SAD HILL FILMOGRAPHY

The collaborations between Devan Scott and Willa Harlow Ross

THE MARTYR • 2017

A long night on a film set gets longer, as an intensely committed but emotionally unstable independent director races the clock to find the perfect performance for a crucial scene. As Milton Tibbons demands take after take, his cast and crew begin to lose their patience with their director's outbursts, until the director makes an emotional disclosure that pushes his set to the point of boiling over.

At once a nervy character study and a darkly comedic satire of independent film sets, The Martyr uses the baffled faces of the crew and a vigorous central performance by Thomas Nicholson to create an atmosphere of high-wire tension and uneasy humour.

• VIFF Official Selection '17

LIFEGUARD • 2015

Over the course of two days, a lifeguard (Meredith Hama-Brown) stationed at English Bay endures an existential crisis. Largely foregoing dialogue, Devan Scott and Willa Ross’ formally controlled character study skilfully unfolds through comic missteps and well-appointed ellipses, stoking its taciturn protagonist’s frustration and setting the stage for an unexpected climactic confrontation.

• VIFF Official Selection '15

• Moonrise Official Selection '15

SAD HILL WITH SAD HILL (2015)

In celebration of its 50-year anniversary, we traveled to the filming location of the climactic shootout in "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", and attempted to make a shot-for-shot remake of the scene, while also reflecting on how the movie has profoundly impacted their lives.

• Cinema Spectacular '16

• Moonrise '16

WE THREE HEATHENS • 2015

A quest in the form of a feature film, We Three Heathens follows three secular filmmakers — Devan Scott, Willa Ross, and Daniel Jeffery — as they take their cameras along with them on an ancient pilgrimage: the Camino de Santiago. As the three walk, their cameras probe ever-deeper into each other and inward, and the physical and psychological hardships of walking the trail day-in and day-out reveals their faults and insecurities with both humour and suffering.

We Three Heathens journeys through the melange of cultures and personalities on the Camino with curiosity and a formally energetic eye for details. As the journey moves nearer and nearer its end, the contradictions between the spiritual inheritance of the old world and the secular lifestyles of the new confuse and complicate the search for meaning. As it draws towards its surprising conclusion, We Three Heathens maintains its rigorous dissection of modernized religion and a humanist tenderness for all those who cross each other's paths.