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Ride Or Die Photo: Tribeca Festival |
American director Josalynn Smith's début feature, Ride Or Die, revolves around Paula (Briana Middleton), a young woman in St. Louis, who plans to travel to Los Angeles to pursue her filmmaking dream. She crosses paths unexpectedly in a boutique with her secret high school crush, Sloane (Stella Everett). The pair discover a mutual attraction, and when Paula takes Sloane back home, an uneasy confrontation erupts with her religious father.
Forced to expedite her plans, Paula sets off on a road-trip to LA with Sloane, who begins making plans to be a waitress while Paula turns her dream into a reality. Unforeseen circumstances, however, complicate their trip, exposing the differences in their personalities and propelling the pair towards an unexpected destination.
Smith directed the amusing short, Enfin Seule, about a woman who discovers that death isn't as lonely as she hoped. Instead, there's an intake process for the afterlife, requiring the newly departed to reflect on their lives. Smith also directed the short Ride Or Die, which she adapted into her feature début.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Smith discussed bringing a black and queer perspective to the western myth, early struggles and having a clearer idea of her future.
The following is edited for clarity.
Paul Risker: Why film as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Josalynn Smith: Up until the time I was 12-years-old, I was very keen on being an Egyptologist or an archaeologist. Then, when I was 12, I saw Titanic on cable, and I became obsessed with it. I saw the behind-the-scenes making of, and I loved the amount of research that goes into writing something and directing.
I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, and there's not a ton of film opportunities, but when I was 15, there was an open call for this documentary called Jim Crow to Barack Obama, which I was interviewed for. I ended up working with its filmmaker, Denise Ward-Brown, all through my teenage years. I wanted to be a filmmaker, and she taught me so much of what I know, as far as researching and editing goes.
I guess I come from documentaries, and I did start my career when I was 15, but it doesn't feel like it. Then in college, I was an English major, so I had a break from film. Then, directly after my undergrad, I went straight to film school.
PR: Cinema is a conversation in which individual films and their filmmakers are in direct or indirect conversation with one another. What films or filmmakers do you see Ride Or Die as being in conversation with?
JS: Hopefully I'm in direct conversation with Gregg Araki because, in its scale and form, Ride Or Die is really inspired by The Living End. It pays homage to that kind of daring and scrappy filmmaking of Nineties queer quirks.
I like all of Greg Araki's work and I like Doom Generation and stuff like that too. But The Living End is really the scale and vibe we were thinking about for Ride Or Die. Sometimes, in tongue-in-cheek we said it's like Thelma And Louise, but that was ultimately a studio movie. I'm more explicitly gay, like Greg Araki, than subliminally [laughs]. And I was really inspired by Terence Malick's Badlands, which is an incredibly sparse script.
We shot Ride Or Die in 13 days in Missouri and the film wouldn't be what it was without shooting in Utah and Arizona. We needed that cinematic vastness which was key to having a strong finish and the beauty and tragedy all at once.
PR: Setting part of Paula and Sloane's journey to forge their own legacy in the American mythical heartland creates an interesting comparison.
JS: As a Black and queer filmmaker, I'm interested in what happens when you put Black and queer characters in the American western myth with manifest destiny, and all this freedom and vastness, to really consider the aesthetics of Americana by playing against type in that place. I want to be in conversation with this quintessential American genre.
And as people have said, the road trip is an American genre in the sense that we are car people, our country is so large, and we drive everywhere because we don't have good public transport infrastructure. So, as a first-time filmmaker, it was nice to tap into the iconography of the nascent American road trip and western genres.
PR: Paula and Sloane's reunion plays in a way that feels like you've let it breathe. This opening portion of the film is not crammed with dialogue nor is the pace of the editing intrusive. Instead, the story unfolds at its own pace and on its own terms. And the way you decide to begin the film thrusts us into the theme of forgiveness, and that the characters are heading towards an unfortunate and inescapable destiny.
JS: I struggled with how to begin the film because I had the desire to get the characters on the road. I wanted to feel their connection as their relationship builds, but also instruct the audience a little about what film we are in.
The beginning was the last thing that came to me, which is a common thing in filmmaking. Here, it was, okay, let's take a shot from the end, with a little blood on Sloane's face and put it at the beginning. This creates a tension that holds our attention until we get on the road, and it gave me the time to watch their reunion and patiently sit with them, because I wanted us to be as invested in them as much as possible until it becomes untenable. This meant taking my time, especially in that first act.
I love films that are daring and there are lots of road trip films, duos and crime films. If there are daring choices mixed with specificity, it can always feel new or fresh. And that's what I wanted to do with Paula and Sloane's story, by giving the audience what we love to see in cinema with something that's a little sexy and has a little bit of violence. So, I was trying to work with story and form in a different kind of way in this genre.
PR: Has Ride Or Die identified how you want to develop your voice?
JS: After writing this script, I thought I knew what I wanted to do next, but this experience has definitely instructed me in what that is. I'm more interested in form as well now. I'll give it a little time, but I want the next one to be a little looser, and I want to continue thinking about cinema and form.
Something that has been spoken about with this film is whose movie it is — whose point of view is it? Those are good ideas, but as a filmmaker, I'm not interested in the perfect POV or even whose POV it is. I'm just trying to make things that are compelling.
Ride Or Die premièred at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.