Writer/Director Julia Max and Actress Colby Minifie talk to Fest Track about perspective, space and reaction in regards to their film "The Surrender" playing the Midnighter section at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
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00:00This is Tim Wastbrook from FesTrackOnStreetTV.
00:29I'm here at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
00:33Humans are illogical.
00:34Yes.
00:34I mean, we do stupid things, but we do very things that sort of defy logic
00:39in pursuit of something that we think is an altruistic goal.
00:42Yes, in extreme situations, you know, we do.
00:46We do irrational things at times because it seems rational in the moment to us.
00:50And I think that's what was so important to me in this is
00:54I really did not want anyone in this family to feel like the villain,
01:00because I don't think there is a villain in this movie.
01:03You know, it's just like they're all in a very difficult situation and honestly trying their best.
01:24I didn't know how bad it was.
01:25You just kept saying he was doing fine.
01:27There were just like moments where she was just like,
01:30I feel like I've kind of come to terms with this part of it now.
01:35And yet in the script, I'm then taking a back step and like almost repeating a beat.
01:41And I had originally been like, oh, let's play that out in the foyer here.
01:46And you were like, but there's so much space.
01:49Why wouldn't I just run away?
01:51Nobody says those kind of things.
01:53It's not going to go into every excruciating detail.
01:57The weight loss, the vomit.
01:58You should have told me.
01:59You knew he was sick.
02:01And you just didn't want to deal with it.
02:03No, you didn't want to deal with it.
02:04He wanted to die in peace without the chemo.
02:07But you forced him into treatment, even though the doctor said it wasn't going to save him.
02:10Well, here's the thing.
02:11For that scene, we were planning to shoot it a little further out.
02:15And this one was like, what if we were in a tighter area so I couldn't escape?
02:21And I'm like, oh, you mean like the hallway four feet that way?
02:25And she's like, yeah.
02:25And I was like, yes, let's read.
02:27Let's move this over here.
02:29And I talked to our DP and we're like, oh, yeah, this works much better.
02:33Let's do that.
02:34As a crew, everybody had to be in a tiny, like claustrophobic, like on top of each other.
02:39But it worked.
02:43Yeah.
02:43So I think these questions always usually lead to really interesting developments and
02:49make the film stronger.
02:50But it didn't matter.
02:51What he wanted and it didn't matter what I wanted, because the only thing that ever matters
02:56is what you want.
03:12I feel like for the film itself, we try we come in this much more from Megan's perspective,
03:17because she is learning about her mother's plans in a way that we, the audience, are.
03:23And so she's a really wonderful vehicle for us to kind of experience that through.
03:29But at the same time, I think it is very important to show Barbara's perspective and make sure that
03:37we, the audience, believe why she's doing these things.
03:40And so that's why there are these moments that we do get glimpses into, you know,
03:46her memories of things, the way she saw, perceived their family and everything.
03:50Because we all have different perceptions of reality.
03:53Our shared memories are all different.
03:56One of my favorite books is The Farway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit.
04:19And it's the closest thing she has to a memoir.
04:23And it's about her mother.
04:25She does not have a good relationship with her mother, and her mother gets dementia.
04:28And then her mother starts treating her very differently.
04:31And it's because she starts forgetting the stories she's told herself about who she is.
04:36And all of a sudden, the relationship like blossoms.
04:40It's a gorgeous book.
04:53This is Megan.
05:04Yeah, this movie reminded me very much of that book.
05:07And it's one of the reasons I connected so much to the script is that like, you know,
05:12I go to therapy.
05:13I talk in therapy a lot about like, this thing and we like create a narrative about what happened.
05:20Like, understand, understand in order to end.
05:24And because all of our lives are stories, right?
05:27And like, we live in these stories in order to move through life and be like,
05:31Whoa, wow.
05:32And I will react to that because of the story that I tell myself over here.
05:36You know, but that also has to do with memory.
05:38Yeah, yeah.
05:39And that's what this keys into a lot.
05:41Yeah, totally.
05:42And we can change art.
05:44We can rewrite.
05:45I mean, every time we retell a story, we write the memory.
05:47We write these memories in order to support the narrative we're telling ourselves about
05:51who we are.
05:52And this movie is like such a great depiction of that, I think.
05:57And Barbara is like, on a journey with her memory.
06:02Oh, my God.
06:17Yeah.