Downwind

Going into Downwind, I really wanted this to be my huge, unmitigated student film success story. I wanted to make a movie the 'proper way,' like the way we'd been taught throughout the year. I wanted to find a perfect child actor, the most pristine filming locations - I wanted to make the best student film I could.
Call it fate, chance, or necessity, but the film gods had different plans. That strive to make a perfect student film slowly turned into simply telling this story the best way we could. I shifted focus from comparing it to other works, to just making the movie as personal to me as possible.
By making it personal, we took off.
It was only when we embraced our limitations that the story started to soar. It was never in the playbook to film it at my house, or cast my non-actor sister as the lead. It turned out the very thing I was running away from became our strongest asset, and one that you can feel permeating through every frame of this story.
Every single person involved with this project made the story their own, and I believe it shows. Much like what Millie and her Mom learn throughout the story, the best planes are the ones that we build together - and this was certainly a plane built by the most empathetic, compassionate, and hard working team a director could possibly ask for.