Sophia Silver on Over/Under and its four-year journey to get a release
Over/Under, a beautiful coming-of-age film by Sophia Silver, made its debut on the film festival circuit in 2022 but struggled to find distribution. After an almost four-year journey, Over/Under will be released digitally in the U.K. on Monday and in the U.S. on Tuesday, and I highly recommend checking it out.
Inspired by Silver’s friendship with her co-writer Sianni Rosenstock, Over/Under tells the story of Violet (Emajean Bullock) and Stella (Anastasia Veronica Lee, who now goes by Tobias Lee), two besties who reunite every summer on holiday in New England before going home to different parts of California. The film charts their summers between nine and 13 years old and shows how they’ve changed year on year and how this affects their friendship. It’s moving, funny, relatable and many aspects of it really resonated with me.
To celebrate its release, I hopped on Zoom with actress-turned-writer/director Silver to discuss the scriptwriting process, finding those two gems and the four-year wait for a wide release after its film festival run.
Congratulations on this beautiful film. It’s based on your friendship with your co-writer. Would you call it autobiographical or inspired by?
Inspired by. I would say like the intimacy of their relationship is very spot-on, but the particulars of their life were fabricated.
How long ago did you start the writing process and what did that look like between you and Sianni?
It was during Covid, so I would say, like most of us, I was going through an existential moment in my life. I was up at my family’s house in Northern California and I was walking alone one day, reflecting on my friendship with Sianni, feeling very grateful for it, and I reached for my phone to text her: ‘We should tell our story one day.’ But I already had a text from her saying, ‘We need to tell our story one day.’ So whether you believe in signs or what, it was too sort of kismet in the moment, and we had this spaciousness in our lives to get on Zoom and start writing memories from our childhood. Over nine months, it took the form of a screenplay, so I would say from start to finish, it was about nine months of us collaborating on the script.
I really loved the structure of the story, how it takes place on these summers, and it really makes it clear how they’ve changed as each year goes on. Did the structure of it come early or later on in the writing process?
Very early. I think we were so drawn to talking about those moments when we felt like things were subtly changing in our friendship, just puberty, the influence of social woundings and stuff like that. So I would say that happened pretty organically.
Now, let’s talk about Emajean and Anastasia because they are fantastic. You discovered two stars there, 100%. How did you discover them, and what made them perfect as Violet and Stella?
Actually, Anastasia no longer goes by Anastasia. He actually uses he/him pronouns now and his chosen name is Tobias. But he has so much love for Anastasia. But I found Toby’s tape pretty early on and it’s just one of those tapes were I was like, ‘Who is this?’ I had sort of a gut feeling like I had found Stella.
And with Emajean, she gave a hilarious tape, sort of not at all what I had envisioned in my mind for Violet, but I just felt like there was something about her essence that was so delicious. I had a chemistry read between the two of them early on and I couldn’t stop smiling the whole time. I basically cast them right then and there.
I also read that you rehearsed with them for five months before the shoot. That’s quite rare on an indie film. Why was that rehearsal period so important to you?
Well, my background is acting and that is what I had been trained to do and what I thought I would do for many years of my life, so I understood how important rehearsing was. When you have the opportunity to tell a play, you’re rehearsing so much, and with film, a lot of times, you just come to set, you meet your scene partner that day and you’re supposed to have this robust history between the two of you.
I felt for the girls we needed time for them to really build that friendship and that bond and I wanted them as human beings, separate from Stella and Violet, to actually love each other and have a friendship and I felt like the rehearsal process gave us that time so that once we were actually there on set, the two of them were having sleepovers on their own every night.
Did you film in story order, so like all of the nine-year-old stuff first and then…?
No, no, I tried really hard, but you know how indie filmmaking goes. We had 17 days, and also working with children, we have only a short amount of hours in the day (due to) child labour laws, and we just did the best we could. I also think that was why the rehearsal period was so helpful because by the time we got to set, the actors knew these characters so well; they just were them, (so) we could go from nine to 13, back to 10, and they were completely dropped in.
And was every scene scripted or did they improvise?
Completely improvised. The script really served as a blueprint, like they understood where the scene started and where it ended, but I was like, ‘Find your way there,’ you know, because at that point also, with the rehearsal process, they were deepening and expanding these characters beyond what I and Sianni could have created on the page and that was so exciting for me as a collaborative kind of director and I would just let them go. We would have the cameras rolling and they would start the scene before and then, you know, some of the gems came through in the final version.
I also spotted that you have a small role yourself as the smoothie shop barista. What was it like being an actor and director and switching between those two hats?
It was so small, I feel like I wasn’t even fully aware it was happening. It became such a family experience, the whole cast and crew, that it was just fun to put ourselves in the film here and there. It was a blast; it was a great day.
The film premiered in 2022 at film festivals. I’m just curious about the life it’s had since then – how come it’s taken so long to get a release here?
That’s a great question. That is just, I think, what indie filmmaking is these days. I was 26 at the time when I shot the film, and I think back a lot to that version of myself who had so much hope and dreams for how things would progress. We had such a beautiful festival run, but the reality of the business is a very different experience than the actual art of filmmaking and telling a story so it was really hard. We were told a lot that there wasn’t enough cast, like names, to actually sell the film, which was so disheartening, especially as you see, the actors are so incredible; it was heartbreaking for them. But here we are five years later, and now it’ll be available for the rest of time, which is wonderful, and we’re just so grateful.
In the past four or five years, what have you been working on?
I’ve been writing scripts, with also a lot of the hope that, you know, if I had the opportunity to make another film, this film would be discovered. I have some things that are in the works. I’ve become a mother twice over; I had two young children, so a lot of the stories that I’m now inspired by are what it means to be a young mum and really messy, raw, exhausting moments, but really beautiful ones too.
Do you see yourself returning to acting or are you now a writer-director?
I don’t know. That question was asked a lot five years ago and I said never again (to) acting and I think probably not. But I feel like you never know, you know, if there was a part that I wrote for myself one day or that came through that was too good to pass on or I felt the same gut feeling that I just had to – I’m sure I would say yes.
Since 2022, what has the response to Over/Under been like? And has any of the feedback surprised you?
I think the main feedback that really surprised me was how much it resonated with the male audience as well. It made me reflect as the filmmaker, thinking, you know, initially, I thought I was telling a story about girlhood but really this story was about personhood. I think no matter how you identify, those years where we’re ending the last fragile bits of childhood (and) entering puberty are universal. I think it was really beautiful seeing it didn’t matter who was watching the film; they went through this moment in their life too and they resonated (with the story).
Where did you film it?
We shot in Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
Is that actually where you would go on holiday?
Sianni and I went to Martha’s Vineyard, which is a small island off of Massachusetts, so it felt very nostalgic for us.
I read that you outlined their friendship beyond 13. What made you finish at 13?
I felt like we were starting to tell multiple movies and I didn’t want to cut some of the precious moments in the film that is going to be available. I feel like giving those moments breathing room is part of what makes it so unique. It has the space to feel the quiet moments and a lot of what’s not being said between two people.
When you look back at the production, what were some of the biggest challenges at the time?
Well, on a personal level, I was pregnant – in my first trimester – with my son, which I did not tell anyone on set. So on a personal level, that was very interesting.
I’m trying to remember. In all honesty, afterwards, I had people who said to me, you know, ‘Didn’t someone tell you you’re never supposed to work with children or animals for your first film?’ I was like, ‘No one told me that.’ I feel like I was really using my gut instincts, and I was so lucky with the people who gravitated towards this film, and I think having that rehearsal time with the actors allowed the production to be so smooth and lovely for everyone.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Coming to Digital Platforms from 24 August (UK & Ireland) / 25 August (US & Canada)