O’Sullivan and Thompson gently fold their story together, finding humor and heart at every turn, leading to the kind of ending that somehow inspired the film’s very first audience at Sundance to laugh and cry. Again, we know how this sounds, but — it’s funny! and good! And a reminder of how bright a light one story can shine on everyone.
IndieWire’s 17 Best Films of Sundance 2024 (And How to See Them)
Covering Sundance virtually was really difficult this year, especially since less films was available to screen virtually. What’s really hard is when your friends made your most anticipated film for Sundance 2024 and you aren’t able to see it (emoji shrug). But since I covered Sundance remotely, I was able to still talk to Kelly O’Sullivan (“Saint Frances”), about her feature directorial debut, which she helmed with her co-director Alex Thompson, “Ghostlight.” I’m so eager to see it as soon as it becomes available.
The film made many top film lists from this year’s festival, including with being named as IndieWire’s 17 Best Films of Sundance 2024. For our interview, we focused on the film’s embrace of community, and how it was shot right next door to our hometown of Chicago in Waukegan, Illinois. Also, we had to talk about Dolly De Leon. She had one of the best performances of last year in “Triangle of Sadness,” and she is a bad ass. I love that she came to Chicago to make this film.
IFC Films and Sapan Studio picked up the rights at Sundance for this film, which will be coming to theaters later this year.
Our Sundance 2024 coverage is sponsored by the Gene Siskel Film Center. One of the last arthouse theaters in Chicago, they present a curated collection of international, independent, and classic cinema reflective of Chicago’s diverse community. Learn more.
Can you talk about your inspiration for this film?
In the middle of the pandemic, I was just super lonely and I was missing community. I saw that the Shakespeare theater had pivoted away from doing a LIVE Shakespeare event of Romeo and Juliet to doing a filmed version with Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor. And I love those actors, especially Jessie Buckley. I’ve never been a huge fan of Shakespeare, but for some reason, something about the intimacy of when they were doing it and when it was being filmed it made me such emotional. So I was just thinking about that community, and getting to make something in the midst of loneliness.
Then the character of Dan popped into my head, this guy that has grown up in a world that has told him that emotionality is a weakness. He really needs a place for expression, so he finds it through this group of community theater actors. That’s when I started to weave together the ideas of classic Shakespeare with the sort of real-life Romeo and Juliet scenario that is happening in his life.
Dolly De Leon has said, “GHOSTLIGHT is a story about how theater can be a place of healing and how a community of like-minded people can help us navigate through trauma. And that the pain of trauma may never go away, but we learn to deal with it through the support of people who care about us.” Can you talk about working with her and your lead, Keith Kupferer?
Dolly was a dream come true. I had never worked with her before, but I had seen her in “Triangle of Sadness,” and both Alex and I were blown away by her performance. And we both were really intimidated by her because in that film, she is so commanding onscreen. You know, she becomes the boss, and probably would be somebody in the end. Then we had a zoom with her, and she was just the most thoughtful and down-to-earth, collaborative person. She had been doing theater for years in the Philippines. So when we were like, ‘We don’t really work with a hair or makeup artist, you’ll have to do your own hair and makeup,’ she’s like, ‘I love that, I’m down.’ The entire way through, she felt like an actor you would find in Chicago by being a person who is so inspired by collaboration, and is down to work with a bare bones crew. She was excited by that, and was a total dream come true.
Keith and I did a play together in the American Theatre Company, which is now defunct. We did “The Humans” together ten years ago and he played my dad. Watching him on stage every night, just as a fellow actor, I was like, ‘He is just one of the best actors in the world. This man is brilliant.’ So when I was writing the script, I wrote it with him in mind because he has to be a believable blue collar construction worker, and then by the end, he is doing Shakespeare brilliantly. He has to have so much emotional repression, but also a vulnerability. I knew he was the only one to do it.
Can you talk about working with your production designer, Linda Lee, who according to the film’s press notes, was an architect. Can you talk about working with her?
She’s incredible. She is actually Alex’s climbing buddy, and then they took a climbing class together, and became friends. As we were ramping up to make this, he was talking to her about it, and she was like, “Yeah, I’m leaving my job and that sounds really interesting.” And he was like, “Do you want to come do this?”
From the beginning, she was just so prepared. She was so thoughtful and so creative. You would never know this was her first time being a production designer. She delivered, and then some. The movie looks so beautiful because of her. Her skills as an architect are transferable skills by imagining the feel of a space, and how it impacts the people around it, and then getting something in the frame. She was a joy.
Can you talk about your work with Linh Tran, who served as your script supervisor? I love her, and she is one of the current filmmakers on the rise whose career I am most excited to follow.
Yeah, we joke that the most decorated and celebrated filmmaker slummed it with us to be our script supervisor. But that was another connection we made through Alex’s friend group. They both went to DePauw for undergrad, and then DePaul for grad, so they’ve had a very similar path and I think they just got to know each other through that community. I think he might have advised her at some point at DePaul. He was just like, ‘We’ve got to work with her if we can, she is amazing.’
What do you hope people see in your film?
I hope that they see the value of empathy. So much about the film is saying, ‘walk in this other person’s shoes for a minute.’ The value of expression, the value of talking about really difficult things, and I hope they laugh a lot. Because I think this film is equal parts comedy and drama. There’s a lot that plays on that within it. I hope there is the release of both, like maybe some tears, but also a lot of laughter, and that there is a embrace of silliness, and catharsis in equal measure.
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