Award-winning screenwriter, director and actor Louisa Connolly-Burnham, 34, is an ambassador for the London Breeze Film Festival.
This year she has two short films of her own at the festival, The Intimacy Coordinator and Full Fat.
Her earlier short film Sister Wives, in which she starred with Mia McKenna-Bruce, won awards on the festival circuit and was longlisted for an Oscar. It is being developed into a full-length feature film.
Her film The Intimacy Coordinator is about ‘Kate’, (played by Louisa), who is an intimacy coordinator on a film set yet also a sex addict.
Full Fat is a story of unrequited same sex love and stars actor-writer Cara Mahoney, 33.
Louisa spoke to The Irish World.
Q: What is it like to be coming back to London Breeze Film Festival?
“It’s so awesome, it’s great. I love Breeze so much, I love the people that run it.
“I love all the things that they offer throughout this festival beyond just screenings.
“I’m an ambassador for the festival as well, which is an honour, alongside some really amazing other ambassadors. I feel very excited to be on the same list as some of those names.
“I love London. I’ve been a Londoner for 15 years so it’s always really exciting to share the film with a London audience and having two films that are so different – they’re in two separate blocks so I get to go and check them out on different days and see lots of other films alongside them.
Q: As you say, you have two very different films in this year’s festival…
“Yeah, they are really different. One of them is my script, The Intimacy Coordinator, and Full Fat is a script by Cara Mahoney.
“It’s important to show different sides of you as a filmmaker.
“The Intimacy Coordinator is more of a psychological thriller-horror, more edgy, dark. Full Fat is a softer, more comedic, queer film.
“They’re both exploring similar themes in that they’re both about women hiding something from the world, keeping a secret that overspills into chaos.”
Q: What inspired The Intimacy Coordinator?
“I wanted to make a film very different to the last film I made which was Sister Wives.
“I wanted to make something in London, in the kind of thriller/ horror genre and I try to make films about what people are talking about – and there’s been a lot of talk about intimacy coordinators.
“It’s quite a new role, a very important role, a role I stand by quite firmly, I can’t believe we didn’t have them for so long, to be honest.
“I thought it would be cool to make a film about something people are asking lots of questions about.
“And I’m interested in addiction and in abuse of power.
“We see a lot of films where women are victims to men rather than vice versa, so I wanted to turn the tables a little bit.”
Q: Your character ‘Kate’ is very predatory which is refreshing to see on screen…
“The thing about Kate is she looks quite unassuming.
“I don’t know if I look very threatening or predatory but usually people wouldn’t assume that from somebody that looked like me and that’s quite scary.
“The way that she manages to manipulate and control – she goes about it in a different way to how a man might, and that’s interesting to witness as an audience member.
“I’ve built her backstory in my mind to justify her actions and give her some sort of humanity – something terrible happened to ‘Kate’.
“She was probably sexually abused and her becoming an intimacy coordinator was her way of taking back a bit of control.
“She wants to reclaim some of her own sexuality and she’s a quite a poorly woman in the mind and goes way too far in the other direction.
“That’s how I justify her. That’s my little backstory for ‘Kate’ in my own mind.”
Q: Have you shown the film much before now?
“We’ve had about six or seven screenings, so it’s had a really nice start. It’s always fun watching it with an audience because it’s a film where you’re laughing one minute and utterly horrified the next and that’s fun with an audience.
“Some audiences are louder than others, sometimes you get a quieter audience, and you think they don’t get it – but a quiet audience doesn’t necessarily mean an unengaged audience. Sometimes the quieter audiences are the most engaged.
“Some people love it, some people hate it and that’s the ride. That’s why we made this film.
“We knew that it might be quite polarising in comparison to other films I’ve made but that’s the fun of it.”
Q: It’s not dissimilar to your earlier film The Call Centre…
“Yeah, I’ve definitely returned to the vibe of The Call Centre, the first film I ever made, back in 2019.
“We’re approaching seven years since I made that and I still really love that first film I made.
“It’s tonally very me and very much the themes that I want to explore.
“Sister Wives was a much softer, more romantic, shiny American movie and I really wanted to return to my weird, dark, perverted roots with The Intimacy Coordinator.”
Q: It does get very dark; you really push it…
“We certainly do. I just wanted to do the unexpected, to go as far as I could with this one to show the world what I’m prepared to do and how risky I’m prepared to be, particularly as a woman.
“I don’t think you would expect a film like The Intimacy Coordinator to be made by a woman but I’m here to prove that women can do thrillers, we can do horror, we can do erotica and we can really, really push the boundaries of what people are willing to make.
“The ending is a choice – it’s definitely a choice.”
Q: Are there misconceptions about women in the industry?
“Yes, we don’t have enough women in horror and thriller, we are expected to make a certain type of film, probably a film like Sister Wives, but we’re capable of so much more and capable of being just as dark and dangerous and bold as men.
“That’s what I wanted to do with The Intimacy Coordinator.
“I really loved The Substance, and I was so heartened to see that was made by a woman because it’s so disgusting, in a sense – we can do the really weird, messed up stuff as well.
“The inside of a woman’s mind can be a scary place, for sure, and I’d like to see more of that.”
Q: Would you be attracted to go into the horror genre?
“Yes, I want to make a horror film more than anything, that’s top of my bucket list.
“As an audience member my favourite genre is horror, I like the way it makes me feel, the way horror can have a really visceral effect on your body – your heart is racing, you’re shaking, quivering, hiding your eyes, it’s so cool a genre of film can have that effect on you.
“It’s really fun and exciting.”
Q: Let’s talk about Full Fat which was written by Cara…
“Cara had seen Sister Wives, which is another sapphic movie, and she liked that and emailed me.
“I really liked the script, and I was really keen to continue making female-focused queer films. I hadn’t written The Intimacy Coordinator, I’m always keen to keep making stuff so when that script came through the door, I really liked it.
“Because I didn’t go to film school it’s very important for me to keep being on set with new people, new equipment, and to continue learning – that is my film school, that’s why I’ve made a film a year every year since 2019.
“I’m very keen to continue making stuff whether it’s my script or someone else’s and Cara’s script was beautiful, so I took it on and we shot it two weeks after I wrapped The Intimacy Coordinator.
“I shot two shorts in two weeks. It was crazy.”
Q: Was Cara, as the writer, easy to direct?
“Yeah, she was brilliant. She’s the writer, the actress and the producer and I’m director/ producer. She was wonderful to direct.
“There’s always a beauty when you’re directing somebody who has written a character they are now playing.
“It doesn’t take a huge amount of work because she knew who ‘Bels’ was, she knew who ‘Grace’ and ‘Max’.
“She was very clear on those characters, so I didn’t have to do a tonne of work with her.
“The only note I gave Cara, or at least a thought we had before starting to shoot, was we had to make sure her character, ‘Bels’, is lovable because she is a little annoying and, knowingly or unknowingly, is hurting ‘Grace’ with the games she’s playing – but we have to love ‘Bels’ because ‘Grace’ loves ‘Bels’.
“It has to make sense why she has fallen in love with her and remains in love with her.
“It was a real pleasure working with Cara and she truly handed the reins to me.
“She asked me to direct it because she wanted it to be my vision, my voice, so she was a joy to work with. She’s become a dear friend.
Q: Was it similar to directing the Irish actress/ writer Lisa O’Connor in Fleeting, her short film about the Repeal the Eighth Amendment referendum movement?
“Yes, absolutely and I’ve directed a few other people’s scripts as well.
“I made a film called The Track written by Augusta Woods, a film called The Ceiling written by Louisa Sexton.
“I’ve made eight films and five of them have been other people’s scripts, three of them have been mine.
“I’ve been very lucky that anyone who’s asked me to direct something of theirs asked because they like what I do.
“They hand their babies over to me, which is wonderful, but I keep the whole experience very collaborative.
“I’m not a ‘my way or the highway’ director. I’m down for a note or a thought or an idea from anybody – they can have input the whole way.
“A film is made by a whole tribe of people so yeah, I’ve had a wonderful time directing other people’s scripts.”
Q: You say you never went to film school, but you were acting from a young age, so you probably were learning, without knowing it…
“I didn’t go to film school, and I didn’t go to drama school, so I really have been learning as I go, for all of it.
“There is no learning like doing and I learn so much from being on a film set.
“My films can really stand on their own two feet against other filmmakers who have gone to film school because there’s a rawness or an individuality to the work I make because I wasn’t put through the sausage machine of a film school or a drama school where everybody learns the same curriculum, is taught the same things by the same person and all come out with the exact same experience.
“I didn’t have any of that, I am totally like an open book doing it my own way and I really enjoy it.”
Q: What is happening with the feature length version of Sister Wives?
“We’re shooting the feature next summer.
“It (the short)’s racked up millions and millions of views so it’s really resonating with people and I’m so excited to shoot the feature next year.
“We’ve got the most amazing cast, the most amazing team.
“We’re making it with Sofia Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola’s production company American Zoetrope in the U.S.
“We have an amazing composer Clint Mansell who wrote the scores for Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan.
“We’ve got Mia McKenna-Bruce coming back to play ‘Galilee’.
“There’s so much more to explore. We’ve spent so much time developing the feature version of that script to make sure we’re really doing those characters justice and expanding in the correct way.
“I’m so ready to walk onto that film set and continue the journey which we started a few years ago.
“We’re making a feature length version of The Intimacy Coordinator as well.”
“It wasn’t the initial plan but an opportunity I can’t ignore has arisen and I’m very excitedly writing it right now.
“It’s been really fun writing it. We’re leaning into way more of those horror elements.”
London Breeze Film Festival runs 21-25 October. See Londonbreezefilmfestival.com. The Intimacy Coordinator screens at Regent Street Cinema on Wednesday 21 October as part of the UK Women of Film programme that starts at 2pm. Full Fat screens at Theatreship Cinema on Sunday 25 October as part of the Nowt as Queer programme that starts at 12.30pm.
