We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joslyn Rose Lyons a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joslyn Rose, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Success is light, seeking it, shaping it, and letting it spill into the world in a way that moves people. It’s not about chasing something outside yourself but refining what’s already within, making space for it to glow in its own time. The most powerful kind of success lingers. It’s the afterimage of something honest, something beautiful, something true.

I think about success the way I think about light in cinema. It’s not just about brightness—it’s about depth, about contrast, about the spaces it reveals. Some of the most defining moments in my work have been the ones where I let go of control and allowed the light to find its way—whether in a frame, in a performance, or in the unfolding of my own path. Success isn’t about force; it’s about presence. It’s about showing up, doing the work, and allowing the right moments to emerge.

But the real measure of success isn’t how brightly you shine alone—it’s how much of that light you pass forward. When a story, a moment, an image lingers in someone’s mind long after the credits roll—when it shifts something inside them, makes them feel seen, makes them dream—then that is success. Because light isn’t meant to be contained. It moves, it expands, it reaches. And if you do it right, it lasts.

Joslyn Rose, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Filmmaking, for me, is about light—how it moves, how it lingers, how it carves out emotion in the quietest of spaces. It’s about capturing something true, something raw, something that stays with you long after the screen fades to black. I didn’t step into this industry for the accolades or the titles—I stepped in because I believe in the power of story to shift perspectives, to heal, to illuminate.

I am a director, a writer, a producer—but beyond that, I am a seeker. My work lives at the intersection of art and impact, where images and words weave together to create something larger than any one moment. Whether through narrative or documentary, I am drawn to stories that challenge, that inspire, that reveal something unspoken. I want my films to feel like a memory you didn’t realize you had, like a truth you’ve always known but never had the words for.

What sets my work apart is the way I approach storytelling—not just as entertainment, but as a form of alchemy. I think about texture as much as I think about dialogue, about the way a shadow falls just as much as the words spoken in its presence. Sometimes a held glance can say more than a monologue, sometimes silence carries more weight than sound. I am interested in the spaces between—where meaning isn’t given, but felt. I want to create work that resonates beyond the screen, that lives in the mind long after the credits roll.

I have had the privilege of collaborating with visionaries across film, music, sports, and activism, creating work that amplifies voices and honors stories that might otherwise go unheard. But at the heart of it all, my focus has never been about who is on the screen—it’s about the humanity behind the story. It’s about capturing the moments that define us, the ones that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

If there’s one thing I want people to know about my work, it’s that storytelling is a force. It shapes the way we see the world, the way we see each other. And if a film can, even for a moment, stir something inside someone—make them feel seen, make them dream, make them question—then that is the kind of success that lasts. Because light isn’t just meant to shine. It’s meant to spread.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the moment when something you’ve created—an image, a scene, a piece of dialogue—reaches someone in a way you never could have planned. It’s not about control; it’s about connection. You spend so much time in solitude, shaping a world, chasing a feeling, trying to catch light in a bottle. And then one day, someone tells you that something you made—something that started as just a flicker of a thought—made them feel seen, or made them dream, or stayed with them in the quiet hours of their life. That’s the reward.

For me, storytelling is about resonance. It’s about what lingers. It’s not just what’s on the screen, but what exists between the frames—the spaces where the audience brings their own history, their own heartache, their own longing. When someone watches a film and feels like it was speaking directly to them, like a memory they hadn’t quite pieced together yet, that’s when art transcends. That’s when it becomes something bigger than you.

There’s beauty in that surrender. You put something into the world, and you don’t know how it will be received. But when it finds the right person at the right moment, when it gives them something they didn’t know they needed—that’s the magic. That’s why we do this. Because art is meant to be felt, to be lived with, to move through people long after the lights come up.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

There was a moment—a stretch of time, really—when I had to sit with the silence. The kind that lingers after a door closes, after a project stalls, after the momentum you thought was carrying you forward suddenly isn’t there anymore. Every artist, every filmmaker, knows that silence. It tests you. It asks you why you’re here, why you keep doing this, why you wake up and choose to chase something that may never fully materialize the way you imagined.

I remember working on something deeply personal, something that required everything I had—every ounce of patience, every belief in my own voice. And yet, despite the work, the love poured into it, there were moments when it felt like it wasn’t going to happen. The industry moves on, people turn their attention elsewhere, and you start wondering if what you’re making, what you’re saying, is ever going to reach beyond the four walls of your own mind.

But the thing about resilience is that it’s not loud. It’s not about pushing through just for the sake of pushing. It’s quiet. It’s in the decision to sit with the doubt and still move forward anyway. It’s in the trust that even when no one is watching, no one is listening, the work still matters. That the story still has weight.

And then one day, something shifts. A door opens—not always the one you were knocking on, but another one, unexpected, waiting. The work finds its way. And you realize the resilience wasn’t about enduring—it was about holding onto the light, even when it felt like no one else could see it. That’s the journey. That’s the lesson. The silence isn’t the end. It’s just the space where the next thing begins.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://joslynrosefilms.com
• Instagram: Itsjoslynrose
• Other: IMDb
  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1764418

Image Credits

Bryan Malik Photos