Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kai Kaldro. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Kai thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?

Every single day of my life. That’s how it goes… but sometimes it goes the other way too!

My feature length debut currently in its financing phase SINNER’S LULLABY is an action-packed gothic neo-noir set of the eve of Halloween, following the front woman of the eponymous heavy metal band who moonlights as a private detective and her lounge singer girlfriend. They band together; musically on stage and in combat against the ultimate femme fatale who has suddenly overthrown and superseded the city’s criminal empire.

For the longest time, my pitch was dismissed and misjudged by so many as a violent decadent B-movie, solely contrived for metal-heads or comic-book fans. Missing the point of the duality with the lounge singer character who hangs her pillbox hat between Grace Kelly & Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, and the classic gothic romance. We’re also keeping things semi-classy in “the place Christ and The Devil shake hands”, aiming for PG-13 rating haha.

A spiritually nourishing, perhaps even meta experience I had was meeting my now good friends and my film’s score composers; Kim & Kathryn Kluge, the maestros behind Martin Scorsese’s SILENCE, who’ve also composed for classical concert legends like Brandford Marsalis and violinist Midori. Despite it’s very embryonic pre-production state, they reached out to me last year, asking if I had found composers for SINNER’S LULLABY.

I was shocked that such a lovely couple with an incredibly cultured, resplendent discography had taken a shine to my script that had been dismissed as the exact opposite for so long. I actually brought this up to Kim & Kathryn and they responded in detail about how they come from different worlds, but their music binds them together. Sound familiar? When they expressed reading that verisimilitude reflected in my script, I’d never felt so honored in my life.

In September, a SINNER’S LULLABY animated teaser was screened at Flower City Comic Con where I was a featured guest alongside great table neighbors like Holly Marie Combs (CHARMED, PRETTY LITTLE LIARS) and Heather Matarazzo (PRINCESS DIARIES, SCREAM 3). It was met with a warm welcome from attendees of all demographics who commended its duality and the diverse complex ensemble characters who break character.

So I say, whatever it is about your character or work that is mischaracterized… keep doing it!

Kai, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a 21 year old film director, editor, and screenwriter from NYC whose filmography is encapsulated by music videos and independent, but hopefully stylized and ambitious action-packed productions that artistically rebel against their budget restraints to emulate blockbuster spectacle— such as the short cyberpunk transmission DISSOLVED GIRL.

I’m in the financing phase on my feature debut SINNER’S LULLABY, a gothic neo-noir. Attached are Kim & Kathryn Kluge (composers of Martin Scorsese’s SILENCE) and casting director Jan Glaser CSA (Rob Zombie’s 3 FROM HELL and THE MUNSTERS)

I was very lucky to be mentored by several folks as I tried to find the lay of the land here, including the late, great Wolf Snyder (1985-2021), production sound recordist of the 2021 best picture Oscar-winner NOMADLAND starring Frances McDormand and on my sci-fi cyberpunk short DISSOLVED GIRL, dedicated in Wolf’s memory.

I also recently wound up in front of the camera for The Chainsmokers’ iPAD music video, as one of the talent for a rave sequence.

I always knew I was going to be a filmmaker. In the summer after kindergarten, when I was just 6 years old, I made my own Spider-Man movie, which I still have taped someplace. Shot with neighborhood kids, on a camcorder. We utilized Halloween costumes, surrogated tripods with music stands, then I cut our 10 minute epic in Windows Movie Maker and composited hilariously rough visual FX in Microsoft Paint. But at the time, it was a brave new world!

There wasn’t a lot of adult supervision at my house growing up, and what I benefited from this was getting to pop in whichever CDs or DVDs I wanted when I came home from school. The making-of-featurettes on the bonus features included on each disc were especially transfixing.

As violent as The Crow, Kill Bill, The Matrix, Terminator 2: Judgment Day or some of Alfred Hitchcock’s films may have been for a pre-teen to be habitually consuming, I very much became cognizant of and enamored with the cerebral facets extrapolated from dialogue, acting, and the editing… as opposed to just the proverbial bullets, blood, and blades haha!

I was born in NYC, but my family moved to a very provincial small town when I was 4. I never connected with anyone or fit in there. I always felt like what had been dismissed as “out of my reach” was what I was meant to do. I dropped out of school in favor of a GED and was emancipated when I was 16, and headed back for NYC. Determined to make it on my own and begin my path as a filmmaker.

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

The hardest part of my career has been losing Wolf Snyder. A week before his 36th birthday in March ‘21, just as NOMADLAND was being nominated by the academy, and just as DISSOLVED GIRL was nearing completion. I’ve never been so heartbroken.

Wolf was like an older brother. Truly one of a kind. He gave me strong words of encouragement both professionally as a colleague on set when I was doubtful of my directorial abilities, and personally as a friend when my social anxiety got the better of me.

We shot DISSOLVED GIRL in a garage during the height of covid. A few months later when he died, the big film he was auditorily responsible for made history as Best Picture Winner, the first to see an Asian female director win. Wolf was being honored by Chloe Zhao and Frances McDormand… then there was my little short film, one of the last things he ever worked on.

Which made me one of, if not the youngest film director to have had a best picture winning mutual enlisted on their own production… but he was also my best friend. And he was gone. I felt guilty that if DISSOLVED GIRL wasn’t good, I had not lived up to his memory… this wasn’t a burden that my 19 year old self was prepared for with his own film. An incredibly confusing, devastating position to be in that no one could give me any answers for.

I couldn’t splice any of the DG negative for weeks, until I tried to remember the benevolent words Wolf gave me while we shot it. Suddenly I began to realize that wherever he was, he’d tell me how much ass I’d kicked and encourage me to keep moving. I crawled back into the editing suite and listened very closely to his dailies as I resumed. He was there with me in a way that far transcended his voice-over calling “sound speeds”.

And he was also with me, about a month later, when we screened the DISSOLVED GIRL to a small socially distant masked audience at a cinema in New Jersey. My favorite Wolf line that echoes through my mind posthumously everyday, which I try to internalize and now imbue others with during their moments of anxiety is “you got to remember to breathe!”

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

While doing research for SINNER’S LULLABY, I went to a lounge in Hell’s Kitchen one fine evening called Swing 46. There was a dance instructor teaching a group lesson to the attendees during the band’s set break and she charitably wound up spending a good moment trying to teach me the most basic swing dance that I kept awkwardly butchering… she then espoused something that really struck a nerve with me, “you don’t have to get all the steps right, but you’ve got to move like you mean it!”

Wow. I think that can be extrapolated to the mentality behind my films and to life in general. The people I’ve always been closest to are the ones who somehow were able to see past my indiscretions at an early point in time because they believed in my passion behind the movement, which I’m incredibly grateful for.

Some of the films I’m most inspired by are the ones that are rough around the edges and made by people young in their career like myself, whose productions were encrusted with unideal circumstances and limited resources such as Sam Raimi’s EVIL DEAD trilogy… but Mr. Raimi and co moved like they meant it, and that passion is immortalized in the form of a beautiful, strange, deeply organic soul that is forever drawing in new generations of fans.

I’ll save the suspense; DISSOLVED GIRL does NOT get every step right and especially NOT the rough short 20 minute version of SINNER’S LULLABY I made 3 years ago. There are many things I would’ve done differently if there were more time and resources… but damn it, I moved like I meant it. I think that’s evident when you watch them and the aspect I’m most proud of. In forgoing the steps I couldn’t get right or didn’t know how to do yet, I learned some invaluable things I couldn’t have otherwise and paved the way for the future where I can. Being shown the path, versus actually walking it.

And with that, I’m all the more determined and excited to start off into the sweeping vistas!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sinnerslullaby.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaikaldro/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SinnersLullabyMovie/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KaiKaldro
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQhY0khNWAmFaDrUgRU6ecQ
• Other: IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11443409/?ref_=tt_ov_dr

Image Credits
Dan Carmen Davi Silva Arsenio Asen