ZOLA DIRECTOR ‘JANICZA BRAVO’ ON BRILLIANT NEW MOVIE!
6th August 2021
Zola is a unapologetic, funny, shocking, heartfelt action packed movie that highlights the subtle differences between two women that may on the surface have similar working class backgrounds, but in reality are so very different!
“Celebrating a release of a film in an environment where there has been so much tragedy is tough. I can’t help but think of all the tragedy that has been. At the end of our film there is a dedication to one of our department heads who actually passed away from Covid and so I’m reminded of this period, I’m sort of outside looking in, this moment is very surreal for me. It took 4 years to get here and this last year was particularly mad and I learnt a lot in that time. I don’t know if I’m particular present” Janicza Bravo.
It’s refreshingly unexpected in the way director Janicza Bravo shoots this story, feeling raw almost documentary like in parts but also fresh and exciting to watch with dreamy glamorous ascetics being played out even in the darkest moments. The writing is based on truth, a story that is shocking with so many layers, a huge reason Zola will make you feel both uncomfortable and reflective. This fresh edgy fearless approach in telling this story based on a Twitter thread by the real Zola A’Ziah King was unleashed back in 2015, could this be the new way future stories are told on the big screen? Social media is now the place to not only connect but also get heard and seen.
“I think it was in the thread in some sense, the experience of what happened on the thread in terms of when it came out October of that year, it was radical and it was like a theatre event and I think people had a really good time as they engaged with it. When I read it which was within 24 hours of it coming out but it wasn’t live on Twitter all I kept thinking was this is so fucked up and my girlfriends who I was reading it with were like this is hilarious and I was like ‘Yeah. but is it? It’s about a woman’s loss of agency no’? But I could see also how it was funny and I do think she is a very skilled storyteller. She does bob and weave through the discomfort but if you pull behind the curtain that’s the film I wanted to make. I also wanted to make the film when you read the thread, the thread is someone who has processed it, so it’s the past tense, the story happened to her in March she told it in October. She writes 3 drafts leading up to the final one and she is experiencing it an arm length distance and it was more curious to me to try to seesaw between both of these tenses. We have the voiceover so we know she makes it out, who she is on the other side is unclear. I really wanted to do this thing where Zola the writer not Zola the person she wrote is lifted and actually put inside the story she lived and so she is looking at it like you are watching her watch the events as they unfold and she is actively writing it if that makes sense”. Janicza Bravo.
A story in film form that has been written originally as a Twitter thread is always going to be challenging. Yes, you think about the “what if’s” watching this film, but you also see how Bravo tells this story in her own wacky refreshing flamboyant way. It feels in your face but also like an educational piece showing you racial bias and how we judge one another by the smallest things with humour used as a tool to unarm us.
We all know someone whether it was at school, college, uni, work in our peer circle that acts in a way culturally and personally that makes no sense! Stefani is that girl, white, blonde but taking on some of the mannerisms and style of a black person. You see this play out in her language, self expression and with her personal style, baby hairs included. Does she get a pass, because of where she may have been raised? Is cultural appropriation allowed when you are being sex trafficked and controlled by a pimp who happens to be black? Or is her trauma and up bringing the reason why we feel compassion and allow this offensive behaviour? Just some of the many questions that you will ponder while watching actress Riley Keough play this complicated character on screen. Keough is brilliant in this and also incredibly fearless taking on a role that could have resulted in a backlash and even being cancelled. Yes, she is acting but in the ‘woke’ time we are living in right now (some that react before fully doing their research) may have found the character so offensive that whoever was attached to it would have blurred the edges.
“Riley is my favourite kind of actor because I describe myself as someone who asks too many questions, she doesn’t ask that many she just says yes. We had one conversation at the very beginning when she said ‘OMG this is terrifying, I’m going to get cancelled, am I going to get cancelled’ and I was like I don’t know but let’s try. I was like whatever we are going to do here we can not apologise for it, we have to dive head first with no hands towards it and if people are going to come for you I will be in front of it. I will stand by you and I will land on the sword, and she just said ‘ok’. We got her a voice coach and she did the work and she was totally fearless and brilliant” Janicza Bravo.”
ZOLA disturbs your mind and reminds you of the differences between gender, race and class. while still managing to entertain. Director Janicza Bravo takes us on one hell of a ride on this trip that changes the lives of both of our leading characters Zola and Stefani. Yet even knowing this story is from the perspective of the real ‘Zola’ the writing is kind and empathetic towards this self confessed ‘bad bitch’ Stefani, who might on the surface be a liar, selfish and manipulative but we feel the innocence and trauma that has put her in this dark place.
However, Jessica Forgie, one of the women that the character has been based on has been critical of the movie and how she has been represented talking to the Daily Beast she said “There’s nothing glamorous about this, it’s kind of mind-blowing that someone actually finds humour in that. This is entertaining and funny to you? What about the reason why he’s in prison? They’re leaving it out and they just make it look like it’s all fun and games. It wasn’t fun and games.I didn’t know how many people knew my story, or cared about it. Whatever they’re trying to portray in this Zola movie, it invalidates the whole situation.”
The ‘he’ she is speaking about is the real-life Z played by Coleman Domingo, Stefani’s friend X (name change for the movie) who also happens to be her pimp (Zola discovers this later in the movie) he is a loud bully type of dude that wears flashy clothes with a smile that in a second can switch on you in a whole other voice when you don’t do as you are told. Zola has no idea her new wild friend is also a prostitute being sex trafficked by X.
“Stefani is based on two Jessica’s, there is a March Jessica and April Jessica. The real story took place in March 2015, Zola is seduced by March Jessica, then Zola leaves the trip they go from Florida to Vegas to continue on the road they are on and then a new set of women are seduced by March Jessica. This other woman that is seduced April Jessica is who I believe this interview was with, she had been shown the trailer and then asked what she thought and I think that was her interpretation of the trailer, maybe she has seen the movie and felt the same way, but I do feel the subject matter was handled more delicately then the trailer gives of.” Janicza Bravo.
“I set out to tell Zola’s story, the IP was hers, the Rolling Stone article was hers, so the first assignment was to tell her version of events. I did my best to be generous to every character, but it isn’t a biopic and it isn’t journalism, the movie is so absurd and so unreal so even when we talk about how some of those characters perceive how they are being portrayed I of course don’t want anyone walking away feeling bad, that they were harmed in any way, I don’t want that, it would be so painful. But this film is super theatrical and it doesn’t look like every day life, so when you look at it I think you see it’s not real life and we didn’t have the life lights to the character Nick Braun played or Riley Keough played but what I did do it use the information that I did learn about them in the twitter feed and kind of made them more dimensional. Derrek all I had was that he was bipolar and kept hitting himself and Stefani she had a baby and she lived with her boyfriend and her roommate who is her pimp also literally that’s all I had. There’s nothing else to describe these characters. So Jeremy ( cowriter Jeremy O. Harris) and I created personalities and if they happen to look like real people there’s something quite amazing about that but not because we know them we fabricated who they were based on what we knew about them in the story and kind of drew these cartoon characters in away.” Janicza Bravo.
Zola showcases complexities in people and a reminder that even the worst kind of humans have redeeming qualities. Stefani is rude, naïve, selfish, narcissistic in away but unaware what she is doing due to the control X has over her. Zola is strangely her lifeline even after she duped her into thinking she was just a dancer and they were going to strip in Florida and come right back home. Zola is angry as hell, trapped with this group of misfits but still has compassion to see this other young woman being controlled, manipulated and needing some care and kindness. Taylour Paige embodies this role so perfectly and even spent a month working in a strip club to truly do the character justice. This is a woman who is classical trained in dance and felt the need to fully represent the real Zola in the most authentic way. A black woman on screen with intelligence, love, empathy and also beautiful that owned her sexuality and flaws.
“I did what excites me. I am my toughest critic and the hardest to please. It’s hard for me to please myself and so I did what I wanted to do, I did the things that made me laugh, the things that made me uncomfortable. I really played the keys that were affecting me at the moment and did a lot of stuff that really scared me and worked slightly on the edge of the cliff. I am not 100 percent sure this is going to work, but I’m going to try it. I made a lot of short films before I made my first feature, I made 6 short films and the pleasure of making short films is room to fail without being watched. Once you move into the feature space and the TV space as I get to direct a lot of television there is less room to fail. If you fail you may not get asked back, but I have been fortunate enough where I feel confident enough that most of it is working so I can try something. That’s my version of jumping from a plane, pushing myself out of my own comfort directing is the only place I feel fearless because as I move through the world I found myself asking more questions before I move forward and in that space I find myself feeling more free.” Janicza Bravo.
At times it feels like watching a social experiment, the differences between a white and black woman who both are struggling in life but dealing with things in very different ways. The interesting aspect is the subtlety and body language from both Zola played by Taylour Paige and Stephanie played by Riley Keough. Visually you can get lost in the outfits, make up and general visuals of the film but Janicza manages to still retain a lot of substance. She has such a unique perspective on how she shoots and uses her actors to tell a story. In parts they feel almost like pieces in what feels like a piece of art at an exhibition to view and make what we want from. Loud, colourful yet messy and dark, with so much to unpack. Bravo has had many fans including Director Barry Jenkins who started his own thread after watching the film.
“It came on the heels of his partner Lulu Wang who also said some really warm things and Melina Matsoukis had reached out to me that week and Ava DuVerney had been championing me that week and Josh Safdie also and I felt this unexpected kind of welcome that I didn’t know would happen from people I admire and that I know and it felt fucking great. And it kind of makes the 4 years, 5 years before it… 16 years all the years before it worth it.” Janicza Bravo.
Zola feels like raw unfiltered energy with elements of fantasy and smoke and mirrors thrown in, feeling like what a real life Instagram might look like. The characters switching between being their best selves taking beautiful sexy selfies while really living in the most disgusting reality in ways. Everything isn’t polished and doesn’t always shine bright even if at first you think it does. A simple story that gets complicated really fast. girl meets girl, both dance for money, one suggests a way of making a lot of cash quickly in one weekend. An exciting, glamorous weekend to make a lot of cash ends up to be the most terrifying two days of both their lives. It’s also a story of sex trafficking and how it’s not always a young girl being kidnapped thrown into a van and taken somewhere and made to have sex with rich men. It’s complex and can happen to anyone vulnerable with a lack of money and support.
“This is better than I thought it would be, but I’m not swimming in it as much as I could. I’m not very good at allowing myself pleasure or allowing myself wins and it is something. I made a movie before Zola which I liked and I was proud of which wasn’t so warmly received and that was a real blow to my spirit, that said that movie is why I got Zola. I recognise this film is being received differently to that film but I’m not going to rest on my laurels because I will make another movie or another television show and I just have to protect myself so I don’t assume now I’ve arrived. I just don’t feel comfortable being safe in that way.” Janicza Bravo.
