Ep 298: Saila Kariat on Jesus Land: Adapting Trauma and Directing Juliette Lewis

Podcast: Filmmaking Conversations Podcast with Damien Swaby · Damien Swaby

Opublikowano: 2026-11-01

How do you bring someone’s most painful memories to the screen with honesty and care?Damien Swaby speaks with writer and director Saila Kariat about Jesus Land, her adaptation of Julia Scheeres’s memoir exploring racism, religious extremism and the bond between siblings Julia and David. Saila shares her journey from engineering to filmmaking and the five-year process of bringing her second feature to the screen. She discusses directing Juliette Lewis, Ella Anderson and Xavier Jones, supporting actors through emotionally demanding scenes, and recreating different locations and decades on an independent budget. From a lightning storm that disr...