“Find My Own Voice” | India Donaldson, Good One
Courtesy of Metrograph.
In India Donaldson’s acclaimed Good One, 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) embarks on a three-day backpacking trip in the Catskills with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros) and his oldest friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). As the two men quickly settle into a gently quarrelsome brotherly dynamic, airing long-held grievances, Sam, wise beyond her years, attempts to mediate.
But when lines are crossed and Sam’s trust is betrayed, tensions reach a fever pitch, as Sam struggles with her dad’s emotional limitations and experiences the universal moment when the parental bond is tested.
India Donaldson’s insightful, piercing debut is screening Wednesday, May 8, at the Music Box Theatre (get tickets now) as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, with the writer-director in attendance for a post-film Q&A.
Ahead of Good One playing the Chicago Critics Film Festival, Donaldson graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, her individual responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
I was lucky enough to grow up around filmmaking. My dad is a director, and I loved watching the filmmaking process whenever I was near him working. Perhaps because of this proximity I also for a long time thought I didn’t want to work in film. I think I had a very specific idea of what it meant to be a director (my dad), and I had to find my own way into it. Eventually I started making shorts, experimenting with ideas, meeting collaborators, basically learning how to make films and find my own voice.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
I wrote Good One when I was living at home with my family during the pandemic. I felt inspired by how an isolated environment can draw out family dynamics in a heightened and often very funny way. So I set out to write something that was intimate and contained but would feel visually and emotionally expansive. I find that camping trips can feel claustrophobic in a counterintuitive way. You’re outdoors, but with the same people for days on end with no real privacy or easy escape.
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
Everything Mike Leigh has made. I love the work he does with actors, and how humor and melancholy always exist in close proximity. That’s something I always aspire to.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
We shot the majority of the movie on a beautiful piece of property near the Mohonk Preserve in upstate New York. We scouted multiple times and really got to know it, and I think of it now as a big collaborator in the movie. It brought a lot of unexpected elements to the process of making the movie that I’m so grateful for. The end result is so specific to that place.
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
Seeing Desert Hearts at IFC some years ago. It’s gorgeous, and I remember feeling totally immersed in that romance. It was a beautiful reminder that intimacy and friendship and love and all the subtleties of female desire can feel grand and cinematic when given space in a theater.
Good One screens Wednesday, May 8, at 7:00 p.m, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 3–9, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago). Get your tickets now.