‘Soft And Quiet’: Director Beth de Araujo Talks Her Disturbing Neo-Nazi White Karens Thriller [Interview]

As one of the most viscerally chilling films of the year, Soft & Quiet” is unrelenting in depicting the rapid force of racism and how violence is so often the devastating consequence. Following an elementary school teacher who organizes a mixer for members of the hate group Daughters of Aryan Unity, the big set piece doesn’t happen until later in the film, but the tension is immediately there. However, most of the film’s narrative happens after an encounter with someone from the teacher’s dark past, which tips off a chain of events that grow increasingly hostile and hard to witness. 

Directed by Beth de Araujo in her feature-length debut, the disturbing “Soft & Quiet” settles under your skin as these reprehensible women commit one vile act after another. We spoke to Araujo about how this ended up being her first film, how the Capital Insurrection might’ve helped funding, and the theatrical style of filming in one shot over the course of four days.  

READ MORE: ‘Soft And Quiet’ Review: Beth de Araújo’s Uncomfortable White Supremacist Karens Thriller Is The Real Deal [SXSW]

The content of this film isn’t easy to sit with. What has been the response so far?
The consistent reaction is that it’s a strong reaction. The film is designed to make you uncomfortable, and I think some people feel more comfortable sitting with that discomfort while others want to run away from that discomfort. 

How important is it to you to look dead-on at the ugly sides of society like this film dares to do?
I have a lot of different artistic outlets that I love, but for whatever reason, writing and filmmaking tend to be where I put my darkest outlets. I think this place was just born out of my nightmare, my cautionary tale, about what there is to lose in my life. My greatest fears. 

How soon in the process did you know you wanted to go the route of shooting the film in one take?
Very much so. I wrote it for the design of it, so I actually drove up and cleared the locations to ensure I could have them all because if you don’t have one of them, you can’t shoot this film in that way. Then, during rehearsals, we timed every scene, so we parsed them out into scenes and transition scenes, and the transition scenes were cars or ones when they were walking. We timed it, and the actors came in consistently within 15 seconds of every scene we rehearsed repeatedly. 

So with my DP Greta Zozula (“The Half of It”), we timed it quite well for when we wanted the last light. We always said that when the white women go outside to discuss what they’re going to do with the two sisters who are inside with the chairs, that will be the last light. So we worked backward. We added up how much each scene and transition scene was taking, and then we timed it so that the last light was during that scene and each day, we pushed the action callback about 30 seconds to time it for the sun. 

I read it was a four-day shoot— did you get any more time for rehearsal, or was it also a quick turnaround? 
[Laughs] I wish. The rehearsal days were even more intense because I knew that I wanted to let the actors relax on the days of shooting. We had four days of rehearsal, so those days were tight, and we used every single minute rehearsing and getting all the blocking down and then getting Greta in to match her movements with the blocking. Those were pretty intense days. 

I can’t even imagine. 
It’s crazy. I always say, “I wish I could have one more day.”

I know you also had told the actors that this would be treated as a piece of theater. Did you look for performers who had theater experience, or was it another element of people trying something new? 
We filmed a moving play, so half the actors had theater experience and were excited by the challenge and love of theater. Stefanie Estes, Dana Millican, and Eleanore Pienta specifically, while the others hadn’t and were excited to try. They are just courageous actors excited by a challenge, and I was fortunate to find all of them. 

Did you find that these characters were hard sells to some actors since they are so clearly terrible human beings? 
It’s interesting. I felt like it was a hard sell for the wrong person. The people who came on to this film were excited by the idea of needing to be vulnerable to every single actor and every single actor picking each other open and being really generous with one another. I think it weeded out the people we shouldn’t have had, so in a way, it was almost helpful for the casting process. 

Can you talk about getting financing — I saw that you mentioned you didn’t have a difficult time getting it, and, along with the quality of the script, do you think it also came down to how timely it is? 
I think the timely thing helped. I will say that it was not supposed to be my first feature. I’d gotten into the Sundance Directors Lab with a feature script called “Josephine” that we’d been trying to get financed for, now about four years. I had to pivot out of necessity to something that was lower budget. It’s funny, it just came together in a sprint, and I don’t know how, honestly. I know this will never happen again to me because it’s just completely not normal. I know how tough it is on my other project. I think, for whatever reason, this just sort of serendipitously came together in a sprint which is the only way a film like this can come together because it gives that energy to the audience. 

I don’t think it was because of the script. I think it’s because we went out for financing the week of the Capital insurrection. I believe that might be the only reason this movie gets financed. 

How important was it to include all of these women’s small offenses and microaggressions along with the larger-scale crimes? 
One kind of leads to the other so they’re sort of inextricably linked. If too many small ones go unchecked, it will inevitably escalate. I think the smaller ones were almost more important for me to get right and create them effectively. 

What do you hope the audience ultimately takes away from the film?
I’m pretty shy and self-conscious in public and don’t like drawing attention to myself ever, but I’ve always regretted the times when I didn’t speak up when I saw something wrong. Or when I saw injustice. So, I hope for me and anyone else like me that the film will get under our skin enough so that when we inevitably see something wrong, we’ll remember this feeling and say something.