Ride Home Films began in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York in 2016, when we, Charlotte and Jillian, started living together as roommates and soon discovered our shared love of writing and filmmaking. We believe that we work so well as film partners because we are best friends first, and each idea we have stems from our intensely similar outlooks on life and shared memories.
In 2018, we returned to our Michigan roots to shoot our debut coming-of-age short film, Call Me When You Get Home, which told the story of siblings Jack (Joey Quehl) and Josie (Charlotte Moretti) growing up and out of their small town. We learned so much from making Call Me When You Get Home, funding, producing, and shooting it entirely on our own. Filling all the traditional crew positions ourselves and having full creative control set the tone for the movies we make and the way we make them, but we always dreamt of telling longer-form stories by making a feature film.
In March of 2020, we began writing Fairmount and shot in September of that year. Jillian served as writer, producer, cinematographer, and director, and Charlotte as writer, producer, lead actress, and art director. We gathered a skeleton crew of five and a cast of talented actors, all of whom believed in the movie and carried this project through.
Our films are largely character driven, as we believe that the truth of a story lies with the person telling it. We see filmmaking as a rare opportunity to crack open the mind of another and peer inside; that our characters exist as real, tangible people, with idiosyncrasies, faults, and failures, is a hallmark of our work and the beating heart beneath it.
Our filmmaking style can be categorized as hyper-realistic, typically employing minimal artifice to ensure an honest portrayal of the world around us. We often cast non-actors in our films, and collaboration is highly encouraged in informing dialogue choices to ensure natural deliveries. Wardrobe and set design are meticulously researched by observing real environments and hand-crafted or selected, and we often utilize "guerrilla shooting" methods, both out of necessity and preference. These elements of our films cohesively converge to present candid expressions of lives stripped free of stereotypes and preconceived notions.
Ultimately, we hope to convey through our films a sincere depiction of the humanity that we feel radiating around us. We believe that being attuned to the beauty, strangeness, and wonder of the everyday is our greatest influence for creating art. We hope to instill in our audiences a sense that all lives, including their own, are well worth exploration, and that film can and should be an accessible tool for expression.
