“Uncut Gems” actress and filmmaker Hailey Gates had her plans for a documentary about military training villages supported by government officials. So she turned the idea into an unconventional love story instead, and “Atropia” was born.
the movie, which premiered Saturday at the Sundance Film Festivalwas originally conceived as a documentary about fake Iraqi villages built on US military bases after 9/11.
“I initially wanted to make a documentary about these fake villages that were built on bases in the United States after 9/11 to train soldiers before they deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Gates told senior writer Drew Taylor at TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt . “The military wasn’t too keen on the version of the Doctor that I wanted to do, so we decided to be satire.”
“Atropia” Follows an aspiring actress on a military role playing game who falls for a soldier crew as a mutineer, their genuine feelings threaten to derail the show. Shot on a historic movie ranch in Santa Clarita that previously hosted productions like “American Sniper,” the project was based on a short film called “Shako Mak0.”
Star Alia Shawkat, who joined the project early in the development process, saw her real-life pregnancy incorporated into the story. “When we were still getting the money, I got pregnant, and that became part of the story,” Shawkat said. “And Haley’s like, we’re writing it in. So it was just real, like kind of rock and roll, and it all happened within a year of writing it.”
The timing of the film has taken on unexpected relevance.
“I wrote this movie at the end of 2022,” Gates said. “I was like, is anyone going to care about a movie about the Iraq war? Because I was so angry about it, and she was so angry about it, and it just felt important for us to do, but I just didn’t know if it would be relevant or welcome. And I guess it was kind of naive to think that America wasn’t going to make this movie relevant again in the time it took us to edit it. “
See the full interview in the embed above.