Sundance 2016 Exclusive: Director Anna Rose Holmer Talks “The Fits“by Wilson Morales
January 25, 2016
Recently making its appearance at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival after its world premiere last year at the Venice Film Festival was “The Fits,” written and directed by Anna Rose Holmer and starring Royalty Hightower.
Picked up for theatrical distribution by Oscilloscope Laboratories, the film also features Makyla Burnam, Inayah Rodgers, Alexis Neblett, Da’Sean Minor, and Antonio A.B. Grant Jr.
Tomboy boxer Toni (newcomer Royalty Hightower) lands a spot on an after school dance team in the West End community of Cincinnati. Enamored by the power and confidence of the team, Toni eagerly absorbs routines, masters drills, and even pierces her own ears to fit in. As she discovers the joys of dance and of female camaraderie, she grapples with her individual identity amid her newly defined social sphere.
Shortly after Toni joins the team, the captain faints during practice. By the end of the week, most of the girls on the team suffer from episodes of fainting, swooning, moaning, and shaking in a seemingly uncontrollable catharsis. Triggered by her own insecurities, Toni questions the cause of “the fits.” Soon, however, the girls on the team embrace these mystical spasms, transforming them into a rite of passage. Toni fears experiencing the fits, but also fears losing her new friendships as a result of remaining left out of the transcendental experience. She has to decide how far she needs to go to maintain her niche on the team.
Having produced and directed short films and documentaries, this is Holmer’s feature debut. In speaking exclusively with the New York native, Holmer talked about her experience on putting together this film and working with the cast.
The Fits, where did the premise of the movie come from?
Anna Rose Holmer: I had always been really interested in this idea of a contagion and I had the privilege of producing some dance films. I began thinking about that idea as putting this mass hysteria or something like mass hysteria in a group of teenage girls that were on a dance team. It really started from thinking about how to make this film and make a dance film at the same time.
What genre would you say this movie is and although it features a black cast, is it a “black” film?
Anna Rose Holmer: Well, in terms of genre I would place it as a portrait film or a psychological film, but in terms of black film I cast the Q-Kidz Dance Team early on in my script writing process and I was drawn to them because drill really spoke to me as the form that I wanted to use to express The Fits. There was this call and response element to drill where the captain does a movement and then is mimicked by her teammates. It grew out of my passion for drill and when I cast the Q-Kidz it inherently became a black film and we worked with the kids to develop that voice over time.
When you say Q-Kidz what do you mean?
Anna Rose Holmer: Q-Kidz is the name of the drill team, all 45 girls in my film are from one dance team in Cincinnati that has a couple hundred girls in reality, we cast 45 of them in the film.
Are you from Cincinnati?
Anna Rose Holmer: I’m from New York.
How did that go about?
Anna Rose Holmer: I was looking for the dance form and I thought step was right, I was watching a team in Brooklyn and I was watching YouTube and YouTube recommends video and I just went down this rabbit hole. I saw a video of the Q-Kidz doing a stand battle is what legs and charisma are doing and it was 15 seconds into the video I started looking up how to contact them. I fell in love with drill and them as a team simultaneously and their coach came on really in the development phase as a producer and she was really our guide to that world of drill.
How did you get Royalty as the lead?
Anna Rose Holmer: Amazingly we found Royalty on day one of casting, which I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about kid casting but we opened up casting only to the Q-Kidz first. She’s part of the team and there’s something about her. People talk about the it factor but I just really wanted to direct her. My impression out of the casting was that she could handle direction intellectually, but also just her physical performance when she was not delivering a line but listening to another actor is what really struck me about her as a performer.
You’re one of three co-writers, how did that play out in terms of who’s writing what area and what part?
Anna Rose Holmer: Well, I co-wrote this with Saela Davis, my editor and Lisa Kjerulff my producer and I brought them on because we were working under a really fast timeline with the grant we got from the Venice Film Festival. We knew we would be premiering in September and we had no leeway and I really trusted their story sensibility. We would workshop stuff out loud and then I would go back to the page and write out what we were doing. It was a give and take and I really like that because it made writing a social thing and the three of us have such different ideas about girlhood as three women and it was great to incorporate our own backgrounds in and own identities as girls in the script. I really strongly identify with Toni, so it was great to bounce those things off so I didn’t get too much in my own head.
At what point did you get your biggest challenges? Was it getting funding for the film, was it continuing to film, was it putting the film together?
Anna Rose Holmer: The biggest challenge was actually working with the kids, which was very, very rewarding but because we have 50 non-actors in our film and discovering how each of them, what their directorial needs were, giving them authorship to rewrite their own lines and spending that time so that we had some mutual trust was something that was really important to me. I lived on location for nine weeks and developing those individual relationships was very challenging but very rewarding. Figuring out how to direct 50 different style actors was a challenge for me.
Having worn more than one hat on this film, what did you learn in the process?
Anna Rose Holmer: For me, I learned a lot about trusting your gut and the rewards of working as a team. I had such a generous crew and cast and the level of respect that we have for each other I feel shows up on screen because I feel every person took this film as their own and I’m really proud of that that my DP sees this film as his film, my three choreographers see this as their work and I’m really proud of my team.
