There's something surreal about watching your own work on screen, especially when it deals with subject matter this heavy. Making I-21 was two years of my life consumed by research, interviews with survivors, and countless nights wondering if I was approaching this story with the respect it deserved.
We shot two complete versions-same script, same story, different gender presentations for leads. It wasn't just about making a point; it was about forcing audiences to confront their own assumptions about who deserves sympathy.
Isa was the hardest character I've ever directed, probably because I saw too much of myself in her destructive determination. That obsessive need to solve, to fix, to never give up-I had to be careful not to romanticize it. Real obsession isn't beautiful; it's isolating and corrosive. Watching the actors embody that slow dissolution over months of filming was emotionally draining for all of us.
We rehearsed for weeks to make those final moments of normalcy feel authentic. I still can't watch it without thinking about how many real celebrations have ended the same way.
Visually, I wanted the film to feel like it was suffocating along with Isa. As her world narrows, so does the frame. By the third act, we're practically climbing inside her head. My cinematographer and I spent hours discussing how grief actually looks-not cinematically beautiful grief, but the exhausting, unglamorous reality of it.
The restraint was intentional. Every instinct screams to show more, explain more, but I realized the absence carried more weight than any graphic depiction could.
I-21 isn't entertainment in the traditional sense. It's a mirror, a challenge, a conversation starter. If audiences leave feeling unsettled and asking harder questions about who they believe and why, then we did our job.
