A mother-daughter road trip has never been so devastating.

By Sarah Grishpul

Nazrin Choudhury’s directorial debut, Red, White and Blue, details the life of Rachel (Brittany Snow), a young, single mother living in Arkansas with her two children, as she is forced to travel across the states to receive proper medical care for an abortion. 

Despite being a predominately American film, the abortion issue has been heavily debated in Canada as well. The overturning of Roe v. Wade last year even fed into the rise of pro-life and anti-abortion groups in our country. It’s also important to point out that despite having decriminalized abortion in 1988, it is not a constitutional right and disparities in access to abortion procedures vary among provinces.

Coming from a female director with two daughters of her own, Choudhury takes such a delicate subject and, in presenting it through a feminist lens, gives voice to those who will ultimately bear the consequences of having politics dictate their reproductive rights.

The short film is shot with such precision and care. Its pale, grey and moody colour grading ties well with the serious, dark undertones of the atmosphere. Choudhury invites you into the lives of this mother and her family, seemingly guiding the audience through a familiar narrative, until the third act completely defies any preconceived expectations on how the story would unfold.

Currently on its festival circuit run, after showcasing the film at the Edmonton International Film Festival and winning the Grand Jury Award for Best Live Action Short, this now qualifies Red, White and Blue to be considered for an Oscar nomination.

CanCulture had the pleasure of speaking with Choudhury about her experience writing and directing the film. What follows is a condensed version of a nearly 40-minute interview, and for the sake of our audience – we’ve retracted all talk of spoilers. 

First off, let’s get into what made you want to tell this kind of story in the first place.

I’m a storyteller. I look at the world around me and the characters that inhabit it and that kind of informs my storytelling. And I couldn’t stop listening to the news in the aftermath of [Roe v. Wade] and how it affected so many of us. 

And so I sat down to do the thing that I do, which is to write a story that builds bridges between people from different walks of life, and even different political views, to just understand the real-world consequences on people who might exist in your life, that you are not seeing. 

Through the medium of film, we can let a few peek behind the curtains at what this means for someone who’s going through it in their lives and the untold burden that we placed upon them as a result.

That was beautifully said. I was also wondering what it was like working with Brittany Snow and the two child actors, Juliette (Donenfeld) and Redding (Munsell).

I’d seen so many shades of Brittany Snow as an actor playing vastly entertaining characters. But there was always a hidden depth to her that I could see.

I really had this instinctive belief and gut feeling that Brittany was going to be tremendous in this role, and to our surprise, she read it almost straight away and said “I wanna meet and talk to Nazrin,” and we met over the Christmas break while she was still wrapping up filming and going into post [production] on her own film.

I think she is such a talent that has been discovered that there is so much depth to her that means, I feel like this is going to be an odd thing to say, but it’s almost like these new discoveries of her range and so on that you see in this film. She’s every bit as good as any actor that I’ve ever admired and wanted to work with and she was so generous. And we were so lucky to find Juliet Donenfeld and Redding Munsell.

It was so amazing to watch as a filmmaker, you’re bringing these strangers together, who’ve never met, and they are being asked immediately to become a family. The chemistry at the rehearsal was really just wonderful. Juliet plays so well as a big sister, the way that she shepherded Redding was amazing. Redding is like an old soul in a small being, just an amazing human being.

Just the fact that they came together as an on-screen family, but were really supporting and nurturing each other behind the scenes in the short amount of time we had, it really felt like a family. 

Yeah, I could really feel this family dynamic and they just had such great chemistry. I forgot that they were actors.

Even though it’s a short film, I’m so appreciative that you say that you felt like they were a family because we wanted it to feel that way. But also the people who come in, we didn’t want them to just be a plot device. Like the diner who opens up the pathway with the generous tip that she leaves for Rachel to go and do what she needs to do and go on this journey. All of these characters I hope feel very fully realized.

Most of the female characters in the film just help each other. It’s such a beautiful thing to see on film, women supporting other women.

I made a very conscious decision not to have any male voices on this. You do not hear anyone, even the songs. It’s all predominantly female voices, except for the young, unadulterated voice of Jake, played by Redding, because the idea is there that he’s kind of an innocent child who’s going to hopefully grow up to become an ally based on his mother and sister’s experiences.

But it’s really important for me to have the voices on this be people who are, or who have been, or who might have been affected by the legislation that came down. It was time for us to speak about the things that affect us, and I think that isn’t to say that we didn’t have people who don’t have reproductive organs and therefore reproductive rights, to consider working on this film, we did, they were allies, but hopefully, they’ll understand the reason why I did that, that I’m starting to talk about now, even though I just kind of subliminally did that and no one necessarily noticed but me. 

I think it became more apparent in post [production] with my editor as I was like, “hey, can we adjust this jingle? Can we change it into a female voice, please? Let’s get this re-recorded and put a female voice in because I want everything to be just female.”

Amazing, and back to the song, after that scene was done I had to pause the film just to look it up on my Spotify. I needed to add this to my playlist.

The voices that you hear, those are my daughters singing. 

Oh, no way!

Yeah! We recorded their vocals. They’re both musicians and very creative. They have lots of strings to their bow, but they are high schoolers—or were at the time—and they’ve written music before, we didn’t have time to write another track, but they re-recorded the vocals.

The fact that those are your daughters, that’s amazing!

I just wanted them to be in this film in some way also as the people who I first pitched this idea to and said, “Hey, I think I’m gonna write this, what do you think?” and who have been my biggest supporters and who’ve lived through this with me more than anyone else.

Towards the end, the aspect ratio just starts to tighten and get more box-like. What was the reason behind this transition?

For me, just in terms of using technical devices it still lends itself to the storytelling. I don’t think something has to do one thing, it can do multiple things. So, it’s like a POV shift by the aspect ratio, as well as in that point, the shared memory that exists between them, and then the feeling of the walls closing in of what’s to come and what they have to face, in addition to what has already been so egregiously faced.

Yeah, and I do like the whole dichotomy of it, where it’s coming in tighter as you’re realizing this new information that is making the whole picture a lot bigger for you, while at the same time, the borders are closing in. 

I’m so happy you said that and then you noticed it. I’m glad that Adam (Suschitzky, DP) and Phil (McLaughlin, Editor) will also feel very pleased that you picked up on that because there were some very clear storytelling intentions behind it.

This being your debut short film, were there any challenges or obstacles that you had to overcome?

I’m luckier than most in the sense of having worked in an established way in film and television. I was able to utilize all the network of relationships that I had to put this film into motion. I work on a show called Fear the Walking Dead that wrapped in December. And so I turned my attention to this film with the writer’s strike coming and do I work and pay the bills, or do I basically put this film afoot because it feels so important for me to tell this story? 

And yes, it’s a short film with high production values, so I had to beg, borrow and steal so many favours, but also from my kids’ college funds, albeit with their blessing to make this and put this out there. It’s been a real labour of love with several challenges and we had a mainly great cast and crew who helped us to tell the story and gave their hearts and soul to this too.

Yeah, for sure. And now that your film is an Oscar-qualifying short—congratulations, by the way—what are the next steps for you?

I would love for this film to be seen by as many people as possible in as many states as possible. My wish and aspiration for this is that we give access to as many people who want to watch this as a stark contrast, ironically speaking to the lack of access that exists for healthcare itself. 

If you can’t get access to healthcare, maybe at least you can access the film, which can then help us to have a dialogue and conversation about why some of these rollbacks are hurtful to characters like the ones in our short film.