When confirming the length of an interview, it’s unusual for a director to warn that their parent could interrupt if it goes on too long.
“My dad might yell at me to start writing our new script at some point,” says Freddy Macdonald, the prodigious young talent whose feature film “Sew Torn” was released on digital platforms on March 31.
While filmmaking brothers are more common, the 24-year-old has been collaborating with his father, Fred Macdonald, for years—making stop-motion animation and live-action shorts, and writing feature screenplays.
“We have the same taste. My dad taught me stop-motion very early on, then he taught me about storytelling. He’d always tell me how to craft a story and subvert expectations. Our voices developed in tandem and we never get into arguments over scripts,” he explains.
Based on their 2019 short film of the same name, “Sew Torn” marks the pair’s first feature film. It tells the story of a seamstress (Eve Connolly), who unexpectedly stumbles on a drug deal gone bad. Realizing that the money might save her failing fabric store, she considers whether to commit the perfect crime, call the police, or drive away.
When Freddy started directing the feature-length, he was just 21. “It was a big learning experience—very emotional and physically demanding,” he says. He chose to make the film in Switzerland, not just so he could amass a “strange, international cast,” but because he wanted to make a film with a “European twist and Hollywood sensibilities.”
“We knew it was our first feature. We wanted it to be in our voice and be strange tonally,” he says. While Freddy was born and raised in Santa Monica, he had already immersed himself in the Swiss film industry for over a decade. “My mum is half Swiss,” he explains. “I went to high school at the Zurich International School. We moved to Switzerland when I was around 15 after my dad got a job there.”
His dad’s profession is how he got into filmmaking at such a young age. While in Los Angeles, Fred ran the animation company Olive Jar Studios. By the time Freddy was 9, his father had taught him how to do stop-motion animation, and he would spend hours in their garage animating puppets frame by frame.
Filmmaking was a family affair: Freddy’s mother designed the puppets he animated, and later in middle school, when he moved to live-action, his sister acted in his films. The family moved to Switzerland and he began writing shorts with his father, which he then co-created with his new Swiss friends. Between 2016 and 2019, they shot “Gifted: Thanksgiving Post Mortem,” “The Father of Art,” “The Coachmen,” and “I’m Good.” Freddy then set his sights on applying to the American Film Institute, saying, “It was a dream of mine to go there. I knew it was a long shot, because it’s a master’s program, and I was applying as a high school senior.”
The Road to AFI
After reading AFI’s prompt—tell a story about a change of heart in five minutes—the pair came up with the idea for “Sew Torn.” In addition to submitting it to AFI and other film schools, they sent it to Fred’s film industry connections. That’s how their six-minute-long short ended up in the hands of one of the filmmakers who heavily inspired it: Joel Coen.
Coen was so impressed that he asked to meet them—and his agent at United Talent Agency wanted to have a word, too. Then they heard Searchlight Pictures wanted to buy the short. Finally, Freddy learned he’d landed an interview with AFI.
When the duo sat down with Coen, the Oscar-winning writer and director told them they should bask in their “family connection,” adding, “You guys should keep doing this. When you collaborate with your family, it’s really special. You should embrace that.”
Soon after, at the age of 18, Freddy was accepted into the Institute, becoming the youngest directing fellow ever to land a spot. For the next few years, he focused on his studies, all while wondering if he’d lived enough of a life to be alongside his peers. He recalls, “I didn’t know if my stories were worth telling. I hadn’t lived a crazy life.” The young filmmaker focused on his own voice, conquered his insecurities, and discovered how to twist his perspective into something original. The result was his AFI graduating thesis short film “Shedding Angels,” which won a Student Academy Award.
While in AFI’s screenwriting class, Freddy looked to expand “Sew Torn” into a feature with his dad after encouragement from Coen, who “was curious to see where the seamstress went next,” he says. “At AFI I tinkered with that idea.” Freddy admits that the feature film script writing process proved to be more difficult than expected. It took 40 drafts to get the final script right. “There were many moments where we thought it wasn’t possible. We even started brainstorming new ideas. But in the back of our minds we knew we had a proof of concept that we could leverage into an independent film and get financed. We couldn’t walk away from that.”
When the two finally completed the script, they looked for independent financiers. “That’s what Joel told us to do. So we could have full creative control.” Freddy had a working relationship with Barry Navidi, who is Al Pacino’s producer partner. Navidi agreed to put up some of the financing. Freddy had also previously met Diamantis and Socratis Zavitsanos at a film festival in Switzerland in 2016. They asked to be producers, too. “They were able to get a large chunk of our budget. They were invaluable in terms of making the production happen.”
After premiering at the 2024 South By Southwest Film Festival, where it was met with strong reviews, “Sew Torn” also screened at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival, before being picked up by Sunrise Films for U.S. distribution.
When asked to give advice to other burgeoning filmmakers, Freddy insists that it’s key to “blast your work out into the world.”
“You really have no idea where it can land. It might end up getting passed along to your hero. I remember after making ‘Sew Torn’ as a short, I was literally crying in the car, because I didn’t think we had the footage. But that’s what got me into AFI, [got me] an agent, and allowed me to meet my hero. You just never know who you’ll meet, at a film festival, in an Uber, or through a friend, who can help make your movie happen.”
