'Wolfpack' and 'Betty' Director Crystal Moselle Interviews Rebeca Huntt About 'Beba'

Acclaimed on the festival circuit and enjoying a summer release the likes of which only Neon can ride, the hypnotic portrait "Beba" takes no prisoners and leaves no victims in its director's sought-after portrayal of her own Afro-American roots. Latinas born in New York.

Filmmaker Rebeca Huntt, in an exclusive conversation hosted here by IndieWire, sat down with filmmaker "The Wolfpack" and "Betty" Crystal Moselle to discuss this groundbreaking feature debut. The film follows Huntt as she embarks on an unflinching exploration of her own identity through the format of a cinematic memoir. Reflecting on her childhood and teenage years in New York City as the daughter of a Dominican father and a Venezuelan mother, Huntt investigates the historical, societal and generational trauma she inherited and reflects on how these ancient wounds l have shaped, while simultaneously considering the universal truths that connect us all as humans.

Throughout the film, Huntt searches for a way to forge his own creative path amid a landscape of intense racial and political unrest.

In his review for IndieWire, Robert Daniels wrote:

First-time filmmaker Rebeca "Beba" Huntt opens her self-titled debut film "Beba" - a complicated and daring self-portrait, exploring identity, internalized anti-blackness and generational trauma - with a declarative statement: "You are now entering my universe." His world, initially, is visually translated via a shaky camera walking through a winding, moss-strewn forest. A woozy horn mesmerizes on a collage of images: Huntt swinging out to sea, people at the beach, his hand in the sand - all shot on a beautiful 16mm. Her spoken word poetry, in which she says "violence lives in my DNA", sets the stage for the next 79 minutes.

Read the full conversation with Moselle below.

Crystal Moselle: There are a few films in this world that when I watch them remind me that you can do anything in the cinema because they are so bold and it's like it's a very brave and your film is one of those films. No, congratulations on that. Seriously. Sometimes I think in my head, "Sometimes I have to do it a certain way." But your movie is one of those movies that instantly reminds me in a way like no, no, no, just do what you think and feel, first and foremost.

Rebeca Huntt: Honestly, I feel the same way about "Wolfpack". I love your work in general but "Wolfpack" was a transformative moment for me as an artist on so many levels. Personally, I'm just able to relate, to see this apartment very much alive, like the broken window for some reason. There are shots in my film of the broken wall and you don't really know what happened but something happened and it's lived, and it's also… the sensitivity with which it was made and the nuance and also just the exploration of strength and emotion and mental illness and mental health and love and resilience and family, it's just like... like the brain you need to have to do something like that is just amazing, so thanks for that because I think maybe "Beba" wouldn't have come out the same way if "Wolfpack" didn't exist.

Crystal Moselle: Aw, thank you. When did you know you were making a film? Let's talk about the process.

Rebeca Huntt: Well, there was a moment like shortly after graduating when I was 23, turning 24, where my producer Sofia Geld and I were like, it's a film. And I was like yeah, I'm going to run with this. We started looking at my journal entries together and from there I started writing what became the voiceover. Voiceover is not like snippets of diary entries. It's inspired by them, and then a kind of original writing based on looking at journal entries from specific parts of my life and breaking them into categories that later became chapters, things I wanted to explore. So after I started putting the diary entries together and coming up with what in my mind and I say to this day is a three act structure. But it's an existential three-act structure, which kind of writing the film is driven by. Then it was either my producer or myself, or I would hire a cinematographer to shoot certain things, or I would turn on the camera and just leave it on. So the quantity of images that Isabelle, our...