By Franca Lafosse
The Secret “Alone and ashamed, a young woman grapples with the weight of her choice as she endures an abortion at home.”
Franca: Congratulations on being selected for Best Australian shorts at Flickerfest and thank you for chatting with us Lilla! Watching The Secret, I loved how gentle the storytelling was, and it really struck me that it dealt so intimately with the topic of abortion, instead of utilising it as a plot point within a wider story. I wondered what drew you to this kind of story and whether you knew this is what you wanted it to be from the beginning?
Lilly: Interestingly, no. The film was made through the South Australian Film Corporation’s First Nations Shorts initiative, which is a two-stage program. The first stage is submitting an idea and a script to go through a writer’s weekend workshop with some mentors, and developing the script over a number of months with three check points and feedback from our mentors. It was super fortunate to be able to get that tailored support through the development phase, and then the funding as well. But going through that first short period, there was a lot more to the story world that I wanted to tell. The film itself is inspired by my own experience. What was interesting to me was that even though I was a pro-choice person, at the time I had this sudden intense shame and inability to talk about it with other people. It was crazy to contend with being pro-choice but also realising that I had a lot of internalised societal views about the whole situation… so making a film was a great way to get past that and put it into my art.
At the start of the process I felt like, normally when you see abortion in films or stories, you always have to see what happened and what led someone to get there, and it all has to be bigger than her. But I think more recently in this conversation people around the world are noting that that stuff doesn’t actually matter, the thing that matters is that women have the choice. So from there I wondered if all of the before and after stuff didn’t really matter, that what I really wanted to show was the complexity and the intensity of what that experience might look like for someone who has taken on the world’s views and the conversations that we so often hear, and felt ashamed despite knowing it was the right decision for them.
So over those six months did you have to unpick the story to find its core?
To be honest, that change came from the writer’s workshop when they said “don’t try to fit a feature idea into a short film, find the essence or the moment from that story”, and I thought this was the most raw and in-your-face moment of it all. So then it was fun to go through the workshops finding out how to open up the character and paint the world within such a restrained time period and location, since it’s really just in three locations.
How did you navigate having to create such an intimate space with the actor, particularly with it being an autobiographical story? Did you feel the need to stay true to your experience?
No, I feel like I did the writing and then detached form it quite a bit, perhaps because this was my first time directing so I had very little expectation. I had written the script, I really trusted my cinematographer, we found a phenomenal actor, and so I was excited to just see how it all fell into place. I really couldn’t have been more fortunate to have Tatiana Goode, she was so easy to work with, and it eased a lot of my stresses as a first time director. There were a few times where we would do a take, for example, the end of the film: we shot on the first day, and she did a performance that I was happy with, but I would ask how she felt about it, and on this occasion she wanted to do another one, and that was the take that we ended up using. So I felt like it was as much about the performance meeting what I wanted, as it was about asking Tatiana whether she wanted to take it any further.
Reflecting on your first time directing then, was it what you expected, were there any curveballs?
Not for the shoot, but it is interesting once you get into the edit – like I’m producing another short at the moment and it’s always the same questions like “did we get enough coverage?”. But the really funny thing with this one is, when I originally wrote it, and the way we shot it, I think my anger at society for making women feel ashamed about these choices was a lot stronger in the script. And it read a bit more as self-shame in that process, which didn’t feel right when it came to the edit. Working with my editor and producer, we were able to find a more positive and uplifting note to end on.
It’s fascinating to notice the shift that happens when you sit with an idea for so long and you change overtime, but still have to come back to the same story…
Totally, and what was interesting as well when I was writing the script was that, even though now there’s very minimal dialogue, there was more in there because when I was writing I thought “you can’t just have action, I need to break it up of the page”. But then we kind of lost all of those moments anyway because they didn’t feel necessary. Even some of the breathy words that made it, I now think you could almost not have them there, so that was a really interesting discovery.
The film has so many tracking shots that follow the protagonist, which created a very particular feeling, I wondered how that came about and what you were wanting to emulate through them?
Yeah, I think the only thing I said to Johanis Lyons-Reid the cinematographer was “I want to see some of the key scenes top-down”, I wanted to feel like we the audience were observing it as this out of body experience. And then through the conversations with Johanis and thanks to the funding from SAFC, we were able to do some really cool, wacky stuff. So basically, Johanis is a really great cinematographer and he has lots of wonderful ideas to add more technical shots, which I was really happy to do!
The quote that came up at the end gave me goosebumps: The more we share stories, the more we know we aren’t alone. I wondered if you could elaborate on what kind of space you want to build through your work, and what you hope audiences who watch The Secret will take away from it?
I think that sentiment is it. And also… I think we’re slowly getting there, but speaking about abortion is still quite taboo and having screened it now, I’ve had women come up to me saying “I’ve gone through this as well and I really connected to it on a personal level”. My editor has also done some work with I Had One Too, which is a social media platform sharing stories of women who have had abortions. So, trying to destigmatize it, and understand that in the conversation everyone gets so caught up on how it happens, and when it’s “okay”, as if you have to justify the reason, as if you can’t just have had an unplanned pregnancy and known it’s not what you need right now. It’s a topic of conversation that lots of people have different opinions on, but I think I wanted to depict that complex and conflicting multitude of emotions you can feel when you are making that choice; it can be sad that that possible path in your life is not going to go ahead, but certain because you’re going to go on this other one that you are ready for right now, and that all of those things can exist at the same time, you can mourn something that you know was the right thing for you as well.
I love that in your bio it says you’ll do “any role required to tell your stories”, how does that fit into your journey as a filmmaker and what’s next from here?
Well, I came into filmmaking as a producer, because I work in the arts as a program manager, and then there was a callout at SAFC for writer-director-producer pairings and my sister and I put our hats in the ring, and that kicked off me as a producer. So, not only was this my first time directing, it was also my first actual scripted narrative in real production. I really like producing as well and have a few other projects happening as a producer, but I think having been involved in a number of filmmaking things I could really see my visions for this artform, so it was really lucky that this opportunity because I definitely see myself directing more projects in the future and I want to continue working on scripts. So, yes, up next is producing my sister’s short film Stewed which we shot recently, and also another film called Burnout, with our small production company Disco Dinosaur Films. And we’re also about to shoot our first feature! I’ll be producing for that one and it’s funded through the Film Lab: New Voices program – an initiative of the South Australian Film Corporation, Adelaide Film Festival and Screen Australia.
Amazing! And who forms Disco Dinosaur Films, how did you come together to make the company?
Disco Dinosaur is me and my sister Pearl Berry, our older brother Piri Eddy, who produced The Secret, and his best friend Johanis Lyos-Reid, who he’s been best friends with since before I was born – so it’s very much a family affair. Johanis grew up in a filmmaking family, so he has always been in the world of the craft and he shot our first short documentary that Pearl and I did together, called Sansbury Sisters. Then in 2021 the Curious Australia initiative happened, between the SBS and NITV and the State Agencies and Screen Australia, and that was a TV half-hour documentary program.
So, we pitched a project with the four of us called Black Empire and that got picked up, that was essentially when we formed the company. And now we’ve been able to pick up some specialty commercial work that focuses on the kinds of stories we want to share whilst also developing our scripted projects. When the Film Lab initiative came up, which was something that we’d put a few projects in for in the past, but finally this was the right time, so that will launch us into the feature world along with our shorts. The three shorts we have on at the moment are all raw human stories, which is what we’re really interested. A lot of them have been drawn on or inspired from our youth and life experiences. Which I think is also very true for me, I want to tell stories that I can really speak to, whether that’s my lived experience or someone else’s story that I can really understand… In saying that though, the feature is a psychological thriller/horror, but it’s about intergenerational reckoning and millennials getting older and ageing into power – but it will be a fun one!
We can’t wait! Thank you for speaking with us and all the best at your screening!