Debra Granik’s latest film hit theaters just a couple of weeks ago, but the Oscar-nominated writer-director is already in post-production on her next project. The “Leave No Trace” helmer is taking on the subject of life after incarceration. The documentary tells the stories of four men and one woman living in different New York boroughs after serving time.
“They were allowing us to document and chronicle and stay with them a bit, and try to, as best we could, find the moments that were extremely difficult, [as well as] the moments where success was sweet,” Granik told Film Comment. “Now we have a lot of footage, and we have to put it together. It’s a longitudinal study of that journey.”
Granik was inspired to make the feature after reading a screenplay that she considered directing. “This particular script ended where I wanted to start the film,” she explained. “It was a disconnect from what I thought was my core interest, which was: how does one stay out? Not what forces one back in.”
Often praised for the realism of her narrative features, Granik wants to approach this issue from “the personal perspective of a lived experience,” focusing on class and capital. “A big part of this film is how do bourgie people allow reentry to even happen?” Granik said. “It takes the torque of, in this case, people of color to push, and ask, to seek, to stay alive. It’s this unbelievable, arduous wrestling match with mainstream society, but it takes bourgie people to patronize their businesses, to care, to make financing available, to do a lot of things that don’t keep this strangely liberal glass wall in place.”
The upcoming project won’t mark Granik’s first foray into documentary filmmaking. Her 2014 doc “Stray Dog” follows a biker and Vietnam vet.
Granik is also “adapting Barbara Ehrenreich’s investigation of the 1996 welfare reform act, ‘Nickel and Dimed,'” according to the source. “The sociology of Barbara’s book brings into play a really rich [sense of] location, and issues around poverty wages,” Granik observed. “That’s a tough blow to withstand as a working-class American, that your wages have been decommissioned and devolved, but you’re still expected to procreate, live your life, and not break the law.”
In theaters now, “Leave No Trace” is set in the remote Oregon woods and centers on a teen girl (Harcourt McKenzie) and her war vet father (Ben Foster). The pair’s off-the-grid lifestyle comes to a halt when they’re discovered in the woods by authorities and questioned by social workers.
“I want people to think about all the people we don’t usually see represented onscreen in American cinema,” Granik said of the film. “I want people to think about what it means to live with the scars of the deep trauma caused by war and the people who spend the rest of their lives living on the margins of society as a result. I want people to think about what it means to live by your own choices in this country, even if you don’t agree with those choices, or society doesn’t sanction them,” she explained.
Granik is best known for co-writing and directing “Winter’s Bone,” Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout film. She received an Oscar nod for the screenplay.
Head over to Film Comment to learn why Granik feels her projects in fiction and documentary are in dialogue with one another.
