We recently connected with Diamantis and Socratis Zavitsanos and have shared our conversation below.
Diamantis and Socratis, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
In 2022, we began producing our very first feature film, titled Sew Torn. Director and co-writer Freddy Macdonald, alongside his father Fred Macdonald, who served as co-writer and producer, presented us with one of the very first drafts of their screenplay. We befriended them at the Heartland International Film Festival in 2017, where both our films won awards.
A few years later, Freddy and Fred approached us shortly after their Coen Brothers-inspired short, also called Sew Torn, was acquired by Searchlight Pictures. The short film was the chief inspiration for the feature length version of Sew Torn, a continuation of the short film’s narrative.
As the short was being sent around, the film eventually landed in the hands of Joel Coen, to our great surprise. He advised our team to turn the short into a feature and to raise the funds for our product independently, the Blood Simple way, to maintain full creative control. We were deeply humbled and set our eyes on raising capital to get this project made from then onward.
After a successful fundraising campaign, involving sophisticated investors from a wide array of industries globally, we began production – spending 22 days shooting in the frigid Swiss Alps. Many iterations of the edit later, we finally had a finished product on our hands and submitted our work to film festivals around the world.
Fortunately, Sew Torn had its world premiere at SXSW in March of 2024 and went on to internationally premiere at the Locarno Film Festival a few months later. Shortly thereafter, we secured international distribution in a few countries after playing at SITGES, a popular genre festival in Spain. Given the rarity of theatrical deals in today’s independent film market, we are very fortunate and thankful to be getting our film out there to the world.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
In 2017, we visited a Syrian refugee camp and directed a short documentary called Two of Five Million – a film about two Syrian refugees and their grueling escape from ISIS. Though we were only seventeen at the time, this eye-opening experience provided razor sharp focus for our future aspirations.
This led us to continue our filmmaking journey, next directing an experimental short film inspired by true events that premiered at SXSW, titled Confined. It follows the story of our good friend who was held at gunpoint in a crime-ridden Baltimore neighborhood.
Motivated to share untold stories on an even larger scale, we then made it our goal to produce and direct narrative feature films. This led us to produce Student Academy Award-winner Freddy Macdonald’s first feature film, Sew Torn, where we were involved in virtually every stage of the production process, from pre-production and shooting to distribution and delivery.
In our opinion, the main quality that sets us apart is our ability to see unrecognized potential in upcoming writers, directors, and cinematographers. We try to focus our time and energy into finding artists who care deeply about good storytelling and craftsmanship. This, in turn, helps us to produce authentic and untold stories that matter.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
By the end of post-production, for most of our films, we have seen our movie at least 50 times. Because of this, our perception is often jaded. Given our level of familiarity with the final product, we instead will focus our attention on first-time viewers when playing our films at a film festival. It is always extremely rewarding to gauge new audience members’ viewing experiences as it gives us a glimpse into more pure and less jaded perspectives. If I could subjectively watch my movie for the very first time, what would that experience feel like? Gauging others’ viewing experiences gives us the closest possible answer to that question and fulfills us deeply.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
From a craft perspective, it is our goal to be as audacious and forward thinking as possible; however, nothing is more important to us than preserving the humanity of our characters and story. Walter Murch, famously known for editing <i>The Godfather</i> and <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, discusses this in his book, <i>In the Blink of an Eye</i>. To him, pursuing craft at the expense of emotion is never an ideal outcome. As writers and producers, we try to partner with filmmakers who pursue both of these qualities wholeheartedly.
That is why we love supporting independent filmmakers with bold concepts and emotionally relatable characters. In our free time, we thoroughly enjoy watching independent films at the theater as it inspires us to continue writing.
We have a tremendous amount of respect for filmmakers who break boundaries and dare to be great.
Ultimately, it is our goal to create great movies and to watch great movies, too!
Image Credits
Kati Hewitt