We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Laurel Elizabeth Hasara a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Laurel Elizabeth, appreciate you joining us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

Yes, for myself I can’t imagine the drab, morosely depressive state of existence as a non-artist.

I often wonder how human beings walk among me who don’t make art the central focus of their every waking thought and motivational pull. Art is like a supplement for popping ecstasy pills. It’s the ultimate and elite form of escapism. It’s a mirror held up to the soul; there’s nothing else like it. It’s the strongest sign of human flourishing, beyond just surviving. I’ve never experienced a moment of boredom or aimless meaninglessness, a so-called “insatiable VOID” that philosophers and clergy alike wrestle with defining, until their dying breath.

However, I do believe temporarily holding “regular-jobs” {as I have} informs, inspires and gives testimony to truths about this life, the beautiful and the heinously unjust…
… but in the end, it all serves to enrich the worlds I build.

Thank the heavens and hells that I’m an artist, and get to create nightmares that claw into people’s subconscious!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m Laurel Elizabeth Hasara, an arthouse screenwriter, film director, gothic visual artist and thoroughbred nocturnal creature based outside of Boston ♡

My debut film, A Grim Descendant, is an Appalachian arthouse horror feature about a controversial young couple who operate the oldest established funeral home in the United States, and conceive of a monstrosity formerly thought to be a thing of storied legend; The Grim Reaper. The lead cast is soon to be announced and principal photography is set to begin Autumn of 2025 in the Berkshires of Massachusettes.

You can follow along the journey on the film’s Instagram: @a.grim.descendant ♡

Every monster has an origin story after all…

If fate allows a long life, with great discipline and a ravenous appetite for expression, I intend on making 12 feature films along side my fiancé, Samuel Krueger who very conveniently happens to be the greatest cinematographer I’ve ever had the pleasure of working alongside.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

In my filmmaking, I wish to illuminate places in America tortured by the mean-spirited stereotypes that stain their culture, much like Appalachia. I’ve really hit a phase in my life where I’m exclusively focused on all things Americana. My feature film, A Grim Descendant, takes place in a fictional town in West Virginia called Inferus Plume; a town that serves as this country’s purgatory, holding onto the past in both its traditions, tall-tales and poverty levels.

Also, I wish to illuminate discomforting professions and lifestyles, those ranking as lower in the social-status hierarchy such as death care providers, mentally ill patients, runaways, penitentiary guards, cemetery sextons, ex-cult members, resurrected murder victims, on and on.

The dark underbelly of this world is where I feel most creatively at home…

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Yes, bar none it would have to be the grizzly, stark genius filmmaking displayed in the 2016 low-budget monochrome arthouse masterpiece, The Eyes of My Mother, by Nicolas Pesce.

Just go watch it. I’m forever a walking billboard advertisement for this underrated gem of a debut.

The chronicling of a depraved female serial killer’s life; loneliness does strange things to the mind…

Contact Info:

• Website: http://laurel-hasara.squarespace.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurel.e.hasara/
• Other: A Grim Descendant, Instagram:
  https://www.instagram.com/a.grim.descendant/

  Laurel Elizabeth Hasara IMDB:
  https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm8131993?ref_=hm_prof_name

  A Grim Descendant IMDB:
  https://pro.imdb.com/title/tt31692347/?ref_=nm_ovrvw_cr_kf_1

Image Credits

All images Laurel Elizabeth Hasara
Storyboards by Anastasiia Tiekhova
House of Hasara, LLC