Pushing Past the Bad

Penny Allen is from Oregon, USA. She made her first feature movie Property, about gentrification. The next feature was Paydirt about people becoming vintners growing marijuana to finance their project. After living nine years in an Oregon horse ranch, Penny moved to France 35 years ago. In France she made The Soldier's Tale about a soldier in the Iraq War, then another feature called Late for My Mother's Funeral, filmed in Algeria. Her new film is Pushing Past the Bad, for the Berlin International Underground Film Festival.

or years, I spent every summer in Agde, France, attending new plays by director Werner Büchler. Over time, we became close friends. He once told me about a boy who lived next door to his summer house. Neither the boy nor his family had ever spoken to Werner, and there was always something mysterious about them. One summer, Werner returned to Agde and discovered that the young man had disappeared, yet no one would explain what had happened. From that mystery, I developed a screenplay in which Werner would play himself and I would direct. After assembling the cast, Werner called with devastating news: his doctors had given him only two months to live. The next day, he suggested we immediately shoot all his scenes. We did. The rest of the film was completed over the following year. Werner lived long enough to see three edited clips, which he admired.