It’s become fashionable over the past few months to shower Destin Cretton’s (I’m Not a Hipster) social worker drama, Short Term 12 (a veritable Sundance phenom), with buckets of adulation. It deserves every drop—this is a supreme effort for a young filmmaker, and one of the most emotionally impactful films of the year. Expanded from a short Cretton made in 2008, the most noticeable change from the original is the switch of the main protagonist from male to female, with Brie Larson (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The United States of Tara) helming the ship (she does a fine job as captain.)

The film opens with Grace (Larson, whose confidence feeds her beauty) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr., consummate bearded nice guy), two lead staff members at a foster care facility (and lovebirds, though they leave their relationship at home as they’re both seasoned professionals), welcoming new recruit Nate (Rami Malek) to the fray by sharing an amusing anecdote about Mason messing his pants following a hilarious sequence of events, all for the safety of one of the adolescents-at-risk they used to watch over. It’s a fun story that sets the tone for the film’s humor while also illustrating the counselors’ dedication to the kids. Grace in particular is passionately driven and undaunted in assuming the emotionally backbreaking role of lead caretaker.

As Mason is wrapping up his yarn, one of the young dorm-dwellers (Alex Calloway) bursts out of a door at hell-bat speed, American flag blowing behind him, inexplicably tied around his neck like a cape. This prompts our social-worker heroes to chase and subdue the redhead loose cannon with S.W.A.T. team efficiency (their relaxed countenances are evidence that the footrace is a common occurrence.) From there, we’re introduced—in a series of deftly written character moments, each more gripping than the last—to the angst-filled, invariably volatile facility innards.

Cretton—who wrote the unbelievable screenplay (I’ll get to that later)—drew inspiration from his own experiences working in foster-care, and the chaotic, yet cyclical dynamics of the on-screen facility feel resultantly authentic, organic, and full of life (real life; the dirty kind.) The troubled kids—whose view of trust is that it’ll inevitably betray them—give the staff members all the pushback (sometimes violent) they can handle, though Grace and Mason valiantly weather the thunderstorms of screams and freak-outs and are especially gifted at cultivating easy rapports with the bottled-up teens, as best they can.

When Grace and Mason get one-on-one time with the kids, we get to see them really work. After some gentle, genuine chit chat with Mason, Marcus (Keith Stanfield), the brooding, “don’t-give-a-fuck” bad boy of the bunch (he shows glimmers of a keen intellect), performs a private rap in his dorm room, revealing a harrowing history with his abusive mother. “Revealing” is the key word here—these kids suppress their emotions to the point of self-destruction, and the only way to identify their problems is for the staff members to peacefully persuade them to reveal the roots of their pain. Thankfully, the compassionate caretakers are gifted at just that.

When Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), a morose (she makes Marcus look like the life of the party) Avril Lavigne-ish teen, arrives at the compound, Grace sees something in her (a bit of herself, perhaps?) and takes a personal stake in the girl’s future, which disrupts the crucial practice of her leaving work at work. Grace’s name turns out to not be as fitting as you might initially think, as her tether to Jayden’s dangerous home situation begins to destabilize her mentally, damaging her relationship with Mason in the process (the two are on the fence between marriage and lover’s limbo.) Larson is the heart and soul of the film, and her ability to embody both titan-like strength and damaged vulnerability is much of what makes Short Term 12 great.

Cretton’s script is, in a word, sleek—there are few wasted moments, no lulls in pace (though there are loads of slow, quiet, emotionally intense scenes), and no disposable components; characters, story beats, or otherwise. The plot is structurally sound, but always feels like it’s unfolding organically, which is even more impressive considering this could’ve easily turned out to be an unnecessarily elongated short in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. Cretton and DP Brett Pawlak’s camera makes us feel like we’re standing in and walking through—not simply inhabiting—the close-quarters halls of the facility (he uses shaky-cam well, which is always a tricky device to harness.)

There are a few quibbles and nit-picks I have with the film: a brief demented detour near the film’s conclusion (involving a bizarre home invasion) feels a little tonally dissonant, the character of Nate could do with more attention, and a romantic scene between Larson and Gallagher where they doodle portraits of each other on their living room couch feels like stock indie fare. But hell, life ain’t perfect, and at the end of the day, Short Term 12 lives and breathes true reality onto the movie screen better than most documentaries can.

Director Destin Cretton (I Am Not a Hipster) and Brie Larson (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, The United States of Tara) sat down with us in San Francisco to chat about their new, festival-darling film Short Term 12. The movie follows Larson and her fellow staff members at a foster care facility as they give their full attention and energy to the kids they watch after, all the while struggling to manage their turbulent home lives.

Short Term 12 is out now nationwide and opens in San Francisco this Friday, August 30^th.

Brie, you grew up relatively close to the Bay Area, in Sacramento. How long did you live there?
Brie Larson: Until I was eight.

Do you have any attachment to that city anymore?
Brie Larson: I’m attached to it in that I have some really important childhood memories there. I saw the music circus. They had The Sound of Music there, and that was the beginning of me being completely obsessed with acting in movies and theater. I could not stop talking about The Sound of Music. They do it in the round [at the music circus], and now they have a big air-conditioned thing, but before, it was an actual tent in the summertime. I loved it. I loved Maria and it was this whole thing. I remember so distinctly being at a friend’s house and being like, “Oh my god, Maria is so beautiful!” and she was like, “I have it on VHS!” I was so excited. She put it on and Julie Andrews [came on], and I was like, “That’s not Maria! I know Maria, and that’s not Maria!” (laughs)

You’ve been acting since you were really young, right?
Brie Larson: Yeah. I started taking lessons when I was seven. I went to ACT (American Conservatory Theater) out here. You have to audition to get in, and I was the youngest person to [ever] get in, at seven. But I feel like there’s some freak four year old that did something really awesome, did the ending monologue from Our Town and just annihilated me at this point. (laughs)

You’re not sure if you hold the title anymore!
Brie Larson: Yeah, I’m not sure, but many years ago. (laughs)

The film started as a short, which you’ve made into a full-length feature. There is a danger of films like this feeling like stretched-out shorts, but yours has no filler. There aren’t any wasted moments in the film.
Destin Cretton: That was an inherent fear of mine going from the short to the full feature. I felt incapable of forcing it, so I didn’t want to take a short and stretch it to an hour-and-a-half, you know? I initially tried that, to just extend it, but the short was never meant to be extended into a feature. I think it’s a piece entirely of its own. When I initially tried [stretching it], it felt wrong and it felt forced. It felt like I was trying to do what I was told to do. You’re supposed to adapt it with the same characters, or whatever.

As soon as I changed the character from a male into a female, it started a ripple effect that transformed all the characters into new people.

So you viewed the project as a completely new story.
Destin Cretton: Yeah. We’re still exploring similar themes that the short explores, but I don’t see it as an adaptation. I see it as a completely new story.

Why did you change the sex of the main character?
Destin Cretton: The main reason was to keep my interest. Also, to instill a healthy bit of fear in me. I’d never done that before, and it scared the living piss out of me.

Why was it scary?
Destin Cretton: ‘Cause I’m not a girl. (laughs)

Was it difficult writing from a girl’s perspective?
Destin Cretton: Yeah, and I knew that I would be judged by, at the very least, my three sisters if I did it wrong. That was also a wonderful challenge for me and a healthy process to go through. I think most people who are exploring anything creative want to do it to learn something, you know? I feel like, through exploring the story through Grace, I learned a lot. I feel like it has made me a better person that’s able to relate to my girlfriend more, my sisters more. I really enjoyed the process.

Brie, were you nervous to have to be such a leader on set, mentoring the younger actors?
Brie Larson: I had a lot of fears inside, but I acted like I didn’t. (laughs) I love kids. I grew up being the oldest of my family, so that sort of role wasn’t a stretch for me. I was also an actor very young, so I know what that feels like. It’s a really intense feeling to have as a kid, because you want it so bad and you care so much. It’s a really informative time and I remember very specifically the people that I looked at and went, “I want to be like that,” and other people that terrified me. It was an important thing to me to try, in my way, to be professional with them and show them what it’s like to be a leader and to think of yourself as the head of your own department, and to also just be a team player. It’s so much more than just a self-centered, get your performance on camera thing. There are a lot of other aspects to it that are required to create a fun and positive environment for the other aspects of filmmaking. It’s not just about being an actor.

Was there a collaborative dynamic on set between you guys and the crew?
Brie Larson: Yeah, I felt that way.

Destin Cretton: I think, specifically, both Brie and John (Gallagher Jr., who plays Larson’s boyfriend and co-worker in the film) stepped into their roles, not only on camera, but the similar roles as mentor and motivator for the entire team of actors, some who were kids who had never acted before. I think together Brie and John helped to create this environment of safe, fun, playfulness, but also taking their job very seriously. They were an extreme source of inspiration for these kids. That is something that a director could not create, the feeling of family and spontaneous interaction between people who don’t know each other. That’s not something you can fake. Thank god that they naturally stepped into those roles.

Brie, did you have to go to dark places in your mind for certain scenes? Is that comfortable for you?
Brie Larson: Yeah, it’s very comfortable for me. I have to make a conscious decision to go to that side of town and I don’t live there, you know? I think everybody gets a little too attached to feeling sorry for themselves in the sort of dark places. There’s also a whole other, healthy life to lead and other responsibilities to have, and you just can’t survive living like that. It’s important as an actor to understand the difference between reality and fiction, which can get confusing if you get too lost in it. It was a very big focus for me, especially for this movie. I was really proud of myself for the way that I structured my day while shooting. It’s something that I want to continue to take as a philosophy. When you go that dark, it’s like a ghost thing—it sticks with you for a while and sometimes it takes a lot longer than you want it to to let go of some of the things that you stir up inside.

So, you were able to let go of these dark feelings on the same day.
Brie Larson: Every day. You do it, and then you let it go. Luckily, I just became very clear. There were certain moments that I had to go really deep, and I was afraid that since that’s not how I am on my day-to-day, and I created these relationships, that I was going to feel self-conscious and that I was going to be afraid to go there. I would just say, “Hey, I’m going to go underwater for a little bit, and it’s going to be a process to get me where I need to get to. Just bear with me. It’s going to seem a little scary and weird. When I get to come up for air, I’ll let you know.” That’s how it worked. You let it go. It feels like you’re waking up. I don’t have a lot of memory of the darker things. When I’d watch them, I’d have no memory of doing them. I’d look up, and there would be a bunch of friendly faces, and I’d sometimes even get a hug. (laughs) Sometimes there’d even be pizza at the end of the day! (laughs)

Pizza day!
Brie Larson: There were pizza days! We could afford that.

Destin Cretton: We tried to schedule the pizzas right after every intense scene.

Is that true?
Destin Cretton: It did kind of turned out that way!

Brie, did you learn the skill of separating your work from real life on this film?
Brie Larson: I learned it from shadowing at the [foster care] facility. The woman I spent time with, that was her philosophy and how she dealt with it. She had Grace’s job for 20-something years, so she knows what she’s doing. (laughs) I trust that advice. It really works. You put everything you can into the work while you’re there, and then you go home and try to remove yourself from it. I’m very hard on myself and am very much an over-thinker, so it was important for me to recognize that about myself and to be aware that it wasn’t healthy.

Destin, what’s a skill that you developed on this project that you think will really help you in your future projects?
Destin Cretton: Well…that’s a question I haven’t been asked before. There’s a huge list of things, a huge list. I think more so than any other film, the importance as a director to create an environment off screen that is in cooperation with what you want to be on screen. In the same breath, I think a fun, safe atmosphere is cooperative to anything that’s going to be on screen, even if it’s a tense scene. Most human beings are able to be at their best creative space when they feel like they’re safe and having fun, even if it’s an intense thing. What we’re doing is playing make-believe. It’s somehow attached to what we used to do when we were seven, even if we’re doing a very serious movie, we’re still attaching ourselves to this free, I don’t care what I’m doing, playing make-believe and being expressive [mentality.] The best stuff that we did on this movie, the best moments, were created with a feeling of childish fun. That’s why I like making movies.

Destin Cretton, writer/director of I Am Not a Hipster, is back with his next film, Short Term 12. The film stars Brie Larson (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) as Grace; a girl in her 20’s who works at a facility for at-risk teens. Working at the center with her boyfriend, the film follows her as she navigates her job while doing her best to help the young, fragile minds that populate the facility.

The trailer for the film is quite endearing. Promising the audience to be taken on what looks to be a very emotional ride. The film debuted at SXSW were it was met with rave reviews almost across the board. One reviewer compared Larson’s performance to Ryan Gosling’s from his work in the indie darling Half Nelson from a few years ago. High praise if you ask me. We here at Way Too Indie can’t wait to see the film. The release date for Short Term 12 is August 23rd. You can check out the trailer below.

Watch the official trailer for Short Term 12:

Director Destin Cretton won the Short Filmmaking Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival for his short film, Short Term 12. He returns to Sundance in 2012, this time it is for his full-length film I Am Not a Hipster. Following a talented and well-respected indie musician, the film is centered on music but it is equally about coping with the loss of people around you. I Am Not a Hipster has a lot of heart, and for better or for worse, the lead character wears it on his sleeve the entire time.

Brook (Dominic Bogart) is a mildly successful musician to a select number of indie fans in the region of California he resides in. He carries the same sort of relaxed and do-not-care kind of attitude that a lot of indie rockers have these days. A great example of this is when he is practically forced into doing a radio station interview by his manager who is ecstatic about the promotional opportunity. He viewed it as more of an obligation than a rewarding break. Most of his interview questions were responded back to with one-word answers; eventually the DJ covered the mic and pleaded for him to help him out a little. Brook shifted in his chair in obvious uneasiness, continuing to be reserved with answers.

The awkward, yet hilarious, interview helped show just what kind of personality Brook has. The interview also was important as it revealed that his mother had recently passed away. Later in the film, it is discovered that Brook recently broke up with his girlfriend. Those reasons help explain his uninspired and depressed attitude on life at the moment, which in return makes Brook a surly and pretentious character that is not easy to like at first. However, once he becomes fully self-aware that he is depressed and incapable of being happy, sympathy can be finally felt.

Because he is surrounded by such great family and friends that support his every move, both the bad and good ones, he never has to feel the proper consequence of his actions. That makes his character heavily flawed and for the most part, off-putting. Though, it does not mean it is any less honest or candid. It does, however, make you question how such a pompous person would be a good substitute grade school teacher.

Brook’s best friend Clarke (Alvaro Orlando), who also doubles as his manager, is the exact opposite of him. He is a happy-go-lucky kind of guy who enters fixed-gear bike races even though he ends up in last place. He is what Brook refers to as a creator of “fluff art” because he would use his phone to take photos of insignificant things and display it as art. Brook eventually realizes what he has become when Clarke finally takes enough abuse and snaps at him for his behavior.

Drawing comparisons to the Oscar winning musical Once, is fairly easy to do as the film also features original music that is performed by the lead actor. The music is not even that far off from each other; both are primary made up of a lo-fi acoustic sound alongside plenty of heart-felt lyrics. One of the biggest difference between the two is the number of musical outbursts, which occur less frequent here.

I Am Not a Hipster is the exact phrase that a stereotypical hipster in denial often proclaims; it is a bizarre paradox that exists to somehow validate the fact someone is actually a hipster. The title is significant because Brook is in denial of his true self and emotions, therefore, until he is able to accept these things, he is doomed for failure. The reason why the film succeeds while similar ones do not (such as The Comedy), is because it does not write off the hero as a hipster who is ungrateful simply because the counter-culture tells him to, the film gives explanations as to why he acts the way he does. The film places emphases on the grieving process which allows the audience to sympathize with the flawed character instead of resenting him.