Lissette Feliciano is a writer, director, producer, and a graduate of Tisch School of the Arts. She is a Tribeca Film Institute AT&T Untold Stories grant recipient, was named as one of Shoot Magazine’s new directors to watch, and has served as an ambassador for TheWrap’s Power Women Summit. Her production company, Look at the Moon Pictures, develops original content that shines a hero’s lens on underrepresented groups, joining the ranks of creators filling the market gap in storytelling for a new young, multicultural audience. Under Feliciano’s leadership, Look at the Moon was among the first production companies to mandate 50 percent BIPOC representation across leadership positions on and off-camera — a metric they are proud to consistently achieve.

“Women is Losers” is screening at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, which is taking place online March 16-20.

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

LF: In my own words, “Women is Losers” is a film about a human being trying to gain financial independence and therefore agency over their own life. It’s a story about the very real, universal human desire to have a sense of control of your choices, your destiny, your future. If you’ve ever felt like you were being held back from achieving your dreams, this is the movie for you.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

LF: For as long as I can remember people have been telling me what I can’t do. Sometimes they’d say it outright. But most of the time — and much harder to detect — the “you can’t” was in the things they wouldn’t say. The opportunities I wasn’t encouraged to go for. The quiet reception to a carefully laid out plan. The amusement at my “ambitious” goals. I have since learned to survive by hearing what people aren’t saying. But before I learned to survive, I cracked. I cracked under the weight of that nothingness. I came home to my mother, broken and ashamed for my failures. Devastated to tell her that despite the hard work ethic she’d instilled in me, that there was something — something I couldn’t see or even explain but that I could feel as clearly as my own heartbeat — standing in my path.

I waited for her, a woman who had worked three jobs to gain financial independence, whose body was irreparably broken from the effort, to tell me to suck it up. She didn’t.

Instead, with a maddening sense of humor, she told me how little she still made at a job she’d been in for 40 years. She told me about needing her stepfather to co-sign on her home loan because the bank wanted “assurances” that she could make the payments even though her stepfather did not have employment at the time.

She told me that even though none of this was legal on paper anymore, it’s all still happening. What I was feeling, she said, was in fact real. “Women is Losers” is that conversation with my mother. I wanted to make a film where the hidden wounds, the unsaid truths of our parent’s generation were brought out into the light to help our own. I wanted to make a film where our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, fathers talk to us about everything, and I mean everything, they swept under the rug. I was drawn to make a film that says the unwritten rules of our world out loud in a way that gives you space to laugh at them and learn from them at the same time.

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

LF: In every way, “Women is Losers” is a movie that asks you to hold onto your hope. My mother, who the story is inspired by, through the sadness of what could have been, continuously shone through and through with gratitude for the little that she was able to achieve. She still believes in America. She still believes this is the land of opportunity. She’d want people to believe that too. So, please leave my film thinking about all the good this world has to offer, then think, “I can have that,” and then go get your “that.”

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

LF: We moved locations pretty much every day on this movie — often times twice a day. That’s just how the schedule unfortunately worked out. It was grueling. My cinematographer Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi — god bless him — and I prepped offline for this film for about a year in our free time. We’d worked together for a handful of years before so we had a shorthand between us.

Going in we knew what we wanted from every scene, but when we got on location the elements just did their thing and we had to respond to them. We’d anticipated that a bit. Thankfully we’d both done a lot of work outside of the U.S., in countries with less film infrastructure, so we were already pretty quick on our feet. That background was what helped us decide early on to put the camera on a gimbal to allow us flexibility of movement. Still, even with that foresight and with our shorthand we were very much put in a position where we had to make some tough choices.

There are a few oners in the film that are definitely not there because I thought it would be “cool” to do a one shot scene — I will say that. They’re there out of necessity. In a lot of ways, the story you see on the screen about a woman making the most of what she has is the story of what we were going through behind the scenes. I do have to say I’m so grateful to [stars] Lorenza Izzo, Bryan Craig, Chrissie Fit, Simu Liu, Liza Weil, Cranston Johnson, Lincoln Bonilla, Steven Bauer, the entire cast, and the team of crew in San Francisco for their resilience and positivity in the face of some pretty out of the blue obstacles.

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

LF: It is challenging and took a lot of people saying no to get to the place where we could make it. But at the same time, you can’t wait until you have the exact number you think you need, you have to start moving forward and you’ll find a way to make it work. It’s much harder to stop a moving train, so I’d say just start going and the pieces will fall into place.

I know my tendency used to be to wait for the “perfect” conditions before I did anything. I’d wait until the script was “perfect” before I sent it out. I don’t think like that anymore. Look, if you’re reading this you’re probably a woman in Hollywood — statistically it’s going to take longer for your work to get made or seen, so I’d say don’t add to that time by holding your work back until everything is “perfect.” It’s not going to be. I’m much more into the 80/20 rule these days.

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

LF: I came to filmmaking through writing. I started writing very young because I was very shy as a kid. Putting my feelings on paper was the easiest way for me to make myself understood because getting through the shyness to say the words was a challenge. These days I don’t shut up, but back then it was really hard for me to connect with anyone verbally.

Eventually, I wrote my way into a better high school and wrote my way into NYU’s film school. I had no idea what filmmaking was. I applied to NYU with every intention of going to the dramatic writing program, but I had also applied to the film program by mistake because I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to apply to more than one program. I thought the application was asking me to check the boxes of the things that interested me. Movies interested me, so I checked the box. Shout out to any first-generation college graduates reading this.

Turns out, I was accepted into both programs. An admissions person from the university, whose name I’ll never know but who I’m convinced was an angel, called me and strongly suggested that I choose the film program because, she said something to the effect of, “You’ll be able to write and learn how to make your writing talk on screen.” She was saying I could talk without having to talk. Mind blown! I loved movies, hence why I checked the box, but the fact that movies started with a script was news to me. I wish I were joking.

I obviously came into the program a bit behind, which some of my not-first-generation-college-bound classmates took it upon themselves to make sure I remembered. Either way, when I finally put it all together, I went back to watch the movies I loved growing up and thought, “You know what, I think I can do that.” And well, here I am.

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

LF: The best advice I have ever received was to enter a negotiation without a scarcity mindset. Access to wealth seems to be one of the main things holding BIPOC communities and women back. For that reason, access to money is one of the strongest themes in “Women is Losers.” What Celina is learning in the film is that financial independence means freedom. She’s also learning that while access to the resource of money may have been purposefully limited to her, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not available. I had to learn that too.

Going back to negotiating without a scarcity mindset: the reality appears to be that there are more than enough resources, money, opportunity to go around. When you don’t believe that, if you find yourself in a position to finally access that resource, chances are you’re going to negotiate against yourself. This is especially important for women because statistically we earn less no matter how far up the food chain we are.

There’s a saying my mother drilled into me that says, “No te saques el pan de la boca.” The rough translation is: “Don’t take bread out of your own mouth.” It really means don’t take money out of your own pocket. It takes practice. Try it. Negotiate everything: your grocery bill, your dry cleaning bill, ask if there is a 10 percent discount at the cash register of any store (there often is). Ask for what you’re worth then double it, chances are you’ll land somewhere around what you really needed. It seems the worst thing you can do in a negotiation is think in your head, “They don’t have the money,” when the reality is they probably do. Whoever your “they” is.

Worst advice: Make a “one-room” movie. Women get told this ALL THE TIME. This goes back to the scarcity mindset. Don’t get me wrong, if you want to make a one-room movie because that’s the story in your heart, go for it. If you are making a one-room movie to fit a budget, chances are someone has asked you to play small. Nobody believed I could make an on-location period piece as my first film, but that’s what I did with “Women is Losers.”

I can’t tell you how many times I was told to make my first movie in “one room.” It gets to a point where it’s insulting. If you’re reading this, you’re a creator. Create a device in your film that embraces your budgetary constrictions and then tell the story you want to tell. Audiences are smart. They’ll go with you if you’re entertaining and honest with them. The entire opening scene of my movie, where the actors talk to the audience and the camera shows the crew is a big stand against the “one-room” mentality. I’d encourage you to take yours unapologetically.

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

LF: I spent too much time trying to convince people that I could do the things I was saying I could do. Again, going back to the movie: Celina spends time trying to convince people in her life to try things her way, often with devastating consequences. But the people she’s trying to convince are just too entrenched in their own limited beliefs to see the opportunity in what she’s proposing. I’ve come up against that a lot so far in my career.

If you’re in a room with people that just aren’t getting it for whatever reason, don’t try to bring them around — that’s not your job. Just thank them for the time and get out of that room as fast as you can. Seriously, make a “you-shaped” hole in the door. Go find the room that is already on the page you are on. It’s so much easier.

Suddenly, you’re able to move a lot faster. Not because you suddenly became more talented or the idea suddenly became better, but because you found a room full of people who have done the work on themselves that needs to be done in order to see and stand for the potential in you.

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

LF: That’s so hard! I’ve been asked this before and I can’t pick. There’s too much good work. One highlight is Dee Rees’ “Mudbound.” She’s not afraid to take long pauses. She has a beautiful way of letting her characters exist in the space going all the way back to her short “Pariah” that I was lucky enough to see when we were students at Tisch. Chloé Zhao does this incredibly well too. I’m consistently striving to be comfortable in those pauses. They do it so naturally. I’m in awe of those women.

Another massive highlight: I saw Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” recently, and was glued to the freaking screen. The colors, the unapologetic strength of it all, was so refreshing to watch. It was entertaining as hell while also telling us something important. That’s a very hard balance to strike and one I’m consistently trying to achieve in my own work. Entertain first. Watching “Promising Young Woman,” it felt like the director just came in with that mentality — bat swinging and connecting. Home-run after home-run. She commands her screen in a way that reminded me of Mary Harron’s “American Psycho.” I didn’t want it to end.

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

LF: At the start of the pandemic, I was really hard on myself about using the “extra” time I had to be creative. Instagram saviors were everywhere with some version of “You have the same amount of time in your day as Beyoncé,” and it gets to you.

On top of that, I grew up in a home raised by the woman that “Women is Losers” is about. She never stopped working. I emulated that. But when the pandemic hit, it seems that what we all quickly learned was that doing anything through “stress brain” might not yield the best results. I had to do a lot of therapy around why my value as a human being was so tied to my productivity. I’m grateful for that time now. I feel like I’ve recalibrated my relationship with my work. It is a piece of me but it isn’t all of me anymore.

I’ve spent more time with friends and family than I ever had before the pandemic. I became a more present aunt, sister, daughter. The funny part is that disconnecting my value as a human from my productivity actually made my work better. My fear that if I didn’t work non-stop my ability to create would disappear turned out not to be true. These days, I keep creative by being conscious of when I want to be creative. I decide that now.

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?

LF: There have been so many attempts at this, even in the short time that I’ve been in the industry, that I find this hard to answer. It seems the conversation over the last 10 years went something like, “Let us in,” with the results being rife with platitudes at their worst and glacial at their best. What it seems like we are seeing more of these days and what appears more exciting and impactful is a conversation that goes more like, “Let’s let ourselves in.” BIPOC communities — especially the generation I’m in — are banding together.

For example, there’s a very strong storyline about honoring the history of the Asian American experience in my film as well as a key moment that touches on the experience of an African American entrepreneur. We can all create space for the experience of our other BIPOC brothers and sisters in our work or in our workspaces. It’s happening. We are starting to take a larger stand for each other’s work. We are starting to fund each other. That’s beautiful. There’s wealth amongst our communities. Pooled together, my hope is we’ll start seeing the mountains of the past as molehills. Who knows, please ask me again in 10 years.