After perfecting the script for a pretty long time, at some point I understood that if I didn’t move, it would never happen. So I made a decision, not an intellectual one. A gut one.

Three weeks before shooting, my body stopped me. A rare neurological condition, my first hospitalization in my life. Dozens of people were synchronized to the shoot date, actors booked between theater productions. No way to postpone. I kept working from the hospital bed.

We had a 200 square meter basement that needed to become an underground casino set. I rented it for a month to have enough time to build it, rehearse in it, and then shoot in it. It sat empty while I was in the hospital.

Seven days of shooting. A day with 40 extras. A special effect Molotov cocktail thrown by one of the actors, fight scenes, dramatic scenes, working with the actors, the crew, being in the middle of it all and in charge. The last cut of the last night, very late before sunrise, everyone started wrapping and I just stood there and cried.

There is an intelligence in the body that knows before the mind does. By the time the cameras rolled, I had learned to listen to it.