Interview with French American filmmaker Sarah Nocquet for "Speed Queen 51" (2024)

Sarah Nocquet is a French American screenwriter and director. Born and raised in Paris, she moved to New York to pursue a degree in film & TV production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and has since expanded her domain of work to include Paris, New York, and London. Her short psychological thriller Speed Queen 51 starring Rory Culkin premiered at Palm Springs Shortfest 2024, and her 5min drama Decoy starring Lia Williams is planning a festival run in 2025. Her short horror Open won her the Best Directing award at NFFTY 2019, and her sci-fi thriller feature Second Nature was a finalist in the 2023 Stowe Story Labs. Since 2021, Sarah runs an annual writer’s retreat during which all participants write the first draft of a feature film in two weeks. Outside of writing and directing her own projects, she can be found working as a writer for hire, music video director, assistant director, and script supervisor. She has written feature biopics for NYC-based Intrinsic Value Films and Paris-based Kaiwo Studio and has worked as story writer and script consultant on a variety of other projects. Sarah enjoys examining the inner life of female protagonists and toying with absurdism and irony in thrillers.

In an interview with Sarah about her short films, here is what she had to say:

Can you tell how you got into writing and directing? Is your main aim to both write and direct?

SARAH: Raised in a bilingual setting (French/English), I was always drawn to ways of marrying language and image together to communicate an idea that transcends monolingual description. Filmmaking came to me as natural expression of this interest, and I often co-opted school presentations, trips, and birthday parties to interpret them in moving image. I started formally writing and directing at NYU, where I studied film production as an undergrad. During COVID, with limited production opportunities, my focus shifted to writing, and I started an annual writing retreat during which my friends and I each write a feature first draft in two weeks (after a couple months of weekly outline meetings). We’re now going into our fifth year! The retreat has been a great way to push myself to generate material, and over the last few years, screenwriting has become a reliable creative habit for me.

SARAH CONT’D: Directing is much more dependent on external resources. Ever since graduating from NYU, I accumulated scripts and pictured directing them, but it all felt inaccessible and unrealistic. The blanket of COVID made it easy to push off my next directing endeavor. As restrictions lifted and film production returned, I came to consider what my next short film would be. A lot of my peers were tackling their first big projects out of college, and I was intimidated by the immensity of both their self-funded budgets and the scale of their productions. I’ve always been drawn to small scope premises where I can hone my craft with a focus on performance, rather than logistics; and slightly terrified at the prospect of all the factors that could go wrong with a complex shoot.

SARAH CONT’D: When I made my first film out of college, I went as far as I could to reduce difficulties and maximize my chances of success: keeping budget and crew size low, shooting locally, with actors I knew and didn’t have to audition, in one location. We shot Speed Queen 51 over two nights in my laundromat, across the street from my apartment. Although I had made short films before, this one really felt like my return to directing. It was the first film that I made of my own initiative, outside of an academic framework. It will always be a special film to me because it allowed me to reassert myself as a writer-director in my own mind, rather than the screenwriter I had been first and foremost for the past three years. I was lucky enough to premiere Speed Queen 51 at Palm Springs ShortFest 2024, and to secure an acquisition deal for the film off the back of that festival.

SARAH CONT’D: I wrote and directed another short film the following year, and I’m currently planning my next film. I still hold a preference for small-scale filmmaking, and I’m learning to distinguish between a stylistic inclination and a fear of failure! I want to challenge myself with my work, yet not push myself outside of the voice that comes naturally to me. As for the balance of writing and directing, I love writing, and I continue to write screenplays that I will not direct, but my purpose remains to write and direct my own feature films.

What do you find most challenging about being a director today?

SARAH: To be honest, I think the social pressure to collect accomplishments, and early success is a real challenge for filmmakers today. Social media presence is so important to building connections and showcasing your abilities, but it also creates a very competitive atmosphere and makes you focus on outcome more than process. The more your network grows, the more you see your peers achieving things you wish for yourself… Being a young director nowadays means a lot of image curation, and inherently, a lot of comparison. I find it very important to set an artistic intention that is about practice and routine, rather than result. Writing regularly keeps me focused on my own ambitions and helps me eliminate the ‘luck’ factor. I make sure to set personal goals that are attainable steppingstones to the career I want, instead of striving for a single impressive milestone that might require a certain number of stars to align.

Why is indie filmmaking so difficult and what advice do you have for young filmmakers out there?

SARAH: Indie filmmaking is tough precisely because it’s not just about focusing on the art. You must claim a space for yourself and demand attention— not to mention money and favors! The trickiest thing is striking a balance between building a creative practice to find and hone your voice (a very private endeavor), and the horrific task of building a reputation. My advice is to try your best not to conflate the two. Identify the moments in which you are advertising yourself and your work, and the moments that are just for you and require no broadcasting or box-ticking at all. A good way to fuel that second part is to write every day— even if it’s brief, or not to do with your current projects. If I ever feel stuck on writing, I’ll go through a phase of coming up with five quick ideas a day, maybe for a month or so, to generate a bank of ideas and loosen up any tunnel vision I’m having.

SARAH CONT’D: My other big piece of advice is to iterate— come up with options rather than a decision. If you’re preparing to direct a scene, find five different intentions each actor could have in each beat. If you’re rewriting a script, come up with ten different choices the character could make. The best way to zero in on what you want is to push yourself to explore all your options; even if you think you already know what you want. If I’m feeling particularly protective of a certain vision, I like using the ‘what if’ exercise: create a copy of your script, or your edit, and tell yourself you’re not changing anything that’s already there; you're just trying something different "as an exercise." Make sure you write a new scene, or rearrange your cut, instead of just thinking about doing it. You can scrap it if you’d like, but it’s important to go through with an alternative to be sure of what you want.

SARAH CONT’D: In fact, the ultimate ideal of your project is almost always hiding behind copious iterations. The podcast The Screenwriting Life often preaches that if you knew for certain it would take you ten drafts to finalize your script, you'd be eager to finish one draft and start another, instead of trying to perfect the draft you’re currently writing. The truth is that it will always take all ten drafts— so iterating is the best (and only) way to move forward. It’s impossible to simply think hard and then write a perfect script! This also applies to directing, although I’m not suggesting you go into a scene with no clear idea of what you want; I just think that embracing flexibility and being ready to propose different approaches to a vision is your best chance at bringing that vision to life.

SARAH CONT’D: The last (and maybe most important) piece of the puzzle is building community— real community, not just a network. Friends who will read or watch your work and spend hours brainstorming a project with you without counting it as a favor to be repaid. Of course, you must provide this support for others in order to find it for yourself; but seeking out opportunities to uplift the artists around you whose ethic and talent you believe in is a fantastic way to gain experience and deepen your own insights into filmmaking. None of my films would have been possible without my filmmaker friends, and I find that helping them accomplish their own projects brings me a lot of fulfillments and motivates me in my own work.

You've mainly worked on short films. What do you love more about shorts that features can't do?

SARAH: I’ve worked as an assistant director on both shorts and features, which has given me a good idea of the differences between them. In a lot of ways, shorts are harder than features: there’s a much smaller margin for error, less time to learn how to work with your cast and crew, and less room for spontaneity, since it’s much harder to redesign a schedule in a short timeframe. On a feature film, it takes at least a few days to find your groove as a team and sharpen your vision for the story. You develop a language with your collaborators that allows for quicker decision-making, and, barring any production difficulties, you find a comfortability that makes the shoot smoother as it goes.

SARAH CONT’D: With a short film, you’re fueled more by adrenaline than by a secure knowledge of the project and each other. This might sound like a clear disadvantage, but it forces you to make daring choices that can really pay off. Making a short film is like making a bet: you must choose a singular perspective and see it through. When you zero in on one emotional event and how to present it, you’re challenged to deepen a singular idea rather than explore its branches, as you might do in a feature. The limitations of short filmmaking push you to narrow your focus, and that’s what makes it such a pure framework for creativity.

Can you tell us about your recent film?

SARAH: Speed Queen 51 is a short psychological thriller about two strangers alone in a laundromat at night. When they realize they’ll never see each other again, they decide to trade secrets. It’s a single scene that presents two morally ambiguous characters and invites us to form judgments about them without the gratification of a clear ethical winner. Cory and June are both looking to escape their lives and rid themselves of a persistent feeling of dissatisfaction. They’re also both people who, to an extent, believe themselves better than their surroundings. This struggle between a genuine need to connect and desperate self-prioritization is what takes them on a journey from approachable strangers to their darkest selves. The film stars Rory Culkin and Jane Purnell. It premiered at Palm Springs ShortFest in 2024 and has played at Woodstock Film Festival and Norwich Film Festival, among others. It was acquired by Kinogo Films and will be distributed as part of an anthology feature.

Why is it so important for filmmakers to attend film festivals? 

SARAH: To me, the film doesn’t feel alive until I’m sharing a physical space with the story on screen + an unfamiliar audience. It feels like putting on a play versus sending someone a recording of the play. It’s a new experience every time, and you leave the screening with a tangible memory. Festivals are vital to building a career as an emerging filmmaker. Not only is your work getting seen by fresh eyes, but you also have a singular chance to meet people just like you and build the support system you desperately need to keep making films. We sometimes dream of festivals as a chance to be seen by leaders in our industry, but in fact, I’ve found them much more essential to building peer connections, which are the real backbone of our work. Festivals are an opportunity to form your artistic opinions and sharpen what you value as an artist. You’re not just attending to promote yourself; you’re also discovering the people and films that will remain a part of your practice for years to come. 

SARAH CONT’D: I know that online platforms are an increasingly popular alternative to in-person festivals, with more filmmakers choosing to end their festival run earlier in favor of an online release, or forgoing an in-person premiere all together, but I really believe that there’s nothing quite like building an audience for your work through live, communal events. Hearing reactions, making eye contact, having a discussion is exactly what filmmaking is about.

What will you be working on next? 

SARAH: My new short film Decoy follows an aging celebrity having a moment alone in a toilet stall after winning an award at an awards ceremony. A young fan outside her stall door strikes up a conversation with her, having seen the award she left by the sink. The camera stays glued to the woman inside the stall as a back-and-forth ensues that makes her reckon with what her success means to her. The audience never sees the fan outside, which invites us to consider their conversation as an exteriorization of an interior battle. It’s a five-minute, quasi-one-shot film that employs a singular combination of premise and form to explore the question of whether we have more to gain from presenting others with what they want, or from staying true to ourselves. I look forward to sharing it with audiences at a festival soon!

About Sarah Nocquet: