Two women (Alexandra Roxo and Alana Kearns-Green) set out to make their first feature… with no experience and no money. With a little help from a Monkee (!), Mary Marie is premiering at the Brooklyn Film Festival on June 4.



Having your first feature film screen in New York is awesome. Any way you cut it, it’s a victory. On June 4, the feature film I co-wrote and co-starred in, Mary Marie, will be premiering at the Brooklyn Film Festival. It is one of 14 features programmed out of 2500 submissions, so needless to say, I am honored. As director Victoria Mahoney (Yelling to the Sky) recently told me, “Every time a woman gets her film into a festival, 20 more gals get to follow.” She is right, and we are proud.

Two years ago, my friend Alana Kearns-Green and I decided to make a feature film. We were sort of stuck, needing inspiration, wanting to create, and so we (like thousands of others) had the genius idea to make a film. I’d heard of people making indies on only a few thousand bucks. So why couldn’t we? Well, we did. And it was a long, hard road...  



Alana and I went to acting school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and at Stella Adler, and we had collaborated on many pieces in the past. But this was different, a giant risk, a giant experiment. We wrote scenes back and forth, she in L.A., I in Brooklyn. We took two months and emailed the script back and forth every day for this writing collaboration that we would, gulp, star in. Did I mention neither one of us went to film school or had even written a narrative script? Umm... yeah.

Meanwhile, I wrangled DP Magela Crosignani (The Imperialists are Still Alive!) on board. I had worked with Magela at NYU and thought she was extremely talented and would understand our aesthetic and... budget. I think in that first month Alana and I embarked on this journey, we had no idea—no idea—the amount of labor that was necessary, and the amount of tears. (How did Joe Swanberg make it look so easy???)  



Somehow we did it. On a REALLY small budget.

So many times in filmmaking, you rely on the kindness of strangers. Angels pop out of the woodwork, people who believe in you (why, sometimes I ask, but they do). They do things for you—they help your little artistic dream come true.

We had one famous "angel" help us along the way. One hint Daydream Believer. Yep. Well, it just so happened that Davy Jones was one of many people who rescued our film from a negative bank balance. We were shooting in Beavertown, PA, where he happened to have a horse ranch and large plantation home—so we naturally thought of him when frantically searching for where to house the 7 crew members who were arriving the next day. We sauntered up to his house—covered in smiles—and three days later, we had not only set up shop in his house but were shooting amidst his prize-winning horses, and in his tub.



Low-budget (when I say low, I mean no) filmmaking is about tiny miracles and not giving up, even when you are tired, mad and totally over the piece you are making. In those moments, you remember the faces of those who helped you along the way, and you remember why you started in the first place. And whatever hurdle comes your way, you take a deep breath and start looking for more guardian angels.

So come check out our take on DIY, no-budget filmmaking at the Brooklyn Film Festival, with our film Mary Marie. June 4 is our premiere, and we are going to celebrate after. Hope you can come.

Watch the trailer:



Alexandra Roxo is a filmmaker and photographer living in Brooklyn. Learn more.

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