Sarah Paulson on Younger Filmmakers at Tribeca Chanel Through Her Lens

Although it’s officially fall in New York City, it’s a balmy, summer-like day on Thursday evening as some of the starriest women in Hollywood gather on Greenwich Hotel’s penthouse rooftop in Tribeca to toast the winners of Tribeca and Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program. 

The crowd, nearly entirely comprised of women, spill out onto the patio as jurors Sarah Paulson, Meghann Fahy, Kaitlyn Dever, Allison Janney, Payal Kapadia, Issa Rae and Jenny Slate announce this year’s grand prize winners: Karishma Dev Dube and MG Evangelista for “Strangers,” a short film about two shy newlyweds clumsily navigating intimacy in the early days of their arranged marriage.

For the past three days, Dube and Evangelista were among a select group of filmmakers to take part in intensive workshops, one-on-one script-developing sessions and intimate conversations as part of Through Her Lens’ mentorship program.  As winners, they’ll receive full financing to produce their short film with support from Tribeca Studios.

For Paulson, the beauty of working through the projects of these younger filmmakers was its distance from the commercial components that can often mitigate creative freedom. “I was inspired because I was smacked  in the face with the purity of my original interest in the medium in the first place,” Paulson tells Variety. “You can find yourself on this train of pursuit of artistic acceptance and also diving into something that really matters to you, but mixed with the commercial components of the life that you need to live in order to make a living. And some of these things are diametrically opposed.”

“But somehow,” she continues, “you’re having this moment with all these young filmmakers in the beginning of their career and their lives, where they are so pure with ideas and confidence and curiosity and exploration and not feeling the sort of boundaries and restrictions of commercial filmmaking. It was just so potent and powerful.”

It’s clear from talking to Paulson, alongside fellow juror Fahy and the grand prize winners themselves, that the program was a mutually beneficial experience. “Most of us are used to being on the other side so to be sitting on the couch, on the other side of the table, was something I felt we were all very aware of,” Fahy says. “We kept getting feedback about how happy everybody was that we were smiling at them, but I think it’s because we all really believe what it feels like to walk into a room, trying to achieve something and feeling really nervous and being confronted with something that doesn’t make you feel super comfortable.”

While the young filmmakers on the other side of the table were given script notes and career advice, the veteran jurors were gifted with hope from a younger generation — who, despite facing seemingly insurmountable challenges in a constantly evolving economy and industry, are still showing up to create their art.

Paulson says: “They know what’s happening with AI. They know what’s happening inside the studio system. They know how hard it is to get a movie made, and yet, here they are with their ideas, and they’re just brimming with them. It’s inspiring. It’s cool to be hopeful. It’s cool to be optimistic. I really feel like this is a real beautiful moment for me to see that you can still have aspirations and hope, even in these sort of moments where it feels really hard to see the light.”

Below, Paulson talks to Variety about the Through Her Lens program, finding inspiration in the next generation of filmmakers and how she’s finding hope in today’s unprecedented political moment:

Firstly, how was your Emmys night?

All of those winners were to me, like a communication of people paying attention, not just ticking boxes, but rewarding work based on [real talent]. It was a big night, inspiring speeches and big night for women and performances of people over 40, and maybe it’ll be a big rush in and an influx of stories of people in their 40s and 50s, which is great for me. 

There were many people who won who deserved to win, right? There were a couple of people who I thought should have won, who didn’t win. So my argument is does the value of that work made wildly less important, valuable or worthy because it didn’t get crowned with the statue? And in my mind, the answer is no. That person whose work I admire does not become diminished in the light of that other person’s win.

What types of stories would you like to see more of in film and TV?

I love a good kitchen sink drama. I feel like there was a time when I look back at these movies that were made in the ’70s and the ’80s like “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” or  “A Woman Under the Influence” or “Opening Night” or even “Postcards from the Edge” — these movies that were made that were about personal relationships and interpersonal relationships. There wasn’t an event or an explosion, or the world is coming to an end or lava is everywhere on the streets of Manhattan. It was like about how people deal with one another and how you make your life work. What is a life lived? There was so much exploration of that at a different time in filmmaking, and there doesn’t seem to be so much space for that anymore. Or if it happens, it happens more in television, which is great because that’s a wonderful place to work as well. 

I feel like we’re seeing a lot more of that in books. Is there any book you’d love to see adapted?

I wonder if “Intermezzo” [by Sally Rooney] is gonna be made into a movie. I loved that book in a way that was really unnatural. I was possessed by that book, I really was possessed by it.

Also, “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” [by James McBride], which is an incredible book and I think is gonna be made into a movie but I don’t think they’ve written it yet. But goddamn, that was a book I loved. I’ve really been in reading a lot now because it feels like a wonderful place to live inside. Although, escaping is not the mode we should be living in. I wonder if we should be living in the mode of being wildly awake and present. 

What does being present mean to you in this political moment?

It’s just conversations I’m having with my friends, which are the same as I’m sure the conversations you’re having with your friends. Like, what do we do? Does there need to be a revolution? Do we need to get into the street in a way that we’re not on the streets? When you look around in restaurants and you’re in Manhattan and people are just eating their dinners and walking around and living their lives… I don’t know what the alternative is.

Shifting to Through Her Lens, it’s clear that it was such a special experience for everyone involved — and mutually beneficial for both the mentees and jurors.

I kept saying to all of them before they were going into the room with the jury, and I was like, Every single one of them, and I can guarantee you this, all of them worry that they don’t have enough to offer you in the moment. They’re worried they’re not going to say the right thing. They’re worried that they’re not going to award the prize to whomever, that someone’s going to be disappointed. And they’re going to worry that they don’t have enough to meet them at the table. Everybody’s worried. Everybody has imposter syndrome, no matter what level you are at. And I think just to try to stabilize the anxiety that somehow someone was superior to another .

What stood out to you about the scripts you saw?

The beauty of it was no one was thinking about it like, Is someone going to buy this and make this? They would like to win the competition, of course. But they want to get it made — it’s about that more than anything else. They all just had a total singular voice of the person who was making it. It wasn’t watered down or made easily digestible.

None of the questions that I had [for them] involved anything about, like, How do I make this more accessible, or how do I meet the moment of a commercial opportunity. It wasn’t about that at all. I asked them, “If the script landed on your desk, what would make you want to be a part of it?”