While Izabel Pakzad‘s “Find Your Friends” joins Hollywood’s storied history of films inspired by true events, the events in question are rarely this jaw-dropping.
Years ago, Pakzad and her friends had planned a “wild girls trip” in Joshua Tree. Although their arrival had been met with “strange interactions with men” in and around their Airbnb, they focused on partying and had a good time. Pakzad’s last night at the house was cut short as she had to head back to L.A. for a meeting the next day, yet something unforgettable happened before she could leave town.
“It was 1:30 or 2 in the morning,” she says. “I had one other girlfriend come with me, and we got into the car. The Airbnb was on a dead end, of course. So you pull out of the driveway, and there’s this green Mustang that’s waiting outside on the street. He puts his brights on, turns his car and blocks me into the dead end. Immediately, I knew something was weird … this feels premeditated, something is wrong. On instinct, I just took the car and drove around him — right on the neighbor’s lawn — and just started speeding. But then it turned into a 100 MPH car chase on the Joshua Tree freeway, where he was trying to swerve into my car, swerve me off the road. We were trying to call the police, but we had no service. Eventually, we saw a car in the distance and I just started calling for help and honking, and then he ended up turning around. But it was the most terrifying seven minutes of my life, where I didn’t know what was going to happen here, but I just didn’t stop the car.”
From that feeling sprang her directorial debut, “Find Your Friends,” which Pakzad also scripted. The film follows a group of friends (including Chloe Cherry, Helena Howard, Bella Thorne, Zion Moreno and Sophia Ali) as they dodge increasingly insidious men while they’re just trying to have a good time partying in the desert.
The flashbacks to her car chase were top of mind for Pakzad when visualizing the film — which, of course, features its own car chase.
“After that experience, I was like, ‘That was terrifying.’ That was the first time in my life when I felt like I was in real danger, or something horrible could happen,” she says. “I just started thinking about my group of friends and where we were at that time in our lives. We had just graduated college and were still stuck in all of these weird partying rituals. I thought it would be a really interesting way to bring those two experiences together in this film.”
One critical element was having the main group be loving and lovable while feeling like real women.
“This movie is about messy and complicated female friendships as much as it’s a commentary on this party, frat culture that raised them,” Pakzad says. “I think it gives interesting context, especially since that’s something I experienced. I’m trying to bring my truth to this movie, and I’m pushing it to the extremes. But it’s rooted in something I experienced.”
To give the audience a visceral front seat, Pakzad worked with her cinematographer, Tim Curtin, to develop an intimate style like she had admired on a previous film he shot, 2017’s “A Ciambra.”
“I wanted to feel like we were with these girls and having this experience with them,” she says. “So it was really important for me to have it feel handheld. I feel that helped create that feeling, which is you’re in the party, you’re a part of it, and it feels authentic.”
Ultimately, Pakzad is excited for audiences to experience a story with a group of women that isn’t always seen in cinema.
“I love genre movies so much, but the one thing I don’t like about them is this final girl trope where they have to fit into this pretty little box, and behave a certain way and be sweet and innocent to survive,” she says. “With this film, the women are wild. They’re vulgar. They have no issue talking about sex. They get to take their power back in this twisted way. Young women in movies don’t always get those kinds of traits without being punished for them. I think with this film, I’m trying to reinvent the final girl.”
“Find Your Friends” had its world premiere at Fantasia on July 18.
Courtesy photo
variety.com
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