Interviews

Video Interview: Elizabeth Chomko – What They Had

Published on October 20, 2018

Compassionate, introspective and quietly in your face, What They Had makes a case for coming to terms….on your own terms. Films where the focal point is around a neurodegenerative disease would be adorned with dramatic weight are a dim a dozen, but first time filmmaker Elizabeth Chomko adds a certain poignancy in de-dramatizatizing the everyday, and finding comedic moments in tragedy and in conflict. Addressing guilt and taking on the anxieties of others, the head strong character of Hilary Swank serves as the film’s core — a deeply flawed mother, daughter, sister and wife working upstream against the angst and pressures of what is a multi-dimensional, generational quintet.

Presented at the Sundance Film Festival and more recently the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, What They Had gets released via the Bleecker Street folks this weekend. Here is my sit down with Chomko.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).