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Writer-director Natalia Leite is carving out a space for women in film, and she’s not holding anything back.
Watching Natalia Leite’s films feels like being transported to a world that is all at once dystopian and utopian; doomed and endlessly hopeful. With two feature films and a plethora or riveting shorts under her belt, Leite’s work cannot be shaken no matter how many times you walk out your front door and brace yourself for reality. The toughness and confidence she exudes sitting down in a café in New York’s East Village initially confirms these feelings. But every expectation is shattered once you see the smile stretch across her face.
“A lot of people will try to mold you into something else as if that’s the path to success,” Leite, 34, explains, setting down her coffee (taken black, no sugar). “But for me I’m always trying to be like okay, this is what I can offer best.”
Leite believes that this accuracy and authenticity are worth fighting for, a task that she tackles ruthlessly in her critically acclaimed film M.F.A. (2017). The surrealistic rape revenge thriller, which follows the dark shift of a timid art student (Francesca Eastwood) into vigilante serial killer, gained attention from audiences for its hyper realistic rape scene, which unfolds in real time and features the only wide-shot of the film, making it impossible to ignore. Capturing the experience realistically meant not only remembering her own history of sexual assault, but also spending hours reading about other victim’s accounts and researching the psychology behind revenge. Leite’s desire to free the scene from any of the sensationalism which has now become typical divided viewers at every stage of the production process. From the moment the concept was introduced to the first cut of the film, Leite and her team were told by executives that it was too intense and disturbing to be successful on the big screen.
“You have to find the balance of sticking to your gut and saying this is the film I want to make and I really believe in this, but also being open to other people’s experiences,” Leite says, pressing her elbows into the wood table as she leaned forward.
She faced similar skepticism in the process of putting together her debut film Bare (2015), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Sultry and unflinching, the film follows a young woman (Diana Agron), as she is pulled into the world of stripping and psychedelics by a female drifter (Paz de la Huerta). Blending fact with fiction, Leite had Agron work undercover at a strip club in Moriarity, New Mexico where the majority of Bare was filmed for weeks leading up to the first shoot. She even took the stage herself a few years prior for the Vice documentary Every Woman: Life as a Truck Stop Stripper (2014), based on the same club in question.
“I think I put too much of myself into my projects at times,” Leite laughs. For M.F.A., she even brought Eastwood to a hairstylist and transformed her wavy, golden locks to mirror Leite’s own straight, jet black hair and short, Girl, Interrupted-esque bangs. “If there’s not a way in for me then I shouldn’t do it. My best work is going to come out of doing things that are very true to me and my own experiences.”
Despite some recent gains by women in independent films, according to a 2018 study from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, men still account for 85% of the top directors in Hollywood, meaning that every project she worked on was brought to light through immense determination and will power. Leite felt as though she was fighting a losing battle, consistently being told by a room full of men that her stories were too niche for popular audiences.
“I try to enter every scenario not thinking about [my gender] at all,” she explains. “But then things happen that remind me that I’m a woman and I can’t do the same things as other people.”
There is still a long way to go. But Leite keeps fighting, taking every opportunity to deliver powerful and poignant work that challenges the expectations people have about women in film, both in front of and behind the camera.
“I’ve always wanted to do things that felt like that they had a purpose in the world, that they were making a social commentary, and opening up a discussion,” Leite says. “There’s a lot of work that I wouldn’t do because it’s like what the point? I want to do stuff that’s has a dialogue because that for me is really juicy.”
Her main inspirations on this front include Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) and Karyn Kusama (The Invitation), who Leite feels are able to bring a compelling but understated emotionality to the traditionally hypermasculine genres of action and horror.
“It’s not just gore, action, craziness,” she says. “There’s something deeper brewing in it.”
Her upcoming project, which is currently in the early stages of development, hopes to bring a new perspective to coming-of-age films, centering around a female protagonist exploring the darker sides of herself that typically go unseen.
“A lot of the time when there’s female empowerment stories there’s a woman who’s already good and she just wants to be stronger or more confident or brave,” says Leite. “I’m interested in showing the full scale of what it means to be a woman and human.”
This compulsion has been with Leite since the start. Rachel Talalay’s post-apocalyptic Tank Girl was particularly impactful for Leite, showing her a side to femininity that went beyond the conservative beliefs she’d been surrounded by throughout her childhood in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Shy and introverted, movies offered Leite an escape from a confined world where she didn’t ever quite fit in.
“I have this memory of going into a video store and finding all these early Cronenberg films and being really weirded out,” Leite says, her brown eyes widening. “I rewatched The Fly the other day and it’s still weird, but it’s also absolutely brilliant.”
But despite her deep love for the medium, Leite had never considered the possibility of making films herself.
“It just wasn’t on my radar,” she remembers. “There were very few directors in Brazil who were working and making a career outside of Brazil at that time. It felt like an alien thing to me, like it just was not an option.”
It wasn’t until she left Brazil at 18 to attend San Francisco Art Institute, the world seemed to open up before her. What started as a couple of film classes taken alongside her fine arts courses soon turned into internships with film companies, and eventually making and distributing her own short films online covering topics like family reunions, coping with breakups and romantic weekend getaways gone wrong.
“It takes a lot of fighting sometimes to get it off the ground and a lot of trust and pushing forward and believing in it,” Leite says, reflecting on the seemingly endless weekend shoots, fundraising campaigns, and rejection letters. “That can get really hard at times too, but I think now I feel like I’m in a place where I’ve got to keep going.”