And now we turn to a new kid on the block, a teenage filmmaker just starting out, but already making waves.

He's 19 year old Philip Youmans.

His first feature, Burning Cane, snapped up three awards at this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

The film is set in rural Louisiana, and it tells the story of a deeply religious woman and her struggle to reconcile her faith with the love that she holds for her alcoholic son and a troubled preacher.

Philip Youmans has now made history as the youngest director to feature in the festival and the first African-American director to win the top prize.

And our Alicia Menendez spoke to him about the story behind his amazing story.

So thank you so much for joining us.

Congratulations on your recent honor.

Tell me what this film, Burning Cane is about.

So Burning Cane is about Helen Wayne, a mother living in rural Louisiana, her son Daniel, and his son Jeremiah, and also her pastor, Reverend Tillman.

And their relationships with each other, their relationships with their religion and their community and how their environment and their their home you know, affects really every aspect in the fabric of their lives.

It's about how religion sort of governs their community.

It's about the cyclical nature of destructive behavior and how vices are passed down in lineage very often.

And it's also about the dangers of enacting a fundamentalist interpretation of religion.

And in taking know religious doctrine literally.

What is the meaning behind the title of the film?

Burning Cane?

Burning cane is a part of harvesting cane, but and it's a part of the culture in the fabric of that entire process in the community.

Sugar cane.

Sugar cane.

But it also releases toxins that are very negative for people's health.

And so I think there is just an interesting sort of dichotomy there you know, in that it is such an important part of their economy about its and sugar cane in that in that in that industry is an important part of the culture in the fabric of that area.

But it is also detrimental to their health in terms of the toxins that are released in the air because of it.

So when I feel like that sort of touches on, you know, the the sort of the multi dimensionality of all of the characters that kind of populate the film, you finish this film up during your senior year of high school.

17 years old.

Tell me about the process of making this film.

So it started when I was 16 in the December of my junior year.

Of high school.

I wrote this short script called Glory, and then I, I wanted to make that short, but I stepped away to make another short.

And then after that my instructor at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts named Isaac Webb told me that he thought that the film had feature length potential because of the fact that it was so grounded in character.

That it seemed like it could be something that could be made physically and.

And so I just became like obsessed with that idea.

And then in the ensuing weeks and months, I was just churning out drafts of the feature length strip script, going through script revisions, meeting with actors all the while raising money and in casting.

And then so in that summer before my senior year, we went into production and shot the bulk of principal photography and then shot Wendell's piece in that August.

And then the rest of my senior year was spent in post-production.

For someone who doesn't go to an elite school like the one that you went to, how do you make a film like this?

I think at my age when when we made this film, I relied so much on the fact that the artists that were my friends and a lot of my friends who weren't artists were just really behind my mission and my drive.

And when when you can't pay people industry, great.

Especially when we were that young, you have to rely on people wanting to work for you regardless or wanting to work with you because they believe in you and they believe in the project.

And for me, in that case, those are my friends.

So I've actually been telling people recently that I feel like if you're as young as I was making making a film, I think you really do have to kind of rely on your friends and your community in a way to band together and help you figure out some of those resource and some of those jobs.

You've said, I think now is probably the best time for burning cane to come out.

Why now?

Well, there is there's there's there's two parts of that.

I think that just I think it's time for us to kind of take an objective look just at religion and its role in our community.

And how it plays into our advancement as a community.

And I also think in terms of making this, you know, in more like applicable sense, I had to make the film then and now because of the fact that there was such a community around me that there was no other time that I was going to be able to rely on people's goodwill quite like I could then.

Because the moment you turn 18, then you're an adult and people expect an entirely different thing.

You know, so when I was 18, we were already in post-production.

But when I was 17, I think we kind of we were aware of the fact that people thought that we were just a student production and in that they were willing to give so much because they thought they were just helping out some kids.

And we were young, but we always envisioned this going farther than just, you know, a student project.

There's a clip I want to watch.

It comes very early in the film, and it is Wendell Pierce giving his first sermon that we see in the film.

Take a look Now, however, since he has died, he has learned that is not to be true.

That's not true.

He who dies with the most toys wins.

You can go out there and try to get a pretty dress, but it don't mean nothing if you got to lose your soul.

He who dies with the most toys wins.

He knows that's not to be true because when he died, he better have good relationships because that didn't get him across Jordan to heaven.

No toys get you into heaven.

It's the friendships that you have is the kindness that you do.

Did you clothe me when I was making did you give me housing when I had no place to live?

Did you feed me when I was hungry?

Did you drink?

Give me water to drink.

We know it's thirst.

He who dies with the most toys wins.

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?

Talk to me about the dichotomy of cutting between this sermon and then this man reckoning with his own demons.

There's some truth to what Tillman says in that sermon, and that he believes that friendships and personal relationships are more valuable than material possessions.

And I think most of us can kind of agree with that.

And I just kind of wanted to show the fact that there can be some truth that comes from this man and he can also still be broken.

He can still be a beacon for people that may oral status that pastors have, but still be grappling with all those same demons on his own.

And it just brings about the question of whether or not we should be following anybody who can't really practice what they preach, but we shouldn't.

Should we even expect anyone to be able to do that?

That's a whole nother question.

You know, how did you convince Wendell Pierce to be a part of this film?

Well, I so in in the months leading up to pre-production, as well?

In the months leading up to production, actually, I was working at a morning called Coffee Sand in City Park, and I was waiting on a woman named Lula, L.Z., who's also an alumni of the same high school that Wendell and I went to, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, and I went up to MS. L.Z.

and I was waiting on her table and she asked me about what I wanted to do, what school I went to.

And then I was talking to her about some of the roles in the project.

I told her that we had cast it pretty much every role except this preacher and I was just kind of explaining, you know, the preacher's motivations where he was in his life.

And she thought she said, What do you think of Wendell Pierce playing the role?

And of course, I, like, freaked out, you know, because Wendell Wendell is so is is big in our community, not only because he's a brilliant actor, but because of him, because of the work that he's done in Pontchartrain Park.

Where he grew up, you know, and sort of helping stop all of the gentrification that was coming through that area.

And then she texted him right in that moment and then he responded to her quickly.

I think she said, like there's a note, a student who's shooting a feature film this summer.

He's interested in seeing you play this role.

And he was like, okay, give him my email.

And so I got his email.

And after that, it was really just a back and forth with the script, trying to make dates work, you know, looping him into all script revisions.

And but Wendell coming in, it helped expand the community because initially the film was so much more centered on Daniel and Helen's relationship as a mother and son.

When New came in and allowed it to kind of build this entire portrait as a community and show and show how Helen's religion and the people that she she associates with her religion how they directly affect her actions with her loved ones and her family.

So it just it allowed the entire story, the entire community of Laurel Valley to be fleshed out.

How did working with Wendell change you as a director?

I think before working with Wendell or even before Burning Cane, I had I had kind of a messed up idea about what directing was.

What did you think it was?

I thought it was so much more, you know, commanding, so much more so much more authoritarian than it really is.

Than it really should be.

It's so much more about the conversations that you have and sometimes maybe even the conversations that you have before you even show up to set.

You know, and I think what working with Wendell and Kaiya and Dominique kind of taught me is that they're they're brilliant actors.

And you have to give brilliant actors the space to create alongside you.

It was just it was just a back and forth, you know, dialog.

And and I mean, he made all the great choices.

So it's yeah, it worked out.

It's not the only character in the film that struggles with addiction.

Let's take a look at another clip and then read in such a manner that it's got me now.

And onto my entry.

And that is, again, not my mode of entry.

It's not I'm not going to back off as a kid.

The positive and I'm going to be the main character.

This is her son dancing around with his son passes the little boy a bottle.

Talk to me about addiction.

So addiction runs through my family.

Alcoholism is probably the most prevalent example of that.

And before I made Burning Cane, actually, it was when I was 17 in my junior year, I kind of had a little spout of alcoholism myself because I was always able to grow a beard pretty easily.

And so I would go up to go up to like discount stores in the city in the Seventh Ward and like get alcohol because they didn't I.D.

me because I looked older.

But I was really kind of self-medicating because I was at a particularly low point.

Then I was insecure and jealous and really kind of sabotaging the relationship that I was in.

And then it wasn't making things any better when when the girl that I was dating at the time, she was also dealing with some sort of alcoholism with her own family and her own father, you know?

So it was just it was kind of a toxic cycle in that.

And and I recognize that it was self-medicating.

And my mother caught me actually a few times.

That's why she told me to shave the beard after that.

You know, I stopped drinking as much.

You know, I stayed away from hard liquor.

And so I just kind of I had my own personal experiences with some of the jealousy and insecurity and alcoholism that Daniel and I find himself with, albeit Daniels is much more magnified and has a much, much, much harsher context in terms of him being an adult and having to care for his child and and all of that.

But what I wanted to really touch on with Daniel and Jeremiah's relationship more than anything in that sort of sphere of alcoholism is just the fact that things can be passed on so easily.

And that's another thing that's that's sort of cyclical, you know, the cyclical nature of vices and how they're passed on from generation to generation.

And it's that's something that's present in the movie, not only in alcoholism, but also in smoking.

You know, it's it's when it's routine, when it's normalized, it's so easy to to let that become a part of your routine.

And I definitely want to touch on that with burning cane and Daniel Jeremiah, his relationship, the mother, Helen, who's played by Karen Kyle Oliver's one of the more complex and dynamic characters in this film.

Let's take a look.

It was missed the mark.

So tired we aren't going to get up by the grace of God.

I could walk away sure.

I was scared.

I was going to have to be in a wheelchair but you know, the help of the Lord be bond and ask.

That was great.

I'm glad to see that you're doing okay.

Eat.

You've said Wendell is our lead male character, but the story revolves around Helen and her decisions.

Her experiences define burning cane how so?

So Helen is is is the character in Burning Cane that has the major dramatic question that really has some measure decision to make, which is which is how does she proceed with knowing the man that her son has become and how does she feel as a mother?

Is there any guilt that she feels for how he's turned out?

And it's also how does she respond?

What action does she take to what he's done?

And which is not just his grappling with his alcohol addiction, but also with domestic violence.

Yes.

And what would I want him to speak on, especially with Helen, is that there is a danger in enacting a fundamentalist interpretation of religion and that by the end of the film, she takes Tillman's words in his guidance literally and in that in that very fundamentalist interpretation of what she's saying, she take what he says.

She takes action from that.

But her major question is how does she help the people and the men in her life, really, that that she loves a pastor, her grandson and her son.

Daniel, you've said my artistic identity is defined by humanizing more than it is by my blackness.

Does that mean.

So I am I want to tell honest, nuanced black stories.

You know, there is a there's an Afro centrism that is always going to be a part of my work.

But I think above all that even if not even above all that, but in kind of in tandem with that is is showcasing the duality and the nuance of our experience.

But I think there's something important about us being able to, you know, as black people be able to tell our stories and be able to be able to show ourselves in that fallible light.

But I think it has to be told from a black perspective to make sure that the humanizing element is still there.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.