Coming into your own as a person is hard, and it’s made even harder when you have a crazy family. The people closest to us affect our lives in so many ways, for better and for worse, and it really becomes up to us whether we let that affect influence our path or not.

“Capsized” explores this idea of if family is everything, and how we can navigate complicated family relationships, especially as women.

The film follows the O’Briens, who are forced out of their home due to foreclosure and end up living together on a small boat. Their chaotic father, Ray, cooks up a plan to save them all; entering a local fishing competition, where the grans prize is enough to save their home.

The film is beautiful, authentic, funny, and distinctly feminine. It’s heartwarming, yet emotional, and by the end audience members will find themself invested in the O’Briens life as if they were old family friends. It’s humorous, but has a lot to say that it doesn’t hold back from.

Cinema Femme sat down with writer and director Lindsey Ryan to talk about messy family dynamics, womanhood, and making waves in the industry.

Lindsey, I just want to start by saying I loved this film. This is one of my favorites of the year so far.

Oh my gosh, I have chills.

I can’t wait to watch it again. Jumping into my questions, you’ve said the idea for this film started with a contradiction: the person who teaches you to love the world can also distort your understanding of it. Can you talk a bit about that idea, and how it eventually blossomed into “Capsized”?

I think the heart of “Capsized” is that idea. With troubled characters, like Ray, I think they’re not always one thing; they’re not always bad but they’re not always good. I think for me I started to look at the people in my life and think about the things they’ve given me that I value, and the things that have really hurt me along the way, and I don’t think you can really separate the two.

“Capsized” became a way to explore that idea, and I think interestingly through the feminine perspective. I think as women we do deal with holding on to that. We have to be the empathetic ones that always move through tricky dynamics, where as an interesting thing I’ve learned is maybe men don’t have to separate that as much in their lives as women do.

Obviously, this film involves a lot of time on the ocean, in a boat. What was the most challenging part of filming a movie set in this location?

Oh my gosh. It’s funny, I grew up fishing and boating, it’s very much a part of my DNA and I love it so much, it’s an obsession of mine. I had shot before on the water and it never gets easier. It’s so me to make things so hard for myself, I feel like my whole, in small ways, I’ve made things difficult.

This one was particularly difficult because it was an ensemble cast. We had three minors, so you’re doing the four hours of school, and then you only have four hours to shoot with them. In this, they’re in every scene. So you add that logistic to the fact that you’re shooting a scene in the middle of the bay, and you literally have to usher people from a boat to land, it was a challenge.

I think the movie’s ambition is a part of what makes it so special, and having those sort of clumsy indie bits of a movie that’s so big and packed with complications is what gives it the texture of dysfunctional family and fun, because it really was that making it.

This family is fantastic, with a chaos that is familiar to many. What was the casting process like for the family? They all fit so naturally in their roles and their chemistry as a group is fantastic.

Thank you so much for saying that. I love the way this cast came together. We cast Rhys Ifans first for Ray. I have always loved Rhys and I love that he has the ability to be so charming and so hysterical. He himself is probably the – no, he is hands-down the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life. And I know a lot of very funny people. He’s just hysterical, but his ability to encompass a very dark character, or have a contrast in his performance, and be able to hit that tonal balance was so important. It could have very easily tipped in the wrong hands, and I think Rhys traverses the terrain very elegantly.

From there, I’ve always been a big fan of Lily Rabe. She’s full of so much pathos, and her ability to just say things without saying anything. I know Lily has a huge fan base and rightly so, she’s just unbelievably talented.

And then the rest of the casting process was a traditional one. It was a lot of looking at faces and making sure they made sense with the parents we cast. I was also blown away by the tapes I received from the actors we cast, Griffin Gluck and Sarah Catherine Hook are just incredible. When we did that first chemistry read with them, it was over Zoom which is always tough, but their little boxes were on top of each other and we were like “Oh my god, they look like twins!” And their chemistry was just instant.

I got very lucky because I don’t think it’s easy, especially in today’s process with everything being so digital, it’s really, really difficult thing to get that meshing with the cast. I think that we got really lucky and found a great dynamic across all of the characters, the youngest ones included. They’re the same way. Amazing takes, and their chemistry was so special.

You touched on this a bit already, but Ray is a tough person to be around, and his character makes choices that are hard to watch, yet we still are. When writing, how did you balance his flaws with his likable qualities?

It’s a challenge. I think people don’t want to see a character that’s truthful in a lot of ways. I’m reflecting the world I see around me, and I think that this sort of male trope exists, and I think we all know them. For me it was really important to stick to that truth and really allow for the family to be people that are constantly embracing it. With someone like Ray, it’s the constant embrace of everyone around him that leads to his ultimate demise.

When writing, it was a cautious battle of like “How do we keep the heartbeat going?”. He has these moments where he is fighting, in his own weird way, for the family. It’s not the way he should be dealing with things, but in his own weird psyche I decided these are the ways Ray decides to protect his family.

I think it was important to find some humor in those moments for me, and find the levity in the ridiculousness of his behavior, and trust that the people who are going to get the movie will get it, and the ones that don’t, don’t.

My favorite aspect of this film is Diane and Nicole. Their relationship with each other, but also their mutual desire for freedom, while only one of them is brave enough to chase it through most of the film. What went into the process of writing these characters? How did you capture such electric performances from Lily and Sarah?

I’m so glad it’s one of your favorites, because right now I’m feeling it so deeply. I’m so proud of these female actresses and their performances they gave with a really authentic female POV. It’s so refreshing for my own self to be able to watch the movie again and be like “Oh yeah, we are allowed to have our own POV.” I could go on and on about that, especially in today’s climate. But, I digress.

They were so incredible to work with, and I give a lot of the credit to them for just finding the truth of the scenes, and having their own dissertations about how they want their dynamic to unfold. We had long conversations just understanding what this movie is about, and what do we as women deal with on the day-to-day that we can really infuse into the script, and it’s a lot of the grin-and-bear-it notions. It’s sort of like the old mentality and the new mentality coming into complete collision with each other because Nicole is the black sheep. Nicole is here to shake things up, and I think that that dynamic was really special to watch unfold and what they found in their more explosive scenes. You feel that eruption of frustration that they both authentically inhabited.

The ending of this film is very poignant. It went in a direction that honestly, I didn’t see coming. How did you come to this ending? Was there ever a world in which the movie ended a different way?

This is the refreshing thing about independent film. We get to do the ending that might not be the one that most people want. I think for me, it was always this ending. Again, even with this really difficult male character, I always wanted this to be the female’s movie. There was never a universe where this was any other POV on it, it was always meant to be the women of the family’s movie. I always felt that the journey of this film was evolving around the troubled person. I thought that there is no better way than the poetic justice that closes out the film. I won’t spoil it, but I’m proud of that ending. Even though it could be polarizing, and that’s understandable, it does exactly what I set out to do with this movie.

Like we talked about, the film explores the idea that we don’t always have to take what your family gives you. What pieces of the story were most important to you when developing that idea?

I think in my own personal experiences it’s about analyzing the things we’ve been taught. Going back to your first question, it’s the things that we choose no longer to inherit and bring with us. That was really important to me. I grew up in the same context most women have grown up in, which is that men move through the world in a certain way, and we’ve digested that and we’re just meant to fit into these roles. That was a part of my upbringing in a weird way, cause I grew up in a coastal town, and it’s in the DNA of where I’m from.

I wanted to deconstruct what it is to take your own life back, and come into your own adulthood, and coming-of-age into the woman that you’re going to become. Those these were really important to me in writing and exploring Nicole’s arc, but also through the whole movie.

My publication, Cinema Femme, focuses on uplifting female and gender expansive creatives. What lessons have you learned so far in your journey as a female creative that you’d like to share?

Oh Megan, where do I begin?

Lessons I’ve learned are that we as women, we don’t share the same pathway in this industry that our contemporaries around us do, primarily the men. I think we have to stand shoulder to shoulder with each other and really support women, and women filmmakers, and women stories, because if we’re not making the change, no one is making the change.

I think in this process, I’ve gone through making my first independent film, and I look around and ratio of men to women in decision making roles is embarrassing. It’s abhorrent. It’s insane, and it’s not getting better until people like us are screaming it from the rooftops. I’m really happy to see people like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Issa Rae starting to shout that.

I’m feeling it very deeply right now, and I think that I’ve learned to be a resource to every female filmmaker I possibly can be, and to make room at the table for each other. I know there’s not room right now, but we can make it. If we can sort of change the narrative around females being a genre, and female fitting into these strange contorted box of what the rest of the industry gets to play in, I think we can make some real monumental change.

I’ll leave it with that I really hope that in 50 years, I’ll look back and laugh at how hard it was for us, and how great it is for the women of the new generation.

What’s next for you?

I’m writing something right now that we’re still pretty early on, but I’m hoping to get it off of the ground. I won’t say a date and time, but sooner rather than later for my second feature. It takes place at a renaissance fair, and centers around masculinity and the world today, and trying to find connection in a world that no longer fosters that. It really analyzes that space with the ironic background of the renaissance fair, which I love.

I’m trying to stay busy and make as much as I can!

Thank you so much for your time today. Again, I loved this film so much. I told everyone at work the next day how awesome it was.

You’re so kind to say that. It means so much to me because all the things I’ve said during this interview are true. I’m just feeling the weight of the world, as all of us are right now, with the news and everything going on. It’s just so crazy. It’s been so insane to make a movie that’s a female’s perspective, and it’s amazing to understand just the complete disconnect of people that just don’t get it. And why do you think they don’t get it? It’s crazy, but it’s been eye opening for sure.