“Beside Still Waters” was always going to be a very personal project for me. It’s my first film and it’s also a love letter to the place that I grew up and the people I grew up with, so finding the right actors to cast was incredibly important.
Prior to casting, my writing partner Mo [Narang] and I watched every single ensemble-driven film we could get our hands on, and it convinced us that movies like these live or die on cast chemistry. Our entire casting process was driven by this belief, and I could not be more proud of the actors we ended up with. Their chemistry is what makes our movie work. Period.
We were fortunate enough to work with amazing casting directors Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee, and Alison Estrin, who knew how to put together great ensembles with movies like ”Short Term 12” and ”August: Osage County,” and also had a knack for discovering new talent with films like ”Boys Don’t Cry” and ”Winter’s Bone.” We knew we wanted a cast of mostly unknowns. One of the things we’d noticed is that so many ensemble films were stacked with a bunch of celebrities who took the audience out of the
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