NYWIFT Blog

By Sofiya Saykovska

Welcome to NYWIFT, Pia Mechler!

Pia Mechler, born and raised in Germany with German, Chilean, and Polish heritage, is a versatile actress, writer, and director. Studying film in Denmark and beginning her acting career in Berlin, she took her skills to the UK and then New York City in 2010, where she also took up directing. Pia wrote, directed, and starred in the web series Almost Settled and made her feature directorial debut with Everything is Wonderful, which premiered at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and was a finalist at the Chelsea Film Festival.

Her latest project, Black Hole, which she wrote to address the challenges of female aging and ageism from a humorous perspective, is currently on its festival tour.

Read on to discover her inspiring international background, her dedication to her projects, and her process when it comes to making films.

Picture courtesy of Pia Mechler.

Welcome to NYWIFT! Give the readers a short intro to who you are.

I was born and raised in Germany. My father is German, and my mom is from Chile with Polish ancestry. I studied film at the European Film College in Denmark, and after graduation quickly “fell into” acting when I moved to Berlin, Germany. Early on, I ventured out to the UK and started working there.

I have always written, and when I first moved to NYC in 2010, I started to direct as well. I wrote, directed, and starred in the web series Almost Settled. My first feature as a director, Everything is Wonderful, premiered in 2017 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and was a finalist at the Chelsea Film Festival. Black Hole is my latest project that has just started its festival tour.

My acting credits include The American Sausage Standoff alongside Ewen Bremner and Antony Starr and The Upside alongside Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston. I could last be seen as Eleanor Bourg as part of the main cast on two seasons of the TV show Devils together with Patrick Dempsey, Alessandro Borghi, Malachi Kirby, and Li Jun Li.

What brought you to join NYWIFT?

I wanted to connect with more like-minded people, and especially women, since we still face so many issues as an underrepresented group in this industry. I appreciate that all WIFT chapters are there to challenge that while also highlighting our accomplishments. I do believe that participating and working as a group has the power to bring about actual change. We are stronger together.

What initially inspired you to pursue a career in the film industry, and how did your journey begin in Germany? Can you describe your transition from working in Germany to establishing yourself in New York’s film industry?

I think I was always drawn to storytelling, even if I couldn’t name it yet. I would literally dictate stories for my parents to write down before I could write myself. Despite being shy, or maybe because of it, I have also always been a performer and a very visual person. Film combines all of that. I plainly love film. I love that it’s a shared emotional experience. It can transcend us and create unity in that way.

After studying film at the European Film College, I moved to Berlin, because that’s what everybody did at that time. I acted in a short film for my friend, the German director Pola Beck, and was approached by a director watching us shoot a scene on the street. That director was in pre-production for a network television show. She cast me on the spot. I know – what luck! That’s how I found my first agent, and one thing led to the other.

However, I quickly found out that the roles I was offered at that time in Germany were very limiting and limited, and so I ventured out to the UK. I just booked a flight to London and knocked at CD’s offices. But despite my slightly naive and also questionably aggressive approach, the now late, great Casting Director Emma Style called me back and brought me in the room for my first English speaking gig (The Color of Magic). After that, I booked a role as a lead on an indie movie and found my first UK agent.

Having English titles on my CV helped me tremendously, when I moved to NYC in 2010. I found a US manager (Robyn Bluestone) and continued from there. I still had to completely reestablish myself, and that’s when I started focusing more on work behind the camera as a writer/director. Not only that, but my experience as an actor had shown me that there was still such a huge lack of strong, complicated, funny, and multidimensional female characters. So creating my own material, gave me an opportunity to create those characters for myself and also for others.

What I loved about the New York industry was that I was taken seriously from the start as a filmmaker. I felt there was an openness to a rookie like me. “Try it out kid, we will help you along the way!” I will always be super grateful for the people who believed in me and trusted me like that.

Poster for Pia’s upcoming short, Black Hole, which screened at the Chelsea Film Festival in October.

How do you approach writing and directing a new project? Could you walk us through your creative process from concept to final cut?

The spark is often a personal experience that initiates a thought process that I cannot shake off.

For example, for my latest short, Black Hole, it was the realization that despite being on a very successful TV show at that time, by getting older, I suddenly seemed to have fewer opportunities. Someone told me I was in black hole of age — too young for the old roles and too old for the young roles. That comment startled me. I started researching and found out a female identifying actor that reaches 40 loses access to about 3/4 of roles. And past age 40, men claim 80% of the leading roles, while women only get 20%. I wondered what that says about society as a whole — if a group of people suddenly becomes invisible on screen.

I first wrote a feature film script about ageism ( a comedy), but then the strike came along and things got very hard to finance. So I had the idea to use the premise for a short. I am lucky that I have talented women in my network — mainly Kim Dang who produced the piece, and Libby Casinelli who was the DP. I got a micro-budget green light from SAG and self-financed the short (which would not have been possible without Kim Dang using her network to get me the best deals on everything).

When writing it, I also made a point of keeping it as simple as possible in regards to location, cast, etc., so I could keep the budget low. I always storyboard everything and prep really well. It doesn’t matter if it’s a feature or a five-minute short. I like to be prepared. Because Black Hole was such a small project, I edited it myself at home and also composed the soundtrack. Color grade and mix were outsourced.

Pia on the set of her film, Black Hole.

Do you have a preferred method for developing characters or storylines in your films?

I have an overall idea and then I just start writing and see where it leads me. I love getting surprised by that process. And then come the re-writes, often after other filmmaker friends give me their feedback on the first draft.

Could you tell us about one of your most recent projects and what drew you to it?

Being a mother, approaching 40 seemed to make my career more “complicated,” while my male colleagues’ careers just started to take off. What does that say not just about the film industry but about a society as a whole when women over 40 suddenly fall into a black hole?

Since representation matters, I wanted to look at female aging and the ageism women face from a humorist perspective while still addressing the horrors of feeling invisible as a woman “past her prime” (even the terminology!) in a patriarchal society. I also wanted to make it fun and entertaining. I like the spaces in between: The black hole of emotions, if you will, where we laugh while being also haunted by a gut feeling that something is not quite right.

Since we were on a budget, all effects are shot in camera—true movie magic—that also adds to the humor of it all.

Photo courtesy of Pia Mechler.

How do you decide whether to take on a project as an actor, writer, or director? Are there specific elements that influence your decision?

As an actor there are certain things I don’t entertain – but that’s often just a gut feeling that something is off, underdeveloped, or too cliche. A red flag is a very stereotypical female character that feels exploited in that way.

As a writer, I have collaborated in the past, when I felt some currency with the material, when something excited me, and I felt that I could bring a new perspective to it.

As a director, I have so far only worked on things that I have also written, but I would be very open to direct something that is being brought to me and that excites me.

What have been some of the most significant challenges you’ve faced in your career, and how have you overcome them?

I think I have been pigeonholed a lot. As an actor, it was often the preconception of what my look might indicate, or my accent or background. And I think having a bit cerebral, at times slightly quirky, character confused a lot of people who looked at me superficially. Now I see it as my strength to not just be one thing.

But it was very hard in the beginning to often be reduced or to hear that you cannot also be a writer/director when you are a certain type or an actress. I had to learn to define myself and not have others define me.

Picture courtesy of Pia Melcher.

How have you evolved as a filmmaker over the past twenty years, and what lessons have you learned along the way?

I think my biggest lesson has been to allow myself failure and learn from it. My feature didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, and there were a lot of other hiccups along the way. But I am still immensely proud to have it go as far as it did. And it also gave me an opportunity to try my skills and style as a director and grow immensely from it. If you don’t dare to fail, you’ll never succeed.

What types of projects or stories are you interested in exploring in the future? Is there anything you are currently working on that you’d like to share to our readers?

I actually wrote a novel in the past year that, in my humble opinion, has great potential to be adapted onto screen. It’s like Tomorrrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow meets Normal People, but set in the world of art and art schools. It follows a decade-long friendship and unfulfilled love story of two art school students, starting in London and ending in NYC.

It’s also about the question of what motivates the art-making process and how much of it depends on outside validation. A question that I constantly ask myself, too. So I would love to see that moving forward. I am currently looking for a US or UK-based literary agent or publisher for it. So if anyone has ideas, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I would appreciate it greatly!!!

Check out Pia’s Instagram, as well as Black Hole’s Instagram for more!