of us would have ever imagined we would all be together in New York. It was a real privilege because Henry had said to us “before he leaves this Earth, he had hoped he would come to New York.” For nearly ten years we have been trying to find the right project to make into a feature film while making a series of short films. Originally we thought Uncertain would be a short about how the town got its name. After a few days of filming we realized it was a much bigger story. We are very pleased.

 

Anna Sandilands: It is a very personal story. For Henry, Wayne and Zach to be here, to be able to share it, and to have the audience respond so positively to them goes a long way for them in their own reconciliation with their lives.

 

IP: Uncertain has every element that makes a film interesting: three fascinating real-life stories, some of the most beautiful landscape cinematography, a dose of witty humor and even a good deal of suspense. How hard was it to weave this all into one film?

 

EM: It was a real challenge. When we first met the three incredibly strong main characters we were instantly intrigued by them. They are very open, candid, and graceful people. We filmed for 9-10 months just following them, not knowing how to tie their stories together. And then the invasive weed on the lake appeared. The lake already was a character, but it became a further character in the film. Watching the weed taking over and choking oxygen out of the lake, echoing the personal stories of the three men—we saw how we could tie everything together through the overarching themes of survival, redemption and forgiveness rather than just through one location.

 

AS: It was very much in the editing process that it really began to cohere. We just knew we had these great characters and this great place. That gave us enough faith to just keep filming. It was when the the salvinia weed came into the story of the lake, that we could see the spark of how they could cohere. We had to work very hard on editing the film to bring it together.

 

EM: Then we started bringing archive footage, arrest footage and the game camera footage that captures the creatures. We had never previously made a film that would have all these different textures, formats, ideas, uses of archive, investigative and police photographs. All this combined with verité filming–we didn’t know if it would work.

 

AS: We knew that the YouTube footage, the game camera, and the archive would all help to add layers we were looking for. So many of these things were happening historically, having these layers gives the audience a stronger sense of passage of time. We also knew that we wanted it to feel somewhat shambolic, similar to the characters’ personal stories. We wanted that sense of being pulled and pushed around and going back in time and coming forward. We wanted to have as much of these elements as possible.

 

IP: The film paints very in-depth portraits of its main characters – Wayne, Henry and Zach. How open were these people to sharing their real-life stories and how willing were they to trust you to convey their stories?

 

AS: From the very beginning, they were surprisingly open to us as the outsiders. I continue to see it as an act of personal bravery on their part that they chose to trust us with many details of their lives. The fisherman opened up almost right away. And the hog hunter did as well: on the first day he told us that he was a convicted felon and he told us why. Why these men chose to believe in us is still a bit of a mystery to me.

 

EM: There were a few people who only allowed us to film them after we came back to their town for the fifth or sixth time. Every few years different film crews would come in to shoot a film on Caddo Lake because it is so beautiful. Otherwise they have never had outsiders spend so much time with them.

 

IP: When you first visited Uncertain with the intent of making a short film, what would you say was the first thing that sparked your imagination and the idea for a longer film?

 

AS+EM: Seeing Henry. The very first thing we saw when we came into town was this extraordinary lake and Henry out in his boat. It was a misty day among cypress trees. And there he was coming out of the mist. He looked like Charon, the ferryman that takes you from purgatory to heaven or to hell, when you see depictions of him.

 

 

 

 

AS: Just that visual alone made us feel like we were in a place we had never been in before and that we somehow slipped back in time. That day, we went out fishing with Henry, an extraordinary man and very much his own man. He is immovable. The world changes around him. Henry is Henry. Next day we met Wayne the hog hunter and we asked him about his powder rifle and why he shoots with powder (thinking it is probably good sportsmanship). And he replied that it was the only gun he could legally carry in Texas as a convicted felon. And we were out in the middle of the woods when he told us this! Perfect strangers to each other! We had this flash for a moment: “Oh shit! What did we get into…”

 

IP: Did you know what it was that you were hunting with Wayne?

 

AS (laughing): Yes, we knew that we were hunting wild hogs. But, again, we saw something in him in that first day. There was this honesty and candor in him that our “oh shit” moment only lasted for about 30 seconds. We felt like we have met somebody very meaningful. That evening in a text message exchange, the two of us agreed that there was more to Uncertain than we had originally expected and we decided to see it through.

 

EM: Wayne was very candid with us. He is a complex man with his brutality from the past. He is also very sensitive and thoughtful. His complexity was exciting to us.

 

AS: When we talked to him and started to get deeper into his story, we learned that beyond that one conviction there were other explosive moments in his past. And we asked him if he could share more of his life with us. He was really uncomfortable and nervous at first. “Why? What’s the point of it?” asked Wayne. We said: “Because we can’t reconcile the man you are today with the man you were back then.” Afterwards, Wayne said that this reply was the reason why he agreed to be so open.

 

The powerful images of Caddo Lake and its community of Uncertain are in part what drives the story in your film. Can you give us some insight into your observational approach to filmmaking?

 

EM: We have always loved observational filmmaking and we developed our approach while working on many short films over the past 5-6 years. We like to spend time with people until they feel comfortable. This allows us to capture people in a very true and natural way. You would never capture that further truth behind people if you are in a rush. With this film, when we saw the lake, how incredibly beautiful and mythical it was, we knew that we needed to capture it in a big cinematic way. At that point, we didn’t know what the story was yet and the characters were only a thread. We, therefore, needed to capture these characters in a way that you would watch them without thinking necessarily about the filmmaking. You would be watching them engrossed in their stories. To do this, we shot with longer lenses and made it more cinematic.

 

AS: I think all we had was instinct in the beginning. We realized afterwards that our instinct served us very well because while being very personal, their stories are also very powerful. They are ultimately stories about all of us. That instinct to keep things open and very cinematic has served us very well because their lives deserved that elevations, their stories deserved cinema.

 

IP: Your early career aspirations included archaeology and car design, before you moved on to start your own commercial production company Lucid Inc. You have now created a feature length film. Do you see filmmaking as just another step to something bigger or do you primarily see yourselves as filmmakers now?

 

EM: We definitely see ourselves as filmmakers. I grew up in a family of photographers and I was always interested in photography. Part of me also liked making physical things – the reason why I considered product design. After ten years of doing shorts and commercial work, we feel we have finally made a film that is trully ‘ourfilm. Today, we are very focused on filmmaking and have no intention of becoming product designers or archaeologists.

 

AS: Though I think there is in fact some relationship between archaeology and filmmaking. It is certainly true with the kind of filmmaking that we do: it requires the same level of patience, open mindedness and willingness to sift slowly and gently. I agree with Ewan, we are very much filmmakers!

 

IP: Anna, you recently gave some good advice to aspiring female directors. Would either of you have any specific tips for filmmakers who are looking to make the big leap from a short film to their first feature film? Are there any keys to making that successful transition?

 

AS: First of all, I think you have to be really clear-minded about what you want to commit to and be confident enough to walk away from something. A filmmaker has to find the right story. They must also be willing to make the hard choice if they have not found the right story: walk away from it and realize that it is actually only a short film. Keep looking for something that is more sustained, because you absolutely have to love the subjects, you have to love what you are committing to. My second piece of advice would be to realize that it is going to take time. A long film takes a lot more time than a short one does, especially if you would like to tell the full story. In our case it was three years. It is also about listening to yourself and listening to your gut.

 

EM: I think it is about trusting your instincts. You have a hunch normally and you have to trust it. Otherwise you will not get past that point of doing a short film. If we had not trusted our instincts about there potentially being a bigger film in Uncertain, we would have stopped, made a short film and that would have been the end of it. That is often the case with documentaries. For a finctional piece you have a script and you keep working on it, perfecting it and getting feedback. We did not have any of that in making our film. It is all about following your instinct.

 

IP: Do you have any idea of what your next project is going to be?

 

EM: Yes, we have a few ideas. All we can say is that the next film is also going to be character-based and it will likely involve a few years and spending a lot of time with our characters.

 

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We hope you enjoyed talking with Anna and Ewan about their work and their new film Uncertain that the Tribeca Film Festival jury called “a beautiful character study that explores violent natures, redemption, and what it takes to tame the self.”

As to when the film might hit Baltimore theaters remains to be determined and is contingent on the film securing a distributor. Film festival goers will, however, have at least one opportunity to see the film in June at AFI Docs Film Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland. Our west coast readers will have a chance to catch the film at the 41st Seattle International Film Festival at the end of May. While our northern neighbours can see it this month at Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival in Toronto.