Interviews

Interview: Victoria Mahoney & Zoe Kravitz (Yelling to the Sky)

Published on December 14, 2012

‘I think a lot of people miss that life is crazy and rugged and messy,’ writer/director Victoria Mahoney said when talking about her new film Yelling to the Sky. The film, which had its U.S. premiere at SXSW (this, follows Sweetness O’Hara (Zoe Kravitz) through her battles with a compromised family life, the abuses she suffers at school, and her own inner conflict as a young woman.

Shot on location in Queens, NY, the film captures this chaos, in part through depicting the duality of a mixed-race household. ‘Most mixed race people, we walk in the middle. (…) We live and straddle both always,’ Mahoney said when I sat down with her and Kravitz to discuss the film. Mahoney was vocal about the film (and vocal about being vocal) and its relevance for young people, while Kravitz maintained her loyalty to the film and honest, small films like it.

[Editor’s note: this interview was conducted during the 2011 SXSW Film Festival – MPI Pictures releases the film in NY and on VOD today.]

Related Topics:U.S. Indie Film, Victoria Mahoney, Yelling to the Sky

Jesse Klein

Jesse Klein (MFA in Film and Video Production from The University of Texas at Austin) is a Montreal-born filmmaker and writer. His first feature film, Shadowboxing, (RVCQ '10, Lone Star Film Festival '10) . As well as contributing to IONCINEMA, he is the senior contributor to This Recording and writes for ION Magazine and Hammer to Nail. Top Films From Contemporary Film Auteurs: Almodóvar (All About My Mother), Coen Bros. (Fargo), Dardenne Bros. (Rosetta), Haneke (The White Ribbon), Hsiao-Hsien (Flowers of Shanghai), Kar-wai (In The Mood For Love), Kiarostami (Close-Up), Lynch (Blue Velvet), Tarantino (Jackie Brown), Van Sant (To Die For), von Trier (Breaking The Waves)