Sara Colangelo is a New York-based writer and director whose short films have screened at festivals around the world, including Sundance, Tribeca, and SXSW. Colangelo’s debut feature, “Little Accidents,” had its world premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, and was subsequently nominated for a 2015 Independent Spirit Award.

“The Kindergarten Teacher” will premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival on January 19.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

SC: “The Kindergarten Teacher” is a psychological thriller about a woman, named Lisa Spinelli, who lives and works in a kindergarten in Staten Island. She takes night classes in poetry but is generally discouraged by her abilities as a versifier.

One day she discovers that a boy in her class has a prodigious gift for poetry, and she does everything in her power to support and cultivate his talent — going to pedagogical extremes and spiraling into obsession to deliver his art to the world.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

SC: My film is an adaptation of Nadav Lapid’s beautiful Israeli film of the same name. The bones of his story are just so good that it was easy to say yes when the prospect of adapting the project was pitched to me. I felt that I could give the story a completely new spin and really anchor it in a woman’s point of view. And I felt strongly that there was an opportunity to talk about the value and space we give art in the United States, as well as complicated issues such as authorship, genius, and mediocrity.

But for me this story is, above all, about a woman’s awakening to art, and her well-intentioned but twisted journey to deliver a young poet to the world.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

SC: I’d like people to wonder whether Lisa Spinelli may have been right all along.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

SC: There were a lot of practical challenges like dealing with 15 kindergarteners in a contained space, or like shooting on the Staten Island Ferry with tourists flocking around Maggie Gyllenhaal, but I think the biggest one was finding the right tone for the film and making sure the audience could stay on Lisa’s side and take this wild ride with her.

She is a character who commits so many surprising acts, and crosses so many sacred boundaries, and as a director I wanted to make sure we could always see the world through her — albeit distorted — lens.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

SC: My all-female producing team — Talia Kleinhendler and Osnat Handelsman-Keren of Pie Films, and Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler of Maven Pictures pulled in the financing, which was all private equity.

W&H: What does it mean for you to have your film play at Sundance?

SC: It’s a huge honor and it’s particularly wonderful getting to this point with a nearly all-female creative team and with a story that centers around a complicated female character.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

SC: A well-known, older male comedian came up to me at an industry party once when I was in my late 20s and told me that if I wanted to make it in this business I should never get married or have kids. It’s such an abysmally stupid piece of advice, and I didn’t take it too seriously but it does go to show the sometimes strange treatment you get as a young, female filmmaker in this business.

I’m proud to say that I got married, had a baby, went into production, and submitted a cut to Sundance all within a year’s time and never experienced any major creative slowdown! So his advice proved wrong.

The best piece of creative advice I’ve received is to love your characters no matter what. It seems obvious but I try, regardless of the tone and style of the film, to give them the benefit of humanity despite their sometimes flawed logic and awful deeds.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

SC: To do your own thing — to try to make films that express your unique vision, and to not be afraid of going outside the box.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

SC: I’ll give three because it’s so hard: “Seven Beauties” by Lina Wertmüller, “The Piano” by Jane Campion, and “Wanda” by Barbara Loden.

“Seven Beauties” is such a stylistically specific, bizarre film. It’s special because it doesn’t try to explain itself or conform to any formula. It feels so ballsy and exciting when you think about when it was made — 1975 — and what Wertmüller is tackling content-wise: WWII, the banality of the bourgeoisie, sadomasochism, male chauvinism. It’s true that it was controversial because of its depiction of concentration camps, but it’s so interesting that Wertmüller took this on within a comedic framework and leapt off these ideological and aesthetic cliffs. It’s a film that would never get made now.

“The Piano” has a femininity to it that is hard to explain; it’s unpredictable, it elevates subtext. I could go on but ultimately it’s an incredibly moving film and manages to be both precise and lyrical all at once. I watched it again recently and was blown away by how perfect it is — and yet how idiosyncratic and surprising, too.

Another favorite, wildly underappreciated film is “Wanda.” I love its eastern Pennsylvania setting and texture, and Barbara Loden wrote, directed, and starred in it. It’s so gorgeous and evocative and was a huge inspiration to me when I was writing “Little Accidents.”

W&H: Hollywood is in the midst of undergoing a major transformation. Many women and some men in the industry are speaking publicly about their experiences of being assaulted and harassed. What do you think of the recently announced anti-sexual harassment Commission made up of industry leaders? Do you believe that it will help make systemic change? What do you think needs to be done to address this issue?

SC: We’re clearly going through a watershed moment — which is exciting and hopeful and painful — but it’s nonetheless clear that there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done if we want women to not only feel safe but excel in every stratum of the film industry.

While I think sexual harassment and women’s underrepresentation are sometimes separate issues that need separate, really pointed plans of action, there is no question that they overlap in the indelible fact that men still control this industry — they head nearly every studio, and are in control of the vast majority of financial resources, setting off-balance the power dynamics in both cases.

I think the Commission is a very good first step. But we have to change an entire culture of “doing business,” and that is hard work. So much of systemic bias and power disparity lies in muscle-memory, and we all need to disrupt these ancient rituals. It feels violent at times — like we’re ripping something apart — but it has to for change to take place.