With Shadow in the Cloud, New Zealand filmmaker Roseanne Liang has created a fantasy action film with a feminist twist. The year is August 1943, and the film opens at Auckland allied airbase, where Maude Garretts embarks on the B-17 bomber plane called “The Fool’s Errand” on a secret military mission. The only female on board, she is immediately singled out and objectified. Sitting in the bottom turret in a position highly exposed to attacks from the outside world, she hears their crude sexual commentary on the radio and tries to gain their respect as she fights off Japanese airplanes and scary-looking Gremlins. Shadow in the Cloud deals with gender politics but is mainly a fun ride. However, the movie has had its own ‘shadow’ cast over it, as rape and sexual assault accusations against writer Max Landis were made public as the film was close to wrapping. We spoke to director Roseanne Liang about all this from her home in Auckland in New Zealand.

In your latest film Shadow in the Cloud, the lead character Maude Garrett is the only woman in a man’s world and to some extent, you are also a woman in a man’s world as most filmmakers are still male. Is it a difficult position for you to be in?

Yes, it’s a mix of a lot of feelings, positive and negative. Growing up in New Zealand in a relatively egalitarian society, I feel like I have been the beneficiary of a new way of thinking. I want to acknowledge the opportunities I’ve had as a female Kiwi-Chinese filmmaker without forgetting the systemic inequities that keep people like me critically underrepresented in our industry. Personally, I have the privilege of feeling safe and respected with NZ crews. It is true, however, that Shadow in the Cloud’s crew was predominantly Caucasian men. We know for a fact that inequities are well entrenched regarding women, BIPOC, LGBTQI and disabled screen practitioners. The problems are far from being solved, even as steps are being taken to remedy them. In society, I feel that being a woman in a patriarchal system means that we normalize certain behaviors and ‘brush it off’. Often, we are accepting the unacceptable because ‘that’s how it’s always been done’.

Chloë Grace Moretz plays Maude. Why did you choose her for this role?

When we started, I was honestly looking for older actresses, because of certain character traits in the script. One of the producers suggested I meet with Chloë because she has a rare combination of action, prowess and dramatic gravitas as well. I had a phone call with her and within minutes, I knew she was it. She understood and embodied Flight Officer Garrett from the inside.

 

Maude Garrett is a very strong action heroine. But her circumstances are not easy, and she has to deal with a lot of pressure. Was it a deliberate choice that you also made her vulnerable and why was Chloë perfect for this?

The pain and trauma that Maude Garrett carries with her, is also inside Chloë in a way. Chloë has been working in Hollywood since she was 6 years old and among other good and positive experiences, I also believe she has been underestimated, objectified and disrespected. She has had to navigate that since childhood and has become incredibly strong and incredibly savvy, but at the same time, there is a sadness and a pain and a trauma under the surface. I think that the trauma is understood between many women. That is just from growing up in this society, I think.

The film blends CG gremlins with a feminist action hero from World War II. You have writing credits that you share with Max Landis. How did you get the idea?

I first received a script written by the American writer Max Landis. He has since been accused of rape and sexual assault. Before we knew about these alleged crimes, he was the screenwriter behind successful films such as Chronicle. When we received the script for Shadow in the Cloud, the producer Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, who had worked with Max before, did not think he would be a good fit for our team. We wanted to be able to have the freedom of making the script our own. That is what happened.

So, you did not collaborate at all on the script?

No, I did not. It is not how I prefer to work but it was the right choice for this project, now that we know what we know about him. There was an article in the Daily Beast that came out when we had just finished shooting. Eight women accused Max Landis of rape and sexual assault. If people are struggling with their feelings about sexual predators and how they can act with impunity in our world, I understand if they choose not to watch Shadow in the Cloud because they cannot reconcile those feelings.

It is a film that is focused on a strong female character, who is a pilot during World War II, and the male pilots she is with on the plane are acting pretty misogynistic with their sexual comments about her. What you just told me sheds a whole new light on that subject in the film.

I think lots of people have struggled with this information. We have had people, not like our film from a prejudicial point of view. There are some who prejudge it as a ‘woke’ feminist movie and they don’t want to watch that. But then you also have the prejudicial viewpoint of people who don’t want to support an alleged sexual predator like Max Landis by watching the movie.

I think from my point of view as a director and co-writer, who took the script and made it my own with the support of the production team, I know why I made this movie and I’m clear on what I wanted to say. I am excited by a female action hero and I am excited by gender politics. Everything about it is true to me because the producers allowed me to make the film that I wanted to make.

The film is about a woman who has to stand up for herself in a man’s world, where they are sexually harassing her. Talk about all the challenges she is facing.

In the film, she has to deal with the normal struggles of war, which is hard enough as it is. Then you add on the extra layer of not being believed and being told that you are not good enough, by men. She doesn’t only have to deal with one thing – she has to deal with five things at the same time.

It is also about how far a mother will go for her child and the main character Maude Garrett is a pretty fearless action hero. Was that something that resonated with you?

Yes, as a mother it did. I have two children, so I absolutely understood the new power that comes to you both in terms of kindness, patience, and love – but also the strength and resilience and resistance to pain and also the rage that comes when you have something that precious to protect. That was something that really spoke to me. I did not just make this movie for women, but as a woman, you definitely have situations where you feel like you are alone in a room full of people and you have to rely on your own wiles and resilience just to be able to navigate through certain situations. I think every woman can understand what it feels like to go through that. I think men can too. 

She has so many elements to fight in the film: The men who are patronizing and harassing her, the Japanese warplanes, the weather and the gremlin.

It is funny how this movie has gained more resonance since the pandemic because we are all going through some kind of traumatic process that has adversities building on top of each other. Just when we were all grappling with the systemic injustice around George Floyd’s murder, I was distressed and losing hope around the Black Lives Matter movement, then Donald Trump was almost reelected. Just when I was losing faith in people – because, in New Zealand, everything that happens in America is mirrored here – there was a pandemic! Everything bad is layering on top of itself. In the movie, there are also all of these things happening at once: the war, the storm, the baby, the gremlin and the men. This is our life now. One way or another, we will get our way through it. We all have our means to navigate through it. And to watch how Flight Officer Maude Garrett does it is joyful.   

The focus is on her throughout the film, and for a long time, we only hear the men’s voices, while we see her in action. Was this a very deliberate choice?

Yes, it was a deliberate choice and one that I really relished as a filmmaker. It was in the original script and one of the aspects that really attracted me. I had seen it in movies before like Locke with Tom Hardy or Buried with Ryan Reynolds – in these movies, the concept lasted for the full runtime. I had not seen a woman go through that and I was interested in how to keep the tension and interest going. Again, I did not want this film to be only for women – I wanted men to be able to watch this and understand what it is like to be in her shoes. If we ever had a question about where to put the camera or how to tell the story, it always came down to we are sitting inside her mind – her point of view. 

There is a lot of locker room talk in this film. Do you think men know how it affects women when they talk like that?

This is one of the biggest things we worked on in the rewrite. We wanted to interrogate the male dialogue and make sure that it was not just a parody. We relied on our male friends and, in fact, I relied on the male actors in the process. Some of the locker room talk is actually the actors’ improvisation and made it into the cut.

The men told me that when they are in a private space with just men, it can be a process of one-upmanship – someone will say something funny and the next one will come and say something funnier to get a reaction. If you can get a laugh out of the wolf pack, your status goes up. Men try to top each other to find their place within the pack. Honestly, I don’t know if men think about it. It is the easiest thing to not think about because there are no women present and they can just talk about them and dehumanize them however they want because they are not offending anyone. But unfortunately, the dehumanization of women in ‘harmless’ private conversation affects women outside of the locker room. It leaks out into our society from the private male spaces and we see the effect in violence against women.

Previous to Shadow in the Cloud, you made a documentary called Banana in a Nutshell about your family and adapted it into a fictional story My Wedding and Other Secrets. What is next for you?

Having made those films, I turned my focus to genre films, especially action films. I realized that I’d always loved action movies and that while people may watch dramas and romantic comedies on streamers, they will still go to the movies for genre and spectacle. Our New Zealand Film Commission has been very supportive of me – after I made My Wedding and Other Secrets, I started interning on some action film projects with their support. They helped fund a short proof of concept film called Do No Harm which premiered at Sundance and allowed me to get representation in Hollywood, which led to this film. Straight after working on Shadow in the Cloud, I started working on a post-apocalyptic comedy series in New Zealand called Creamerie. We premiered locally recently, and it’s been a wonderful success here. We are now in international sales and have to wait and see whether or not it will catch on worldwide. I also continue my work with my team in America.