When Alex Suszko decided to turn his script into a feature film, he didn’t have a camera.
Now that the project is complete, Suszko said she was one of the first disabled people to self-finance her film in Minnesota. His 26-year-old Suszko from Stillwater has epilepsy.
This film is called “Dolwa”. It is also the name of the film’s fictional moon, which transits Earth and cosmically ties the lives of his three main characters, played by local actors Jennifer Prettyman, Janet Mondrow, and Nadia Anderson.
Suszko got the idea for the film in 2016 while studying filmmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After graduating, he completed the script, but he was unable to sell it to production companies as he had hoped, so he chose to work on the project himself. He had a casting call for his 2018, and from 2019 he shot the movie through 2020, finishing editing late last year.
“I spent too much time on this idea and didn’t do anything about it,” he said. “So I decided to buy a camera and become a director, producer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects designer and supporting actor.”
Suszko is currently taking the film to festivals, where he hopes it will be shown and picked up by distributors. However, certain festivals require the film to be premiered. That means Susco cannot host a public screening of ‘Dolwa’ without jeopardizing the film’s festival eligibility. However, you can see the trailer on his Facebook page for the movie.
Unlike traditional film budgets, which are largely predetermined and apportioned throughout the filmmaking process, ‘Dolwa’ was only funded piecemeal. Suszko spent a portion of every salary he earned from his day job on movies.
This meant that Sushko could not necessarily afford the specific lighting fixtures and location fees to shoot the film the way he had originally envisioned it. In a way, he said, the limited budget actually helped heighten the emotional impact of his cinematography, with special effects spending big budgets on his sci-fi elements of the plot out of the question. So he further refined the inner conflicts of his characters. By combining his close-up shots of the actor’s face with stark shadows and occasional surreal colors, he wanted to convey a “metaphysical impact” and an almost claustrophobic feeling.
“There was a certain payoff to being restricted like that, because I had to be creative in how I approached shooting scenes and making movies,” he said. said. “Some scenes actually got better when we realized, ‘Our backs are against the wall, but we can do this really cool thing that we never thought possible.'”
Ultimately, the price tag for the movie ranged from $7,000 to $8,000.
These constraints also helped Suszko and the cast familiarize themselves with the character’s psychology. “I was surprised,” he said.
He emphasized that the film was a true team effort between Suszko and his cast and crew members, with the support of the community. He was able to shoot scenes at Stillwater’s Zephyr Theater, Ziggy’s on his main, and Sushko’s alma mater, St. He Croix Preparatory Academy.
Susko, who lives with epilepsy, also brings a unique perspective to the characters. Suszko says his epilepsy isn’t as severe as “always worrying he’s going to fall over and have a seizure,” but it’s partly due to his social interactions and simply being on the same wavelength as others. He said it was difficult to do.
The characters in “Dolwa” aren’t necessarily written with disabilities, but Sushko says his experiences reflect in their relationships with each other. In particular, he wanted his film script to include elements of both communication breakdown and empathic connection. And he hopes the film will be a celebration of what local artists and performers never thought they could do.
“Having a disability shapes your worldview. I think it’s a worldview that is inherently isolating, but it doesn’t have to be. I get it,” Suszko said.
“In terms of the physical effects, you don’t have to fully understand it, but the idea is that you can muster empathy for someone else from going through those obstacles.”
