The first to acknowledge that her latest movie, I.S.S., is inconsistent with her previous work is Gabriela Cowperthwaite.
Cowperthwaite might be expected to concentrate on stories inspired by actual events, as he is the director of Blackfish (a documentary about the cruel treatment of orcas in captivity), Children of the Underground (about a covert network built to smuggle families away from abusive partners), and Our Friend (a true story of friendship in the face of terminal cancer).
Rather, she turned left and then straight up due to an unrequited love for thrillers, horror, and blockbusters.
“Even though I’ve made these earnest documentaries … this was not any of those,” she stated to CBC News.
The film I.S.S., which is set for release on January 19, delves into the fate of American and Russian astronauts and cosmonauts stationed on the space station when hostilities between their nations back home drive them to confrontation while in orbit.
Their governments order each team to seize control of the research vessel “by any means necessary” when a worldwide conflict breaks out on the planet below. This forces scientists to make difficult decisions about how far they will go against people they had previously regarded as friends and colleagues while confined in close quarters hundreds of kilometers above Earth.
For Cowperthwaite, that was sufficient reflection of the world we live in today to pique her curiosity.
“What I did love about it, is it sort of was a real-life situation,” she stated. These are things that are unfolding in one form or another. And so, I really enjoyed that; it was almost realistic.”
The confinement was the most evident similarity; lead actor Ariana DeBose, who plays Dr. Kira Foster, an American researcher, revealed that most of the filming took place during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic’s lockdown.
“There was an intimacy that is garnered from those experiences that was very necessary for this film,” she stated.
“There was this overwhelming reality that art in our case sort of was imitating life.”
