The Big Picture
- Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits down with the team behind Sew Torn at SXSW 2024.
- Stars Eve Connolly, Calum Worthy, K Callan, Caroline Goodall, Thomas Douglas, Werner Biermeier, and director Freddy MacDonald discuss making their brilliant crime thriller.
- The movie focuses on Barbara, aka ‘The Mobile Seamstress.’ While heading home from a botched sewing appointment, she comes across a drug deal gone wrong and must decide what to do — commit the perfect crime, call the police, or drive away.
Sew Torn marks Freddy MacDonald’s feature directorial debut, so I’m eager to label him a SXSW discovery, but the truth of the matter is, others have already noticed what a phenomenal young artist he is. He was the youngest directing fellow accepted at the AFI Conservatory, and signed with United Talent Agency (UTA) at just 18-years-old. Industry insiders have been investing in MacDonald for years, but with Sew Torn celebrating its world premiere at SXSW, it’s time for a much wider audience to recognize the immense amount of talent MacDonald has at such a young age, and how much promise he has moving forward.
Eve Connolly leads Sew Torn as Barbara Duggen. Or rather, “The Mobile Seamstress.” Barbara inherited her mother’s fabric shop, but is struggling to keep it up and running. While on her way home from a botched sewing appointment, she comes across a drug deal gone wrong.There are two downed motorcyclists, guns and a briefcase. What does Barbara do? Commit the perfect crime, call the police, or drive away? She’s torn. From there, Sew Torn reveals the repercussions of all three choices.
Sew Torn is a true festival gem. A hugely entertaining watch that is absolutely brimming with impeccable craftsmanship. It was a treat and honor to have team Sew Torn, including MacDonald, Connolly, Calum Worthy, K Callan, Caroline Goodall, Thomas Douglas and Werner Biermeier, at the Collider interview studio to hear about their experience making the film.
'Sew Torn' Director Freddy MacDonald Has an Impossibly Sweet Story of Meeting Calum Worthy
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'Sew Torn' Review: This Tangled, Twisty Thriller Is a Dark Delight | SXSW 2024
This film is like a real-life choose-your-own-adventure in which all options are bad.
While Connolly, Goodall and Biermeier are new Freddy fans after making Sew Torn together, Worthy, Callan and Douglas went into filming well aware of what he was capable of behind the lens via previous collaborations.
One of my favorite things to hear about an agent? When they’re not solely focused on getting a client the biggest productions imaginable, but also have a keen eye on lesser known talent bound for big things. That’s the case with Worthy’s agent, Tara Jones. Worthy explained:
“I first heard about Freddy through my agent, Tara Jones at UTA. She sent me an email and said, ‘You need to watch this short. We just signed this incredible young filmmaker, and it's gonna blow you away.’ This is really a testament to what great agents can do. Tara Jones, she's one of the best agents out there. And so she sent me his material and immediately, however long the short is, I called her 30 seconds after that and I said, ‘How can I work with him? I got to meet him.’ And so we met and he mentioned that he's doing this short film, and we got to work. Immediately we clicked, and while we were shooting that short film, I think I expressed to him, ‘I need to work with you again.’ But did we actually meet before at some point, or did I meet your family at some point?”
Worthy was right. That wasn’t the first time he and MacDonald met, and MacDonald’s memory of seeing Worthy for the very first time is wonderfully wholesome and speaks to Worthy’s big heart on set and off. MacDonald recalled:
“He was signing autographs at Universal Studios. My mom always tells this story because, not to talk about other people at Universal Studios signing autographs, but it was a lot of people who didn't really care to engage with all these young kids. I must have been like 10. But my mom always [says], ‘I knew you were gonna work with that guy because he had the biggest smile on his face.’ She says you spoke with me and my sister, and you talked to my mom. She said he was the sweetest guy. So when you were in my house in the same place where I'd watch every Austin & Ally episode as a kid, it was the most surreal moment for me.”
Calum Worthy Insists Freddy MacDonald Is One of the Directing Greats
Eager to sing MacDonald’s praises more, Worthy took a moment to emphasize what an exceptional actor’s director he is. In fact, Worthy insists he’s one of the greats. Here’s how he put it:
“Freddy really embraces actors’ specific ways of being on set. Every actor has their own method and their way of approaching a character, and what he does is, I like to think of him as a conductor because everyone brings their own instrument, and we're all playing the same song, but he doesn't make people conform to one way. He really embraces what's special about that performer and really enhances that performance. And a lot of the takes can be very long sometimes, in a longer scene. We had this amazing experience in this one part where I'm supposed to be really going through some emotions. He was tracking me and he would just say one thing, he's like, ‘Forgiven.’ It would just immediately go there. It was a really incredible experience. I've never experienced that with a director before. I hope more directors have his kind of style. He really is phenomenal. And it's not just his age that I'm so impressed by, his skill. He's on par with any director I've ever worked with as being one of the great ones.”
You’ll have to take Worthy’s word on what it feels like to be directed by MacDonald, but one thing you’ll be able to see for yourself when you watch Sew Torn is that he’s brimming with creativity, has a next-level eye and a downright impeccable attention to detail.
As Barbara pursues her three paths in the movie, she finds herself in positions where she needs to construct these elaborate needle and thread contraptions. For MacDonald, it wasn’t enough to film them in a way that’d make it seem like they worked. He went above and beyond to ensure every single trap was grounded in reality. He explained:
“Even though, of course, the film is very heightened and bizarre, we really wanted to make sure all this thread-work felt like it was somewhat grounded in reality. My dad and I spent a lot of time trying to make these things work practically. We just spent hours in our backyard with cardboard guns and thread and just tried making these things work, and once we finally did, we filmed them, kind of shot for shot, each rig shot for shot, for the cast and for the crew to kind of understand how these things work, and that they do actually work.”
'Sew Torn's Needle & Thread Contraptions Actually Work
One of the greatest beneficiaries of these test videos? Connolly. She recalled:
“I am not good at anything like that, so I was a little bit stressed about it, and he sent me videos of him and his dad, and sometimes your mom was in the videos as well, making all these little videos and showing me exactly what I was gonna have to do. So it was just me then following along with these videos, and showing my family as well when I'd get it, to where I could do it acceptably, which was just so helpful because it's kind of scary going into it all. But again, he's just so specific. And even the videos were so clear and done perfectly that it was so helpful. He’s just a genius.”
There’s been no news about release plans for Sew Torn, but hopes are high a distributor will snatch it up fast. In the meantime, be sure to catch my full chat with MacDonald, Connolly, Worthy, Callan, Goodall, Douglas and Biermeier in the video at the top of this article.
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Sew Torn
A seamstress gets tangled in her own thread after stealing a briefcase from a drug deal gone bad. In an escalating game of cat and mouse, her different choices lead to drastically different outcomes along the way.
- Release Date
- March 11, 2024
- Director
- Freddy Macdonald
- Cast
- Eve Connolly , Calum Worthy , John Lynch , K Callan , Ron Cook , Thomas Douglas , Caroline Goodall , Werner Biermeier
- Runtime
- 95 Minutes
- Main Genre
- Thriller