Amber McGinnis
There is a moment early in International Falls, the feature film debut from director Amber McGinnis, when Rachael Harris as Dee sits in her car, looking at her house and deciding whether to go in or turn around. Harris imbues that swift, decisive moment with such richly textured, intimate humanity that we as viewers lean forward, invested in where Dee will now steer her life. Harris and costar Rob Huebel consistently deliver subtle, bittersweet, gorgeously authentic performances in this quiet dark comedy.
Director Amber McGinnis crafts these performances into jewel box moments of humor, intimacy and the sorrows that come part and parcel with being human. “I think by telling those types of stories, we can show how ordinary people can do extraordinary things,” McGinnis says. “Those are stories that inspire and provoke and encourage… and can also entertain.”
“My mission is to tell stories about working class women who turn their pain into power. That's it. And if there has ever been a time, where we need to turn our pain into power, it is right now.”
Long before it was a film, International Falls started its life a play by Thomas Ward. “It was a two-hander that premiered at a Fringe Festival in Dallas, way back in the day,” McGinnis explains. “Thomas Ward and I go way back … I knew it was a great story, and that it would be something that I'd love to direct in that as a first feature independent film, the fact that it so much of it takes place in one location would make it possible for us to do it on an indie budget. So that was sort of just the genesis of the idea.”
That primary location, a generic hotel set in International Falls, Minnesota, provides a visual spine for the film, with quiet hotel room scenes, raucous comedy performances, and late-night raids of the breakfast room. When the film escapes the confines of the hotel to venture onto a frozen lake or to take in kitschy tourist destinations, the world breaks open into vast skies and expanses of snow while Dee begins to take control of her story and claim her voice.
Although this is her first feature film outing, McGinnis is is a veteran stage director with credits at the Folger Theatre, Round House Theatre, Theater J, Olney Theatre Center and more under her belt, as well as experience directing industrial films for WILL Interactive. Just getting a film financed and distributed is a major feat as a first-time director, much less attracting the talent that she brought together with casting director Matthew Lessall while also courting funding and organizing production.
“Yes, International Falls is my first feature-length film, but I've done the theatre equivalent of that length dozens of times,” McGinnis says. “And with my more industrial and commercial work within film, I was working with crews and with larger budgets even then what I had for International Falls. I'd say the biggest difference was that because I was a co-producer, and I was saying yes to the money and writing all the checks, carrying the financial strain of the film while directing was one of the hardest things.” She laughs and adds, “I couldn't just advocate for the art to the producer. I was always wearing both hats.”
In the film, we follow along as Dee finds and asserts her voice and autonomy, rejecting what had pinned her to a listless and unhappy marriage, and instead embracing a future that may be uncertain but that is unquestionably her own.
This is the core message in all of McGinnis’s work. “One thing that this [pandemic] time at home has helped me sort of refine is what my ‘why’ is — what my mission is,” she says. “My mission is to tell stories about working class women who turn their pain into power. That's it. And if there has ever been a time where we need to turn our pain into power, it is right now. And so whether that is the story of a woman who lives in a small town in Minnesota whose husband is cheating on her and she needs to find her voice after a personal tragedy, or it's the story of a woman who's a single mom from Middle America, who has a mom that's addicted to opioids, who takes up mixed martial arts as a way to learn how to combat the perils of her everyday life — that’s the next script that I've been pitching — or if it's the story of a mill mother in the 1920s, based in my hometown, who lost four of her children to the whooping cough over the course of a few months, these are stories that inspire me. And they’re stories of bravery and boldness with working class women, everyday women.”
Recently, she turned her focus back on herself and her family for the short documentary, The Adventure. Created for the Easterseals Disability Film Challenge, The Adventure is the story of Amber and her daughter Isla, who has Down Syndrome. Clocking in at three-and-a-half minutes, the film ranges from her shock at the diagnosis, through her anxieties for Isla’s future and for her own, to her realization that Isla is a girl not to be underestimated. “Here's this thing, this scary diagnosis, you know, that honestly was very painful for a while and really, really scary,” McGinnis says. “But it's also been the greatest gift of my entire life, you know? And she's perfect.”
Amber & Isla at the Nashville Film Festival
Like the quiet, contained scenes in International Falls, The Adventure is a compact, polished gem — sweet, complex and deeply human. “I think there are just so many stories out there that are like that,” she says. “And I guess I just feel like if they resonate with me and can have like a broader reach, it's going to resonate with other people as well.”
With International Falls available on Showtime and Amazon Prime, and two other scripts in the works, McGinnis is at a pivotal point in her own career. As she looks at the the moment we’re in as a nation, she feels confident that the way to build connection is through telling stories. “Especially the hard ones,” she says. “Because we all are very tempted to brush the hard facts under the under the rug. And that's how history just keeps on repeating itself … My fear is that too often the history that lives on is what's in the headlines. And so often what's in the headlines forgets the nuance of what's actually happening … I think that that is where our work as theater- and filmmakers comes in, because in that art, in the stories we tell, we get more than five minutes of someone's attention span, like a headline. We get to bring them in for a longer story, and explore nuance. And that is where I hope in exploring that nuance, we can in some way start breaking some of these cycles of history.”
