By Lucy Spicer
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Festival is having a front-row seat for the bright future of independent filmmaking. While we can learn a lot about the filmmakers from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival through the art that these storytellers share with us, there's always more we can learn about them as people. We decided to get to the bottom of those artistic wells with our ongoing series: Give Me the Backstory!
Kate Beecroft's film background may be in acting, but she was destined to be a cinematic storyteller. When I was young, I loved writing stories. But I think the message that I got as a young girl was, You like telling stories? Then you should be an actress!' I didn't even know it was possible to be a director and a writer until much later in my life, she says. Beecroft enrolled in drama school in London, where she quickly discovered the types of people she actually wanted to see on screen. I witnessed so much talent, people with such raw creativity and dedication but who weren't getting opportunities because of their look or their lack of connections. And so I started writing roles for those people. For the unique faces and souls that I wanted to see on screen. That's now become a huge part of my identity as a filmmaker.
As a writer and director, Beecroft's search for unique faces and souls would eventually lead her to South Dakota, where a chance meeting brought her to a ranch east of the town of Wall. Owned by a heavily tattooed, recently widowed young horse trainer named Tabatha Zimiga, the ranch and its residents - including Zimiga's own daughter, Porshia, and other wayward teenagers who needed a place to stay - enchanted Beecroft so much that she made them the subject of her feature debut, East of Wall, which premiered in the NEXT section of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The vast majority of my cast had never acted before or even seen a camera, and now we're here! says Beecroft. And yes, this was about their lives, but it was fully scripted. We treated them like professional actors - they had to memorize their lines, recreate emotional moments, rising to the challenge in ways I was blown away by.
The film - which won the Festival's Audience Award: NEXT - sees Zimiga and her gaggle of horse-riding teens playing versions of their real selves, and in doing so, portraying identities not often seen on the big screen. My biggest takeaway is that there is so much talent in this world. The next Meryl Streep could be at a bus stop in Idaho right now. But they don't have connections, or don't see it as a viable path, or whatever host of reasons that they're undiscovered. I think it's so important to get out of my own comfort zone as a filmmaker and take chances on people who inspire me. And I think people would be surprised at what's possible, explains Beecroft. There's so much undiscovered talent out there. We need new faces, new perspectives. Go find it.
Read on to hear more from Beecroft, including who the director's creative heroes are and what she found most challenging about filming on a remote ranch.
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By Lucy Spicer
