Bringing the Film ‘Dead Women Walking’ to the Screen: Producer Clara Levy
One of the beauties of watching a film as an audience member is our ability to get lost in the story and be touched by what unfolds on screen. But long before we get that opportunity, someone had to believe in the story enough to put in months and sometimes years of effort in order to make it a reality. While the writers and directors usually dream up the initial idea, more often than not it takes a strong producer who’s willing to go the distance in order to make something great to bring a production to fruition.
Producer Clara Levy, of Blackpills, is one leading woman behind the scenes who is dedicated to bringing poignant and emotionally impactful stories to the screen. Some of the projects she’s helped nurture out of the writers room and onto screens across the globe include Zoe Cassavetes’ (“Broken English”) Gotham Award nominated series “Junior,” the soon to be released anthology series “Do Not Disturb,” which marks two-time Oscar Award nominee Jude Law’s directorial debut, and Righter Doyle’s “Bonding,” which took home the Audience Award from Outfest, competed at the 2018 Cannes International Series Festival, and was recently bought by Netflix.
“What I like the most about producing is that you work in team to create a piece of art that gets to be shared with the rest of the world and that can impact anyone. I truly believe that storytelling is one of the biggest tool to create an impact in the world and that’s why I also feel it’s a responsibility,” explains Levy.
“I look for projects that are meaningful. I think at the end of the day, of course it’s about entertainment, but it’s also about spreading a message that would not have gone out there otherwise. The other thing that usually matters the most to me is the talent’s sensitivity. I feel that if you find someone that has this quality, this person can do anything.”
One project that has creative a large impact, and one that Levy nurtured from the ground up, is writer and director Hagar Ben-Asher’s (“The Slut”, “The Burglar”) recently released film “Dead Women Walking,” which depicts the lives of several women on death row as the march closer to death.
“‘Dead Women Walking’ artfully and sympathetically shares the most vulnerable interactions at the end of these women lives, cataloging every vulnerable, devastating moment,” Levy says.
“This is not a film only about the death penalty, but about the elements that have led these women to this point, including their socioeconomic circumstances, their personal and emotional histories, the fact that women are the highest increasing population in prisons… and the harsh statistic saying 88 percent of women in prisons are women who were sexually assaulted or abused in other horrible ways. We wanted to ask this simple question: who are these women? How did they end up here?”
Earning extensive international acclaim, “Dead Women Walking” took home the Carmel Award for Best International Film from the Haifa International Film Festival, nominations for the Deauville Film Festival’s Grand Special Prize, and an Artios Award nomination from the Casting Society of America. Levy and Hagar Ben-Asher earned a nomination for the Festival Prize from the Black Film Festival Montreal for their work on the film as well.
“I enjoyed working on a project that I deeply believed in. I believed in the writer-director Hagar Ben-Asher, I was convinced that we were doing a project that made sense and that had to be brought to the world,” says Levy. “I enjoyed meeting such talented people, either in the production team, on set, the cast, the post-production team, the composer, and even our sales representatives at Seville International…. It has been an amazing opportunity meeting everyone through this project.”
With “Dead Women Walking” being chosen as an Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival, Venice Days Film Festival, Busan Film Festival, Vermont International Film Festival, African Diaspora International Film Festival and more, there is no doubt that Levy and the team nailed the mark when it came to bringing this powerful story to audiences across the world.
As a lead producer on the project, Levy was involved in the creation of “Dead Women Walking” from the earliest stage when it was still a loose idea. Levy first met Cannes Film Festival Award nominated director Hagar Ben-Asher while in Israel where she was in charge of looking for writers and projects to option for the new short-form format Blackpills was creating at the time.
“I was scouting talents and projects that could tackle our short-form format at Blackpills, I was introduced to Hagar who mentioned this ‘idea’ she had. She wanted to explore a topic about time… Then, it became the logline of ‘Dead Women Walking’,” recalls Levy.
“I felt strongly about two things. First of all, I was deeply touched by Hagar’s universe. I loved her previous film The Slut, and I felt strongly that she was someone I wanted to work with, [someone] that had an ability to express emotions in a very strange and peculiar way. Second, the topic, of course, deeply touched me.”
Though “Dead Women Walking” initially began as an episodic series, Levy and the team knew it was powerful enough to turn into a film, but transforming the script from an episodic series into a feature film was not without its challenges. While they choose to maintain a format of vignettes within the overall film in order to tell each woman’s individual story, the writing still needed to be changed.
Levy explains, “The original format was 9x10', so we had 10 minutes to literally express matters of life or death, make the audience care about several main characters, and we had to be consistent enough to move people in such a short amount of time. It was a difficult balance to find, but Hagar is an amazing writer and she succeeded in addressing these multiple tricky bits!”
Considering the fact that the film is highly cinematic and so well made, some audiences may be led to question whether they are watching a fictional narrative film and not the real-life stories of nine women. As tragic as they are, the stories presented in the film are real, but finding the right cast was another challenge for the production.
“One of the biggest challenge was the casting, as it’s an anthology with 75 parts… Rich Delia and his team navigated the process by keeping a clear notion of what we were seeking for: Real people,” explains Levy. “The film had to have a sensation of a documentary, to come as close as possible to the souls of the characters, and to let them shine on screen while they carry the pain of life in their eyes.”
The global success of “Dead Women Walking” says leagues about Levy’s talent to not only follow and nurture a production from its beginning stages, through all of the changes, the filming and all that takes place post release, but more importantly, it speaks to her ability to find powerful stories that need to be told — and the persistence necessary to actually make them happen.
She says, “I’m very passionate about my projects. I’m very stubborn and determined once I get my mind on doing something. I think this is very important because building a project from the ground up can take so much time and energy, and there are so many challenges, you need to keep your goal in mind and you need to believe strongly in what you are doing.”
