Below is my conversation with Sam Mirpoorian, the director of Greener Pastures, a documentary feature being screened at this year’s Heartland International Film Festival. We talk about Sam’s connection to the subject matter, finding trust in the film’s subjects, and the length of the film’s shoot, among other things. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ben Sears: What was the process like of finding the subjects of the film?

Sam Mirpoorian: It started in the spring of 2018 after doing discovery and speaking to well over 100 farmers over a 6 or 7 month period. I just identified farmers that had some kind of direct or indirect correlation to suicide, whether they had suicide ideation or a suicide attempt themselves, or a family member had died by suicide. That’s kind of the genesis of the film started, and from there, it kind of just happened very serendipitously where Jeff was featured in an HBO & Vice piece on farmers and mental health in August. I reached out to him on Facebook. It was a shot in the dark, I didn’t think he would get back to me, but he responded 10 minutes later, and I was out filming with him in October. And then I went to a couple farmers’ union events in Indiana, and I pitched the story to some folks there, and they mentioned Chris Peterson. Chris was a former Iowa President of the farmers union, he’s a board member, he’s kind of like the Godfather of agriculture of the Midwest. You see in the film where a lot of Democratic candidates – Barack Obama, the Clinton’s, Jon Edwards, Al Gore – they would always come and seek his endorsement because they’d always want to start off the Iowa caucus in the right direction. So while I was filming with Chris, he didn’t know who Jay was, but he sent me an article to a Modern Farmer magazine article that was about Jay. From there, I reached out to Jay on Facebook, and he responded. Juliette, I had reached out a couple times on a dairy farmers group on Facebook. She had gotten back to me after a friend had died by suicide.

BS: I imagine you’ve got to have a lot of patience, having to weave through so many potential candidates until you finally find the right one.

SM: Well, you see how Becky is like a main character in the film – she didn’t become a thought in my mind until, like, a year and a half into filming. So that’s one of the examples of being patient and following the story, seeing what naturally and organically unfolds. It worked out really well, and this was a perfect situation where the passing of the torch, and this multi-generational look at how a parent can pass down the legacy to their child. I thought she depicted that really well.

BS: So did you have any interest in farming before you started this?

SM: I had no interest in farming, I had no idea, no relatives that were farmers. I’m Iranian-American, so my culture has always been around going to college and getting your degree, and sticking to something practical. Never thought about filmmaking, never thought about farming, never thought about any of these things. And then my mentor, Andrew Cohn, who did Medora and Night School, was helping me with some projects and pushing me in the right direction, and he told me to make a feature, and I can get you funding for it. So he introduced me to the Catapult Film Fund in San Francisco. I received a $20,000 development grant to start developing the project and the story. So Andrew was really instrumental in helping me get in the mindset of a feature because I didn’t really know what to do.

But I heard an NPR story based on CDC statistics that farmers and agriculture workers have the highest rate of suicide among any profession in the US. My buddy Adam, who’s also a cinematographer on the film with me, mentioned the same concept and story from a guy that he was working in a warehouse with. So it all just started as an idea, and then Andrew gave me some inspiration and motivation to turn it into something, and I did the legwork and research.

BS: How long did the research portion of it take?

SM: Well, the concept of development is kind of like the bridge between research and production. Research and development started roughly around March of 2018 and it went all the way until 2019, while still shooting and moving the needle forward.

BS: Did you always plan on shooting for so long?

SM: No, Covid played a really big role. We were looking to wrap shooting in 2020 because of the election, and Becky was the arc. We shot in 2021 and 2022, and it just helped to put a bow tie on the end of the film. But the climactic moment is the election in 2020, and then the wrap-up and the aftermath was in 2021 and 2022. I was 24 at the time when I started it, and I’m 30 now, so I never anticipated or imagined the film being as longitudinal as it was.

BS: Did you ever think about cutting it short, or thinking you had enough already when the pandemic started?

SM: That’s a great question because it was my debut feature, and first time editing something like this. I had no idea how to go about it, so I edited the film and we got rejected at every single festival. We thought we were there, and we absolutely weren’t. We brought in another editor, she worked on it for another 9 months, really left no stone unturned, and that’s when we were able to identify extra things that we needed to go get, like extra sound bites, and things to fill in the gaps and the holes. So it was a really thorough process about understanding story and the timeline and the process of where we are, thinking we were done and we’re absolutely not. That happens a lot with features, and this was no exception.

BS: I imagine that when you’re in the thick of it, you don’t have as clear of a sense of what the narrative of the film is going to look like.

SM: No, you have no idea. I think you go into it with the hopes that it’s going to develop the way you envision it, but almost every single time, it evolves and morphs and shapes into something you wouldn’t even imagine. You have to craft it as best as you can because that’s how you get money and funding. A few weeks ago, I was looking at some of the older decks that I wrote, and the only thing that was the same was Jeff. Chris and Becky weren’t on there, Jay wasn’t on there, Juliette wasn’t on there – it changed entirely. I thought that was really funny, and it makes a lot of sense because that’s just how it works. But obviously the construct and the foundation was there of mental health, globalization, mechanization, and climate change.

BS: Did you set out wanting to make a statement with this, or did just want to tell the stories of these peoples lives, and then the statement kind of makes itself?

SM: One thing that Andrew taught me is that information overload, to a certain extent, can get boring and overwhelming as a viewer. You can make these informational documentaries that have talking heads, or you can do these character studies, and that was the thing I was most attracted to. When you do talking head and informational pieces, you don’t have to build trust. You just pop in, shoot what you get, and you get out. There was a huge sense of pride, and love and respect about the process of getting them to trust you, and letting you into their home. That’s something earned and not given, and I think that’s why I really wanted to tell this film in the most humanistic way as possible. Those bigger, day-to-day issues, they easily presented themselves. It came so naturally, and we didn’t have to worry about it.

BS: Was it hard for your subjects to trust you to the extent that they did?

SM: Some were harder than others. I would say Jay and Juliette were the easiest. They were very trusty, and they gave us access to everything. Chris and Becky got to that point, but it probably took a year or two. Jeff had boundaries – every now and then I’d flirt with him, I’d cross over, and he’d get really upset, but ultimately he’s really happy with the film. The biggest thing with the film, is that you can see everyone’s family except Jeff. He had boundaries, and we respected that, but obviously as a filmmaker, you want to get access to every single nook and cranny of someone’s life. I think it worked out well though. Who’s to say if it would have worked out better or worse if we did or didn’t have more access?

BS: Do you still keep in touch with everyone?

SM: Yea, they’ve all been to at least one festival screening except Juliette because we just haven’t been in Kansas. I talk to them probably a couple times a week on Facebook. They’re all very responsive, and they’re all really happy to see the updates – every time I share something on Facebook, they like it or they love it. They’re really proud of it.

BS: All of the subjects are in the Midwest. Did you seek to stick to the Midwest, or did you want to go nationwide at any point?

SM: That was something we had, not necessarily fears, but concerns about how it would be received. I think, initially, I just tried to do whatever I could possibly do with the largest reach when I didn’t have any money. I said ok, I can drive to this state, then this state and this state, and I know that going to dairy farms in upstate New York or Vermont, or Georgia, it would have been more expensive and less tangible. Adam has family in Chicago, and I would stay with them for an extended period of time and bounce between Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. It’s like a perfect halfway spot, so logistically it just made the most sense. But we definitely thought about trying to extend the story, but we just found a good patch of people to follow here.

BS: Maybe that’s what the sequel can be.

SM: [laughs] Yea, before the film, I never really thought about how important soil health is, or how important farmers are. Without them, we’re not eating. It’s as simple as that, but it’s very complex as well with policy, and the weather, I just have a strong appreciation for it now.

BS: A lot of people have a kind of preconceived, simplified notion of farmers and who they are and what they want.

SM: People don’t really understand how brilliant they are, too. They’re biologists, they’re engineers, they’re chemists.

BS: It’s more than just planting seeds in the ground.

SM: Right. Equipment breaks down every hour, on the hour. They can’t wait for a John Deere representative to come out on Monday if something breaks down on Friday. They have to figure it out then and there, and I got to see that several times. It just gives you a new appreciation as far as how great they are.

Greener Pastures will screen as part of the 2023 Heartland International Film Festival. Buy virtual and in-person tickets here.

Below is my conversation with Ryan Whitaker, the director and writer of Surprised by Oxford, a film that’s making its world premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival. We talk about the challenges with creating chemistry between stars, filming at Oxford University, and adapting a dense source material. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

 Ben Sears: Tell me how you came to the project? What was it about Carolyn’s story that spoke to you and believed you could turn it into a movie?

Ryan Whitaker: It was almost five years ago when I read the book and first talked to Carolyn about the rights. The book was recommended to me by my mom and my sister, who thought I would like it because it touched on a lot of things that were interests of mine: British culture, the city of Oxford, and the Inklings, writers like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They were right, I just fell in love with her story and thought it was a beautifully written book, and I immediately began thinking about what this story could look like as a movie. It was a bit of a challenge because it was an almost 400 page memoir with a lot of characters, so it was really about chipping away at the marble and finding the movie hiding within. I loved Carolyn’s story, I loved that it was a coming of age story, a romance, and a spiritual journey. It was all of those things at once.

 BS: How much involvement did Carolyn have once the movie was greenlit?

RW: Carolyn has been nothing but supportive and collaborative from the beginning. I knew things were going to be smooth sailing when she read the first draft – which I was terrified to share with her because of all the things I had changed, which you have to do when you’re adapting a story like this – and she responded positively to it and has been nothing but supportive ever since. She’s remained involved, not directly, creatively speaking, but I would call her a close collaborator. She and Kent were on set for production, and she has a cameo in the film. It’s been a great working relationship.

BS: Were there any details that she helped with, from the Oxford atmosphere?

RW: The University of Oxford is a very strange place, if you’ve never been there. If you haven’t been there or toured, a lot of people don’t realize that it’s not one college, it’s a bunch of different colleges in the city of Oxford. The layout of the colleges is unique, in that there’s little walled gardens throughout the city. You have the quad, and the porter’s lodge at the front, and almost every college has a chapel and a dining hall. They’re all similar but they all have their own character. Getting those details as accurate as possible was really important to me. Carolyn was there in the early 90’s, and the film is set in the modern day, so it was a combination of talking to her about what it was like then and how much it’s changed since then. That town hasn’t changed much in a couple hundred years, but we also talked to students who are there today, trying to make it as accurate as possible.

BS: Was there a creative reason to set the film in the modern day, or was it a logistical concern? 

RW: It was purely practical, just a budget consideration. The question that I asked was, “does this film need to be set in the early 90’s?” Beyond the fact that this is when Carolyn was at Oxford, it would make more sense that it would be set in the modern day, and it would allow our budget to go further. There were very few things in the story that needed to be updated. For example, there’s a text message that Carolyn sees on Kent’s phone, and in real life, that was an email – in the early days of email. Beyond that, there wasn’t really anything in the story that dictated that it had to be set in that time period. 

BS: Speaking of shooting on location at Oxford, how difficult was it to get access to those historic locations? Were there many hoops that you had to jump through?

RW: The original plan was to shoot between terms, in the summer, when classes aren’t in session. We didn’t quite have our financing together, so we ended up pushing it into term time, which made it a little more complicated. Honestly, it really came down to some sheer luck, but then also really great people on the ground, working very hard to secure every location we needed. We were very lucky that we got access to all the locations that we did. We were able to shoot almost everywhere that we were able to, so it was logistically difficult, but you’d never know that from seeing the film, all the chaos outside of the frame.

BS: I know I’d be very nervous the entire time that something would be broken or misplaced. There’s a lot of delicate decorations that would make me anxious.

RW: By far, not only the most expensive location, but the most logistically challenging was the Bodleian Libraries, which are some of the oldest libraries in Europe. We shot upstairs in the Duke Humfrey room, which only deans and students have access to. A few films have shot up there, some have shot downstairs in the Divinity school, but the Duke Humfrey room was the library in the first Harry Potter movie. You can’t touch anything. Every single book has an alarm. You can’t take water on that floor. The gag about the ink pens not being allowed in the library came from a conversation with Carolyn. They’re very particular, so we had some locations like that that required a lot of tip-toeing around. You really don’t want to be the guy that destroys an original Shakespeare folio, or something like that.

BS: How did you come to cast Rose as Carolyn?

RW: I had first seen Rose in a film called Finding You, that my producer Ken Carpenter had done in Ireland, and Ken had said ‘what do you think about Rose in that role?’ So I went and watched that film and found her to be really likeable, the camera really loves her, she has a really great presence on screen. We got together and talked about the character, and I got a really great feeling that she could inhabit this role. The character is a bit of a complicated character, and I needed to cast someone that could somehow be unlikeable and likeable at the same time, and someone who could handle the intellectual side of the character in a way that didn’t feel precocious. I just had a feeling that Rose could do it, and it ended up being a great experience working with her, and after she was attached, it was just about how we build the best possible cast around her.

BS: That character has a steeliness to her that makes you understand how she could be so apprehensive of someone else, but there is a kind of openness that Rose really brings to it.

RW: The messy nature of the character is what I always thought was interesting. Casting is so important because if you cast the wrong person in that role, you don’t want someone that’s only unlikeable. Or at least unlikeable and un-relatable. If the character’s going to be unlikeable, they at least have to be relatable, and I think that’s what Rose really brought to the role.

BS: Rose and Ruairi’s chemistry is really great together, which is really crucial in a romantic comedy, or even a romance. Did you do anything to foster that chemistry or did it just come naturally?

RW: There was very little time – I’m trying to remember back, now – but Ruairi was one of the last people we cast in the film, actually. There wasn’t a lot of time, but I think they did spend some time together before we started shooting. Which was important to me, and to them, just to be around each other and develop a rapport. I do think that helped, but it was a restrained schedule.

BS: It’s not something where you can just put two people together and expect sparks to fly, so it worked out in the end.

RW: And even if you do all the work, whether it’s rehearsals or sending them off to spend the day together, it still might not work on screen. It’s always a bit of a gamble and we were very fortunate that the chemistry was there between the two of them.

BS: You mentioned earlier that you’ve always been a fan of classic literature, which forms a backdrop for the film. Were you worried at all that some of the dense, more academic books wouldn’t translate to general audiences? How did you go about making these people seem so smart but making it relatable?

RW: I realized early on that the most important thing was that the audience doesn’t have to know the literary references. The most important thing is that the audience has to believe that they do, and so that was a guiding principle to me. There is some “inside baseball” in this film, and you may not know the ins and outs of it, but the most important thing is believing that the characters do, so I hope we succeeded on that front. There were certainly even more literary references in earlier drafts of the script, which came down to a practical question of, how much can the audience handle? That was certainly something we talked about, but I just felt from the beginning that, if you know all these references, great. That’s wonderful, but it’s not necessary to enjoy the story.

BS: The romantic comedy can easily be formulaic in its plotting. What are some of the difficulties that you came across to keep this from being formulaic?

RW: Actually, I never saw this as a romantic comedy, I saw it more as a coming of age story. Part of what was unique about Carolyn’s book is that it wasn’t just a romance, it was also a coming of age story, it was a spiritual journey. It was all of those things at once, which I think is unique and I wanted to retain in the telling of the story. It’s easier said than done, and that was one of the more difficult aspects of the adaptation, was finding a way for those storylines to feel like they’re happening simultaneously and they’re all connected. So I guess the answer to the question is that the subversion of expectations was almost built in from the beginning just because it was a very unique type of story.

Surprised by Oxford will screen at the Heartland International Film Festival on October 12 at 7pm at the Deboest Lecture Hall at Newfields in Indianapolis. Buy tickets here.

Below is my conversation with Linh Tran, the director and co-writer of Waiting for the Light to Change, a film that’s making its world premiere at the Heartland International Film Festival. We talk about Vietnamese filmmakers, the complicated process of writing the film, and its visual influences. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Ben Sears: Now that you’ve made your first film, do you find yourself watching movies differently? Do you find yourself analyzing them differently?

Linh Tran: It’s actually a little funny for me because I didn’t grow up watching movies. I didn’t really watch a lot of movies until I was in college, but I guess, from back then to now, there has definitely been a change in how I watch movies. I feel like the change is like, I begin to sympathize and appreciate more things and I watch movies in a kinder way. Now, I feel like I can enjoy them more, actually. I just started watching movies that I enjoy over and over and over again, and the first time is always like watching normally, and the second or third watch is more like a study. It’s a little bit of a learning experience, but at the same time, I don’t think it really differs that much.

BS: Do you find yourself looking at it differently from a technical level, thinking how you would have shot a scene from a different perspective, or a different editing technique?

LT: I don’t think so, actually. Sometimes if something is really outstanding, like a really flashy camera movement, then I would notice it right away, but most of the time I feel like whenever I catch myself doing that, it’s probably because I’m not really into the movie.

BS: You mentioned that you didn’t watch a lot of movies growing up. Is it because you didn’t have access to many of them, or you just didn’t have an interest?

LT: I think both. I’m from Vietnam, and it’s really unfathomable for someone like me – because nobody in my family is in the arts or making movies, or anything like that – and none of the kids that I knew growing up was interested in art. We weren’t encouraged to explore that side; the parents were always saying ‘you have to be good at math’. It just didn’t occur to me that that was a possibility. Making movies was never a thing. We did watch a lot of TV growing up, though. I didn’t get that interested in film until I got to college when I came to the states to study.

BS: Are there any Vietnamese filmmakers that you admire, or that you would recommend?

LT: It’s really hard because I feel like Vietnam was a colony for such a long time, and people were too busy with the war, and people were really poor until the 2000’s. So nobody thought about going to see movies, and now people are going to see movies, but they’re a lot of, like, “instant noodles” kinds of movies. Their arthouse scene is booming right now, and there are a few directors that I know and I like. Dang Nhat Minh made movies in the 90s and earlier, but doesn’t make anything nowadays, and I’ve only seen a couple of his films, but his filmmaking feels very honest and authentic, and very unlike a lot of movies that are made right now. Phan Dang Di, who is still working, and I think he’s really popular on the international film festival circuit. I’ve seen a lot of his movies and I have met him once. He’s a very quiet guy and an interesting character. I got to work with one of the actors that was in one of his movies for one of my short films, and that was really fun. I’m kind of jealous of my friends who are Taiwanese or Chinese or Korean because they have a really long and great cinematic tradition that we don’t have. But at the same time, it’s sort of freeing. You can do whatever you want and there’s no standard or someone to judge. But I’m not in Vietnam right now; hopefully one day I’ll be able to make a feature in Vietnam. 

BS: One of the most noticeable things about Waiting for the Light to Change is how most scenes just unfold in these long, unbroken takes. Was it always your intention to film it that way, or did it come about during production, when you were planning it out?

LT: The slowness and rhythm of the films of people like Jia Zhangke and Hong Sang-soo has always appealed to me. With those movies, you can really feel it as if it’s unfolding in front of your eyes. But this was really the first film where I tried to emulate that. It also was because we didn’t have a lot of money or time to shoot the film, so it was a necessity, but at the same time, it works well for the kind of story it is.

BS: I was reminded of Yasujirō Ozu and how his camera was always so static. Was that something you were trying to consciously emulate?

LT: I really like Ozu as well, especially the subject matter of his films. I also really like how stoic his films seem to be. I wasn’t actively thinking of him while I was making the movie, but he’s always been an influence and was probably in the back of my mind. What I like is a lot of restraint. It comes from a character or personality thing, and it kind of extends into the filmmaking.

BS: The dialogue almost feels improvised throughout the film. Was there much improvisation that you allowed from the actors? It feels Ozu-like in that it’s almost like you’re watching something unfolding that you shouldn’t be watching.

LT: So, I’m going to tell you a story of how the script came to be, first. I was a grad student at DePaul University, when they had this program where you pick a script, pitch it, and work on it. This was a very different script, and then we were going to go into production when COVID happened. At one point, after the shoot got pushed a couple times, it wasn’t COVID-friendly, so we put it aside. We thought, let’s just write a new script as what we know as 25, 26-year old’s. At the time, I was working with two playwrights and we wrote the script over Zoom calls, we improvised the dialogue, we divided it into parts, wrote it, read it, and revised it over two months. In January of 2021 we got the first draft, and shooting was in March 2021, so we didn’t have a lot of revision. We were trying to cast the actors who reminded us of the characters we were writing, and we interviewed them and incorporated stories that they told us into the script. Because of COVID, we quarantined the entire crew at the lake house in Michigan where we shot the film. I was so lucky that I got the actors out there a week in advance, so we had the latest draft, we had a table read and I took the script away. When we went into rehearsals, they didn’t have a physical copy to memorize their lines. So during rehearsals, we would improvise these scenes based on what they remember, I would record it on my phone, and write the script based on what they said and send that to them. So on the set, there wasn’t a lot of improvisation, but the improvisation was in the rehearsals.

BS: You can really sense the chemistry between the actors, which is really crucial in this film. Did you do anything beyond quarantining them together to bring that chemistry out?

LT: Yes, in rehearsal, I really tried to get everybody to have trust with each other and establish that kind of familiarity. Before we went to Michigan, I would have these Zoom calls with the actors and I would turn off my camera and let them talk to each other. I would pop in and out, and let them chat on their own. Some of the stories they would tell each other, about their family, or their lives, were really powerful. Sometimes they would just share these things that were so intimate.

BS: Tell me a little about how you chose the location where most of the film takes place.

LT: Well, we didn’t really have money. One of the producers, Jake Rotger, said we could go and shoot at his family’s lake house before he had a story or a script or anything. So we had the location first, and then we tailored the script and the actors and everything to fit the location. Actually, in the original script, there’s a bonfire scene and because we were using the university’s money, they wouldn’t allow us to use fire because it could be too dangerous. We were really upset that morning, we got an email from the school, so we had to think of how we could transform the scene without the fire, so we changed it to a propane oil lamp.

BS: I’ve seen a lot of festival movies that tend to play up the drama with contrivances that don’t really feel authentic, but the drama here is underplayed, which I appreciated. When you were making it, did you ever get the urge to play up the drama?

LT: I don’t like making things so obvious and so external. There’s so much drama going on in everybody’s head all the time, and however we can make that known is more important to me. My best friend bought me a plane ticket to spend Thanksgiving with her. I told my writers I would take notes and come back with a story, so a lot of the bits in the film are things that I’ve experienced in my life. So to me, this is plenty of drama already. And there was a lot of energy on set that it already felt so full to me, and I really didn’t think of making this more dramatic.

BS: You kind of expect that, if things don’t go the protagonists’ way, the world will be over or nothing will ever be the same, but that’s not true to life.

LT: I think, in some sense, it will never be the same. Sometimes you meet someone and you know you’ll never see them again. It’s not always like that, but I don’t think the stakes need to be any higher. When I was writing this, I just really wanted to make something that people around me, people my age, could watch and think ‘oh my god, this is someone I know’.

Buy in-person and virtual tickets here.