Rising Star Director Sean Cisterna On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Entertainment Industry

Give back to your community. Offer to mentor an emerging filmmaker. Go out for coffee with a new writer who has a great idea. Be a guest speaker at a local high school or university. You never know whose life you’re about to change simply by making yourself available.

As a part of our series about pop culture’s rising stars, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Sean Cisterna.

Sean Cisterna is a multi-award-winning and versatile film director. His latest film is the feature documentary The Long Rider (2022), the expansive and inspiring story of Filipe Masetti Leite’s journey from Canada to Brazil entirely on horseback, and filmed in 13 different countries. Cisterna found success with From the Vine (2020), an international coproduction starring Emmy winner Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix, Memento, The Sopranos), and distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Cisterna directed the acclaimed cancer drama Kiss and Cry (2017), which topped the Canadian box office, and is currently streaming on Netflix worldwide. His 2015 feature Full Out, starring Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The L Word), is based on the true story of gymnast Ariana Berlin. The film was broadcast on NBC, now residing with Netflix Worldwide and Disney Europe. Cisterna was awarded a Canada 150 Citizenship Award by the Federal Government for his dedication to and community engagement in the arts.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit of the ‘backstory’ of how you grew up?

I grew up outside of Toronto, Canada. I wasn’t the most popular kid in school and wasn’t good at sports, so I had a lot of time to myself, and that’s what fuelled my love of movies. I saw E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial when I was 4 years old and it left me damaged forever. I cried and cried and knew from a very early age the power of cinema. Ever since then, I devoured as many films as I could, went to film school, picked up a camera, and never looked back.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

I suppose it was a fear of dying penniless and alone. I always excelled in the arts when I was in school, but the artists I was obsessed with had all been dead for years, or I read stories about how they lived in poverty for the bulk of their lives. As my love for cinema grew, I paid attention to the 3 minutes of scrolling credits at the end of every film, and figured I’d have a shot at being employed as one of those crew members.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your filmmaking career?

I made a film that Netflix bought called Kiss and Cry. It’s based on the true story of Carley Allison, an up-and-coming young figure skater who finds love just as she’s diagnosed with an incredibly rare 1 in 3.5 billion form of sarcoma. I’ll always love that film because we casted Carley’s real-life best friend, Sarah Fisher, to play her. We also shot the film in the actual locations that Carley lived her life before she untimely passed away, including the high school where she studied, the skating rink where she trained, the hospital she was treated at, and her family’s home. It was the closest thing to blending film and documentary that I’ll likely ever do, and it was all the more emotional and impactful because of it.

Here’s a trailer for Kiss and Cry: https://youtu.be/Ma99gh6q9s8

Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?

I was lucky enough to direct Emmy winner Joe Pantoliano in my last film, From the Vine. I am such a big fan of his work, especially Memento and The Matrix. Joe’s probably known best for playing darker, gritty supporting characters, but I wanted to offer him the lead character in a whimsical romantic comedy set in Southern Italy — and he fell in love with the script and agreed to do it. We had to spend a month in a tiny Italian city on top of a mountain, drinking wine and making a movie together. Life just didn’t get any better.

Here is a trailer for From The Vine.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My high school media arts teacher Christine Mattachini first instilled in me the knowledge and skills needed to make a short film. She taught us how to use a camera, edit shots together for emotional impact, and tell a story using basic filmmaking tools. She broadened my interest in the medium by exposing us to the works of Hitchcock, and teaching us key filmmaking practices. I voraciously absorbed all that knowledge she gave us at 15 years old. Thank you, Christine!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I’ve heard it attributed to different people, from Michael J. Fox to Peter Jackson, but the quote “Pain is temporary, film is forever” really helps me get through a challenging day on set. No matter how much you may be suffering personally on a given day, or no matter how much your energy may be depleted, the audience is never going to know or care about what you’re experiencing. Push yourself to capture the best footage and the most truthful performances you can, because the film is going to live forever, but your personal discomfort won’t.

I am very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?

Diversity is important in the entertainment industry.

First, a predominantly white narrative is not reflective of our world, and lazy casting makes these stories now seem almost insincere and contrived.

Second, it gives underrepresented artists a chance to tell their stories, and has that spinoff benefit of driving economies in places that might not otherwise have had an opportunity to participate in a film production before.

And third, as an audience member, when you watch a film from an exciting new diverse filmmaker, that experience consequently teaches us empathy for our fellow humans. And that’s the beautiful part of being a cinephile — to be transported into a world that isn’t your own, and be a richer person because of it.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

The Long Rider is my latest film on the festival circuit. It’s a feature documentary that chronicles the story of aspiring journalist Filipe Leite, who leaves his adoptive home of Canada, and sets out on an epic quest to ride from Calgary to his family’s home in Brazil — and later beyond — entirely on horseback. Inspired by Aimé Tschiffely’s 1925 equestrian journey, Filipe’s 8 year odyssey of over 25,000 kms across 12 international borders, sees the young immigrant battle intense heat, drought, speeding transport trucks, nature’s wrath and corrupt border guards on his history-making long ride home. The film has been winning Audience Choice awards at different festivals, so it’s truly rewarding to know that people are falling in love with our film.

Here’s a trailer for The Long Rider.

Which aspect of your work makes you most proud? Can you explain or give a story?

In order to become one of those world-renowned directors who seem to have no problem greenlighting their next pictures, lightning just needs to strike at the right place at the right time. For the rest of us, we just have to continue pushing that big boulder up the mountain and hoping it doesn’t roll back down. I’m most proud of the fact that I have survived in this industry and have been able to support a family while being a working artist. I think it’s also really important to figure out a work-life balance in order to be truly successful at both. I have a wonderfully supportive wife Samantha, and three young daughters, and if they didn’t keep my mind focused on the truly important things in life, I don’t think I’d have such a balanced outlook on life.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

The 5 things I wish someone told me when I first started are:

1. Say no when a project doesn’t feel right. When I graduated from film school, I committed to doing 10 low-budget straight to DVD films each shot for $10,000, filmed in 5 days or less, and they all turned out terrible. I hated making them, and I hated how they turned out. Now whenever I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach, I run.

2. Give back to your community. Offer to mentor an emerging filmmaker. Go out for coffee with a new writer who has a great idea. Be a guest speaker at a local high school or university. You never know whose life you’re about to change simply by making yourself available.

3. Sign the paperwork first. It’s so tempting to start work on a project before it’s officially greenlit, and you can waste hours upon hours designing storyboards and making shot lists…but if the financing papers aren’t signed and the money doesn’t show up in the bank, you’ve put in a lot of wasted time and effort on something that may not see the light of day.

4. Network. Attend festivals. Go to parties. Host screenings of your films and your colleagues’ films. Write articles for your local newspaper. Be an advocate for indie film via your social media pages. Be that big fish in a small pond.

5. Invest in yourself. My first feature was met with consistent “no”s everywhere I went when I was looking for funding. And so I had to make a choice — let the project die, or do something stupid and fund it myself on credit. And I did the latter. That film that everyone said no to was eventually sold to a national broadcaster, and was invited to festivals in Canada, the US, and abroad. And it gave me that first credit as a feature filmmaker. Sometimes stupid decisions can pay off.

When you create a film, which stakeholders have the greatest impact on the artistic and cinematic choices you make? Is it the viewers, the critics, the financiers, or your own personal artistic vision? Can you share a story with us or give an example about what you mean?

I prefer striving to make films for audiences, and I want them to feel something positive by the end of their experience watching my work. I want audiences to feel elated, or charmed, or inspired. At the same time, I’ve started to almost reverse-engineer my films in the sense that I’ll develop projects that have a clear and identifiable target market, as well as some marketable hook, so that when the film is available in cinemas or on VOD a year or two later, the media is more apt to report on it so that those target audiences can find the film. Many of my colleagues’ films are darker, and more personal/introspective, and they find success at top festivals, but they often struggle to find a place in the market because their films aren’t really digestible by wider audiences. For me, I try to construct an overall positive feeling for an audience in the work that I create.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Let me proclaim it now — I’m starting the Mainstream Film Revolt. For years audiences have complained about the lack of originality in mainstream films and that every film at your local multiplex is a cookie-cutter copy of a predecessor. I want audiences to become so infuriated and disappointed by the lack of originality in big-budget mainstream movies that their collective souls crave more original, auteur-driven indie films that stimulate new ideas and provoke important discussions. My hope is that independent film has a resurgence the way that vinyl has had a resurgence.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this. :-)

As tempting as it is to list my filmmaking idols like David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola and Bong Joon-Ho, I’d be remiss not to first have a private lunch with a smart, creative and forward-thinking Venture Capitalist. A feature film is nearly impossible to commit to film without the help of financiers. They don’t get enough credit when it comes to filmmaking. So if you’re out there, and you can envision your name on the big screen at the start of a film, I’d love the opportunity to meet with you.

How can our readers further follow you online?

My social media handles are @seancisterna on Instagram/Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn. Readers can connect with me any way they’d like! I love meeting new people.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!