After the death of her husband, Tabatha- a young, tattooed, rebellious horse trainer- wrestles with financial insecurity | dG1fSllha1BfRDZ6Vzg
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I'm Kate Beecroft. I am the writer and director of East of Wall, which will be premiering
00:10in the next category at the 2025 Salyards Film Festival.
00:15This is a docu-fiction film inspired by the life of Tabitha Zumiga.
00:20After the death of her husband, Tabitha wrestles with financial insecurity and unresolved grief,
00:25all while providing refuge for a group of wayward teenagers on her broken-down ranch.
00:30I was driving, filming around the U.S., when I met a woman who said,
00:33if you want a real story, at East of Wall, there's a woman named Tabitha waiting for you.
00:38I always say that Tabby's like if Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe had a love child
00:42in a trailer in South Dakota. When we pulled up to the ranch, there was an intimidating
00:48group of teenagers who came out of their trailer home and looked me up and down.
00:53And after that, I spent three years living with them, building this script off of intimate
00:57moments that they shared with me about their lives and moments of their daily life that I
01:01witnessed, all while teaching them how to act. I always knew that I wanted them to play themselves.
01:07They have this incredible wildness about them, and I just became addicted to them,
01:12and I never wanted to leave them. The film also stars Scoot McNeary and Jennifer Ely,
01:17who are complete badasses for saying yes to a project like this. It's been five years since
01:22I started this project, and the greatest gift has been watching these kids grow up over these years.
01:27They've turned into such bold and complex, fierce human beings.
01:31The day that I met Tabby, the first sentence she said to me was,
01:34I'll show you some real cowgirl shit. And after five years of working on this project,
01:38she has definitely helped trigger that.