Writer and director Nikole Beckwith made her feature film debut at Sundance 2015 with “Stockholm, Pennsylvania,” which earned her a Nicholl Fellowship, Satellite Award, Women’s Image Award, and a spot on the 2012 Black List. Her play “Everything is Ours” was developed with Labyrinth Theater Company and premiered at HERE Arts Center in New York with Colt Couer, followed by “Untitled Matriarch Play (Or Seven Sisters),” developed at The National Theatre and premiered at The Royal Court in London. Beckwith has also written for episodic TV, published short stories, and is a former Story Pirate.

“Together Together” is screening at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which is taking place online and in person via Satellite Screens January 28-February 3.

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

NB: It is the story of a young loner hired as a surrogate for a single man in his 40s, and the unexpected relationship that develops between the two strangers. It challenges their boundaries, and what they think of love — or think of as love.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

NB: So many things, but I mostly write out of curiosity and I was very curious what such an intimate circumstance might do to the relationship between two strangers.

The more I wrote, the more I realized I had an appetite for a story between a woman and a man that didn’t involve mutual attraction. There are a lot of different ways to be the object of someone’s affection, or to love someone.

W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?

NB: I think the last shot in the film brings a lot of things to the surface, so it leaves you with plenty to think about and carry with you. But I also like to tell stories in a way that leaves room for that experience to be specific to whoever is watching it.

Really, I just want people to think about the movie, for it to be something that resonates and something that viewers will have feelings about long after watching. What those feelings are will be different from person to person, and possibly from viewing to viewing.

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

NB: Time and money are the forever-challenges of this kind of filmmaking. There is never enough of either.

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

NB: We have a couple of different financing producers, and they were all found through my producer and partner on the film, Anthony Brandonisio of Wild Idea Productions. I met Anthony working on my first film, “Stockholm, Pennsylvania.” He was a co-producer and did post supervision, among many other things, but it was during post that we became close. He was in sound and color with me on that film and was my right hand and translator during that era of working on the movie. Anthony became my touchstone and the person on that side of the desk I came to trust the most.

When I finished this script, he was the first person I called and the first person I sent it to. If you asked Anthony how we got this film made he would have a blow-by-blow account for you. If you ask me, I will say that I found someone I trusted, who I knew was smart and very good at his job and, just as importantly, is a very good person. I knew he would stick with it and me. Anthony has a lot of experience in the mysterious financial and production side of filmmaking.

My advice is to find someone you actually trust, both professionally and personally, as filmmaking gets very personal. And once you find that someone, forge a partnership.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

NB: I started off as a playwright and adapted “Stockholm, Pennsylvania” from a stage play into a screenplay. Once I was on the water bottle tour with it, I swiftly figured out that unlike playwrights, screenwriters are not typically involved in bringing a script to life on screen. And I wanted to bring my things to life. Once I picked up that mantle I fell in love — I felt like a fish in water, or whatever that saying is.

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

NB: The best advice I got was to make sure you are spending at least 15 percent of your waking time on your own work, even if you are tired and tapped, even if you love your “day job” — maybe especially if you love your day job.

The worst advice would be any of the various times I was told to over-compromise or make myself smaller. I remember a former agent/manager telling me I needed to be more vulnerable in meetings so people would want to work with me. I fired them.

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

NB: Fire anyone who says you need to be more vulnerable.

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

NB: I love Chloé Zhao’s films: “The Rider,” “Nomadland,” and “Songs My Brothers Taught Me.” So beautiful. On their own, they ring out as singular experiences, and side by side it’s like watching a constellation come into focus. Chloé is an incredible artist. I trust her work. When I sit down to see one of her films, I know I am in for something honest, immersive, and transportive. She is so good it feels like the story is telling itself. That is so rare. I can’t think of another film I feel that way about, and I feel that way about all three of hers.

W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how? 

NB: At the beginning, I thought, “I am going to get so much writing done.” I had big plans to emerge like a phoenix with a library of the finished scripts I have been thinking about forever because that is what hunkering down at home means to me. But we aren’t just hunkering down at home. We are weathering a global crisis, forever altering our world and life experience, presenting us with an uncertainty that is unparalleled.

And I’ve learned just getting through the day to day of that takes a lot of creativity and imagination, whether you’re a writer or not. It doesn’t feel creative because we associate creativity with inspiration — but living all these days either in isolation or in danger or both, has asked us all to call up our most creative selves, remaking our home lives, social lives, and inner lives.

We have been impelled to reinvent how we interact with time and space. It is easy not to see it that way, overshadowed by getting through it, surviving it all. I don’t have a library of finished scripts, but I have 315 days behind me of a life I don’t recognize, a life I didn’t know was in me. We all have that together.

W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?

NB: On a macro level, there are too many white people in charge. That goes way beyond the film and TV world — that is a problem across the board. I think instead of just filling open positions “inclusively,” more positions need to be created, partner positions. There should never be a room full of white execs and creatives talking about how to better a project’s representation. They should be restructuring the system to make sure that meeting never has to happen.

In the micro, everyone needs to hire better. Look at quality not quantity as a measure of experience, because the smaller systems are just as rigged — you need experience to get a job, but you need the job to get experience. If someone worked on a beautiful short or student film, hold that up as equal to the beautiful feature on someone else’s reel. Otherwise, the broken system keeps feeding itself. When I walked on set to direct my first film, the nine-year-old actress, Avery Phillips, had more on-set experience than me, but we made our days and eventually got into Sundance. I never went to college or film school. Résumés can be misleading.