New Talent: Sandra Winther
Sandra Winther has only been directing since 2014, but in those short years her reputation has ramped up on both sides of the Atlantic. Having grown up in Denmark with a passion for movement, breakdancing, diving and playing basketball, she channeled this into a dynamic visual style when her filmmaking career began in New York.
Much of her work is based in documentary, drawing on real people’s stories, but she often uses choreography and strong lighting to heighten the emotion of her films.
She’s made campaigns for brands such as Nike, Adidas, New Balance, Beats by Dre, MTV and Vogue - all of which convinced Archer’s Mark to sign her for UK representation a few weeks back.
LBB’s Alex Reeves caught up with Sandra to understand what drives her.
LBB> You recently signed to Archer’s Mark. Is that the first time you’ve been repped in the UK? What was behind that decision?
Sandra> This will be the first production company I’ve joined in the UK. New York has been such a priority for me since I moved here. For anyone moving to New York you just get sucked in and it takes all your energy and focus. Now I’ve gotten to a place where I miss home. I just want to be near Denmark. There’s also an aesthetic and a form of communication and creativity where the approach is a little bit different in the UK. So I’m excited. There’s a lot of great work coming out of the UK. I signed with New Land too, in Copenhagen. Being European, I’m excited to work more in Europe. I’m still going to be based in New York but definitely planning to spend some more time there.
LBB> A lot of your work is rooted in a documentary style. Why is that such an appealing approach for you?
Sandra> I think right now there’s a huge audience for things, people and stories that feel real. That authenticity is really important no matter what kind of brand you are. I feel like every project of mine is an opportunity for someone to be given a voice and I think a lot about that in all the projects I pitch on.
I’m working on a documentary right now called Lowland Kids. We just submitted it to our first festival. We’re going to submit to to a ton more. That’s been an incredible project to work on.
The producer, who’s a friend of mine, found this very beautiful story and came to me last summer: ‘There’s this island called Isle de Jean Charles in southern Louisiana. I think there’s a really great story there. What do you think?’ From there we zoned in on these two teenagers that are soon to be going through this relocation process. The island that they live on, the community there have been labelled America’s first climate refugees. They’re the first community in the US to receive a federal grant to be relocated because where they live has been absolutely destroyed by rising sea levels, hurricanes and the oil and gas industries creating all these canals that have let the salt water come in.
In the last 60 years the island has lost something like 90% of its landmass. It’s a pretty wild place. It’s where Beasts of the Southern Wild was shot. It’s a beautiful place but it’s also quite sad how destroyed it is now. It used to be such a healthy place where native Americans settled and were living off the land and could grow vegetables and fruit and everything, and now everything’s dying.
There’s one road that connects to the island from the mainland and when that road gets flooded, which happens very often, you can’t get medical help on the island, the school buses can’t pick up the kids that live there, so very soon it won’t be possible to live there. What makes this story universal is that because it’s told through the lens of these two teenage kids. It’s more than a documentary about climate change. It’s a film about growing up on the outskirts of America and growing up without your parents. They both lost their parents to a heroin overdose six months apart when they were little and their uncle has been raising them on the island. He’s in a wheelchair. They’re very poor. They don’t have a lot but they’re extremely thankful for everything they do have. And their home is what makes them feel rich and connected to something bigger than them. They have the biggest backyard you can imagine. They can go fishing and hunting two minutes from their house and do the things that they love. All of that’s being taken away.
LBB> It’s a really bittersweet story. It’s such a sad situation but there’s a lot of joy in the film. Was that important to you?
Sandra> I definitely don’t want to make the island seem bleak because it’s absolutely beautiful and so is the bayou. In the film there are these scenes with the kids on the bayou tubing, going gator hunting, but also doing things that teenagers do, like going bowling and eating pizza and having a party at their house and a bonfire. I think the film is very uplifting but it has a sadness to it. This place is so beautiful and it’s their home and they’ll never get that back. They are family and there’s so much love and power in them as a family so they’re going to get through it whenever this relocation happens, even though moving is going to be the toughest thing they’ve ever done. They’re going to stick together as a family and make this new place their home because they have to.
LBB> So let’s rewind a little bit. What was growing up in Denmark like?
Sandra> I grew up with parents that were so supportive of everything my brother and I wanted to do. I was doing tonnes of sports. Breakdancing and gymnastics and diving and trampoline jumping, playing basketball. I just wanted to do everything all at once.
In a sense it shines through in my work now that I’ve always had a big passion for dance and sports. I’ve always been a bit of a tomboy who would want to climb on things. I’m like my dad in that sense. He’s a grown-up child who loves roller coasters and used to go skydiving and stuff. We’ve been tandem jumping together.
My parents were so trusting of me. I never had a curfew or rules set. I was a good girl in the sense that I was doing my homework, but I was also going out partying like Danes do when they’re 15. I was also showing up to gymnastics practice and taking weekends to go off to camps. I was just doing it all at once.
I actually went to school for one year on the West Coast [of the US] - a small town in Washington state - when I was 15. That exposed me to American culture at a younger age. There was a lot of distrust. The first family I was staying with was very strict. I ended up changing families.
It was a great experience for me because I did get to experience what it’s like being a young kid growing up in America for a little bit at least. I think it’s a lot harder than it is in Denmark for so many reasons. I think there’s a lot more pressure on you.
LBB> What were your early steps in filmmaking?
Sandra> At an early age I moved out and got an apartment with my friend and was quite independent from an early age. I got into film, spent one year working at Elle magazine as a fashion assistant and then realised that I didn’t want to do fashion but I wanted to do something with it. Then I started studying film and media at university in Copenhagen, that’s when I started working on films outside of film. You have a lot of time outside of school in Denmark (at least you can make it that way). So I was able to work on some short films and started working at the Danish ad agency Hjaltelin Stahl.
LBB> That’s a pretty neat route into the ad industry! Where did it go from there?
Sandra> While going to school I just really loved piecing things together in an edit. I was obsessive about it. Then the creative director at Hjaletilin Stahl at the time, Rasmus Laumann, came from a film background and I was working quite closely with him. So I was working at an ad agency but in film.
LBB> Then you moved back to the US to study at Columbia university, right? And you haven’t moved back.
Sandra> The plan was that after studying in New York I was going to go back and work for the agency. But once I moved over here I realised that there were so many more opportunities. I knew I wanted to work in film but I didn’t feel like I wanted to go back to Denmark and work on films for cell phone carriers and insurance companies just yet.
What I felt I could find here in a different way than at home is find my own voice, aesthetic, style and approach. I felt like I had the opportunity to be inspired that would speed up the process and I would be more challenged. I really liked the challenge of not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow or how I’m going to get to making my own films, but I knew that right then I enjoyed editing and if I could be around people that I feel inspired by and work on projects that excite me, I’d get to that point where I could do my own projects.
Then reality kicks in and it’s really hard. I wanted to work as an editor but I wanted to do it on cool projects. I also didn’t really have much experience. It was a matter of finding the right person that I can work closely with and luckily I was able to meet Quentin Jones, a London-based director who was living in New York at the time. She was an incredible mentor - a strong female who came from an art background and was an artist first, a filmmaker second. She had such a unique vision and technique. So I ended up assisting her on a bunch of projects and doing editing for her, but also for other directors and other projects. So really I started out as an editor and that’s what I did for the first year and a half or so. Then she decided to move to London way earlier than I thought.
From there I started directing my own projects. To begin with they were much more fashion focused and relied more heavily on VFX and motion graphics. The reason why I got into filmmaking in the first place was to tell stories and be able to pour myself and my experiences into the work so I think I was searching for getting to a place where I could start shedding a light on people whose stories I felt were worth telling.
LBB> What was the one project that laid the foundations for your career, or made the biggest impact?
Sandra> I think that would be the i-D New Balance short documentary series, just because that was a project that I pitched to them. I thought it’d be really cool to focus on subcultures of sports or movements. I felt like i-D was the perfect platform because they do have a big focus on subculture, showing people who may not be known yet but are the next generation. It took a while to be greenlit, but when it was I felt it was my first opportunity to give a voice to young people in different parts of the world. I also got to spend time with these individuals and get that story out of them. One of the things I enjoy the most right now about my work is all the incredible conversations I have with athletes and people in all parts of the world who are very inspiring. We found all the talent together and the dance group in New York hadn’t been featured in anything. They still tell me today that project changed their careers. No one had put them on stage and that film did it for them. Things like that make me really happy.
LBB> A lot of your films feature women doing sports. A lot of brands seem to be keen to champion this ‘fierce women’ aesthetic at the moment. What are your feelings on that trend?
Sandra> I’m extremely excited to see brands featuring women the way they are now. For me it’s always been something that’s been important. The work that’s coming out that’s showing females being fragile or overly feminine is just as important too, but for me I’ve always seen women as powerful and fierce and I’m very attracted to those types of women. I think for me, always being a bit of a tomboy and not letting being a woman hold me back from doing anything, I feel like I have a responsibility to portray women at their strongest. Through sports you can really bring that out in beautiful ways.
The piece I did for adidas by Stella McCartney, I went into that wanting to do something more than just show them in their natural workout environments, to elevate it to a place where they come out as superheroes. And I feel like we were able to highlight that really nicely. But I think it was also a reflection of the inner strength you have to have as any person, male or female, when you reach that moment that you can’t go anymore and it just becomes you and that punching bag, or just you and that track in front of you - that’s the only thing that exists.
I still think there should be a lot more female directors on sports, car and tech commercials. I think we’re just as capable of bringing out that energy and power in those commercial films as men are. We’ve just got to keep at it.
LBB> You mentioned that you used to do all the sports and extracurricular activities as a kid. Do you keep any of that up?
Sandra> I went surfing this morning. Not super big waves but nice to get out. We live in Manhattan so we get up at like five o’clock because it’s an hour to get to the waves. So I was up real early. It’s the best start to the day, but then you crash at about eight o’clock like ‘what’s going on!?’
I started surfing the year around 2014. My boyfriend and I made a trip to Puerto Rico. My boyfriend’s dad has a house there and he’s been going since the ‘70s. His dad never really taught him to surf but then later realised this was an opportunity to learn to surf with me.
It’s a hard thing to learn when you’re an adult. All the surfers I know in the city grew up surfing. You can’t really do that in Denmark. There’s one place you can surf and I’m pretty sure it’s gnarly and cold as hell all day.
LBB> At this point in your career, what are your priorities as a director?
Sandra> I want to tell stories that have a high level of authenticity. I’m in this commercial space but I want things to feel real. I want to do the people that I feature justice through my films if we are telling their real stories. Of course you create a heightened reality and you make it maybe more emotional or faster paced or whatever you do to combine all the elements, but I want to portray people in a real-life light.
I’ve been very fortunate that the projects I’ve been asked to do I’ve been able to do that and also put my own take on it. But the challenge is there are so many more projects that I want to do and as I do them I just want to keep staying true to myself. With every project you grow, but you stay true to how you feel a story should be told.
I want everyone that’s in my films to really feel like, ‘Wow! Holy Fuck! I’m a queen, or a goddess, or a champion. I’m the greatest! She really brought out what I stand for.’ That’s something that’s really important to me.
LBB> And what are you working on or looking to do next?
Sandra> One goal of mine is moving into doing feature-length documentaries. Lowland Kids is the first step in that direction and it’s a 25-minute film. Maybe that’ll grow into a feature. The family hasn’t been relocated yet so it would make sense to spend the next few years on it. Even doing something episodic telling the stories of families around the world going through a similar situation would be really interesting.
On top of that, moving into narrative. Once this doc is done, get working on a script. Many directors doing commercial work have this dream to make a feature, but that’s also a goal of mine. It’s just a matter of prioritising that so I can still make commercials but making that a focus.
