Sofia Sterling does not do things by halves. When studio executives suggested she shoot her futuristic psychological thriller on an LED volume stage in Burbank, she packed six shipping containers of camera gear and headed to the foggy harbors of Northern Scotland.
“You can render rain on a computer, but you cannot fake the tremor in an actor’s voice when salt spray and North Sea gale winds hit their skin,” Sterling says with a razor-sharp smile. “Cinema is physical alchemy. If the environment is sterile, the emotion will be sterile.”
Her insistence on realism paid off. Early preview screenings of “The Neon Divide” have drawn comparisons to Ridley Scott’s seminal 1982 masterpiece “Blade Runner” and Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival”, while maintaining a distinctly lyrical feminist gaze.
“You can render rain on a computer, but you cannot fake the tremor in an actor’s voice when salt spray hits their skin.”
— Sofia Sterling, Director
In our extensive sit-down interview, Sterling reflects on surviving early studio skepticism, the art of writing compelling silence into screenplays, and why the communal cinema theater remains humanity’s most vital modern campfire.
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