Cory Stillman
Stephanie Filo made history in 2023 when she became the first editor to be nominated for three Emmys for three different shows in a single awards cycle.
Especially considering Filo’s victory in Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming for her work on A Black Lady Sketch Show, that kind of success would have been more than enough for most editors. And yet, Filo is only getting started. The editor and activist is now nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing for her work on Minhal Baig‘s We Grown Now. The film follows two boys as they navigate the hardships of growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing complex. It is also nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Picture.
The third directorial effort from festival darling Baig, We Grown Now previously won the Changemaker Award at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, recognizing films with a strong social message. And for Filo, whose other credits range from Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story to Surviving R. Kelly, social impact has always been paramount to her creative process.
“I think as editors, we have a responsibility to make sure that we understand whatever small or large social message a project might have, and to make sure we understand the nuance that may go into that to ensure we’re telling that story authentically,” says Filo. “For a project like this which is connected to a very specific time and place, approaching this project for me involved researching Cabrini-Green’s history to understand the landscape of the place as well as the greater Chicago landscape at the time.”
Filo also continues to give back to her native Sierra Leone, serving as a board member for Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone, and helping to found the End Ebola Now organization alongside actress Nzinga Blake. In addition to film and television, Filo has cut several PSAs and campaign videos for the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation, and Obama’s White House Task Force to combat sexual assault on college campuses. A film like We Grown Now therefore sits at the perfect intersection between Filo’s interests in art and activism.
“Originally, I always saw [activism] as a side hustle I was passionate about, separate from film and television…But at one point, I realized I could also pivot my full-time day-to-day work to find film and television projects that also had a social impact spin from time to time.”
And by traversing so many different genres and mediums, Filo has equipped herself to tell stories in ways that only she can.
“In We Grown Now, we go from a serious and slower-paced day at school straight to a more stylized museum sequence that feels faster-paced in its editing style,” says Filo. “We bounce out of that faster pace into a more serious and tense scene that plays dry with no music and very long shots of Malik and his mother (played by Jurnee Smollett). Having a background in different genres really helped in finding different ways to play with the ebb and flow of our boys’ journey and convey the story we were trying to tell.”
We Grown Now releases in theaters nationwide on April 19th. Read the full interview with Stephanie Filo below!
You are nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Editing for Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now, which is also nominated for Best Cinematography and Best Picture. Could you tell us more about the film and your experience cutting it together?
Definitely! We Grown Now follows two young boys, Malik and Eric, living in 1992 Cabrini-Green Chicago as they learn to navigate life, friendship, and tragedy within their community. Our director, Minhal Baig, spent several years engaging the former 1990s Cabrini-Green community, hearing stories from those specific years (as well as writing several into the film), which added a lot of depth to the way we approached this story. Because this film is a “slice-of-life” and also told entirely through the perspective of our two boys, the editing journey was very special on this project. Trying to visit this story through our boys’ eyes, Minhal and I spent a lot of time reflecting on our own childhoods and how we absorbed information at the time. How did we hear and understand new information? How did that chip away at our relationships or the foundation of our innocence or the way we perceived the world over time? Following that idea, you’ll see that oftentimes we live on shots of the kids even while adults are speaking, and when you do see the adults it is usually from a lower angle. Since a lot of scenes require you to sit in the moment and really be immersed in the boys’ perspective, we almost took a documentary style approach to editing this story. We played a lot with moving around story cards on the wall and trying different structures to find what felt like the right balance. Finding that balance for our “Slice of Life” style was also important, because that allowed us to play with editing styles to enhance the magical moments that our boys would experience, like visiting the art museum and jumping. Audio was another piece of the puzzle – the Cabrini-Green high-rise buildings were 16 stories with thousands of tenants – with this in mind, our final locked cut before the sound mix ended up with around 50 different audio tracks to try to convey all of those background floors and sounds one might hear to feel as immersed as we could during the editing process. This project was also super collaborative – it was great being able to discuss the edit with our Cinematographer, Pat Scola, throughout the process, as well as our composer Jay Wadley who also had such amazing perspectives to lend to the film. Collaboration with our incredible producers Joe Pirro and James Schamus, as well as Participant and Sony, was also so valuable in really making sure we did this story justice and tried out various approaches.
We Grown Now won the 2023 TIFF Changemaker Award, presented to films with a strong social message. How does a project’s social message influence your creative approach?
I think that a project’s social message lives as the backdrop while you’re editing it, whether it’s prominent or not. Sometimes that social message might be a broader systemic issue you’re trying to highlight, but sometimes the social message lies in simply seeing a place or person represented on screen. I think as editors, we have a responsibility to make sure that we understand whatever small or large social message a project might have, and to make sure we understand the nuance that may go into that to ensure we’re telling that story authentically. For a project like this which is connected to a very specific time and place, approaching this project for me involved researching Cabrini-Green’s history to understand the landscape of the place as well as the greater Chicago landscape at the time, talking to as many people from Chicago as I could, trying to think back to music or movies I was into during that time period to find the tone, and also taking time to really sit and understand all of those elements but also how they would be understood through the eyes of a child.
You are also an outspoken activist, advocating for women’s rights worldwide. Tell us about some of the campaigns you have worked on and where this kind of work fits into the broader arc of your career.
My dad is an environmental and human rights attorney, and so I think activism has just always been a part of my DNA. I’ve been lucky enough to work on campaigns with organizations like the United Nations, International Labour Organisation, Obama’s White House Task Force to combat campus sexual assault, as well as ongoing personal grassroots efforts over the past 20 years.
The way this has shaped the broader arc of my career has evolved over time. Originally, I always saw it as a side hustle I was passionate about, separate from film and television – I would go home after working on a tv show or film to then work on social impact campaign projects at night, and then go back into work the next day. But at one point, I realized I could also pivot my full-time day-to-day work to find film and television projects that also had a social impact spin from time to time. So, even though I bounce around in genre often, something that I think has been universal for the past several years has been the fact that I tend to gravitate toward stories that help to highlight various issues or show underrepresented perspectives, and I think that my social impact background definitely helps inform the way I approach every project I am involved with.
Could you talk about your involvement with organizations like Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone and End Ebola Now?
Sure! I’ve been a board member for Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone since the program began in 2012 – we are a social impact and feminist-based organization for Sierra Leonean girls aged 11-17 that focuses on building leadership skills and a sisterhood amongst their peers. The first year of the program we started small with just one day of workshops and 9 girls, and now 11 years later we’ve worked with over 400 girls and their families. We have year-round staff within the country that works with girls on workshops, community engagement and advocacy throughout the year.
I am also one of the co-founders of End Ebola Now, which is an organization that was created in 2014 to spread accurate information and awareness about the Ebola Virus and its impact through artistic community activism. In 2014, several West African countries including Sierra Leone were hit hard by the Ebola outbreak, but there was a lot of misinformation about what the virus is and how it spreads. Several larger NGOs distributed flyers, but due to a high illiteracy rate in rural areas, and 26 different languages being spoken in the country, the flyers really weren’t helpful. And so myself, Nzinga Blake, and a few other Sierra Leonean diaspora and activists in LA within the film and TV industry got together to start making PSAs in all of the local languages, just to try to get the proper information out there via social media, local television, radio, and word-of-mouth. A couple of years into working on our ongoing PSAs, we also created a dance challenge (with all funding going towards the only fully-functioning hospital in Sierra Leone at the time, Emergency) that started to go viral after Kevin Bacon and other celebrities started taking part in it. The outbreak lasted about 2 years in West Africa and we are still passionate about educating the masses about Ebola and its spread.
How do you view the intersection between art and activism?
I think that art and activism go hand-in-hand, and it’s not always in ways one might think of on a surface level. Sometimes activism simply comes in the form of representation in front of or behind the camera. Sometimes, just showing underrepresented people existing in their day-to-day lives on screen is activism. Every story has a different way it can impact a viewer, and I think the more conscious of that we are in our storytelling and the more sensitive we are to the stories we are trying to tell, the stronger that story can and will be.
As an editor on A Black Lady Sketch Show, you made history as part of the first all-Black editing team to be nominated for and win both an Emmy and an ACE Eddie Award. What was the collaborative process like between you and your peers on the hit series?
A Black Lady Sketch Show is a super collaborative process and a super close-knit team, which I think is what makes that show so special. We show our cuts to the other editors throughout the process, but also with the rest of the post team when we can to get feedback, ideas, and keep working towards making it great. Because we all know each other so well, sometimes editors will throw in little beats that we know will make each other laugh, and that just makes the process so much fun. Working with Robin Thede is also a dream because she really advocates for her post team and loves listening to and working through different ideas with us. Once the episode sketch order is decided, our whole team will sit down to watch it through, and we all come up with funny one-liners from the episode. We all vote on our favorite one and that becomes the episode title. It’s a super fun way to celebrate sending an episode off to the studio.
You have also made history as an individual, becoming the first editor to be Emmy-nominated three times for three different series. What was your reaction when you saw the nominations and received triple the good news?
My reaction to getting 3 Emmy nominations at once was shock! I was sitting on my couch that morning when my phone started blowing up. First, our A Black Lady Sketch Show creator and showrunner Robin Thede texted me “Wow! Congratulations on 2 nominations!!”, because she saw that I was nominated for our show and History of the World Part 2. But then about 5 minutes later I got another text from her saying “OMG!!! You got 3 nominations!” Then she called me screaming, and I was just speechless. My dad was also in town and sitting next to me on the couch when the news came in, so it made that day extra special. I am still just so honored at the recognition, but more importantly I really hope it helps to remind the world that editors are capable of editing any genre that they are passionate about when given the opportunity!
You have worked across several different genres, from period dramas to sketch comedies to true crime documentaries. How has your approach to editing differed or evolved across all these unique projects?
My approach to editing and my collaboration style is similar across projects, but I will say that having experience across various genres actually serves as a tool to help think outside the box when telling stories and solving problems that may arise, and that’s a crucial skill to bring into any editing room. Sometimes bringing a comedy technique to a music edit might help enhance a horror beat, or a long dramatic moment might emotionally hit harder if it’s played dry like a verité documentary. Understanding the different conventions makes your toolkit larger and that’s so valuable as an editor. In We Grown Now, for example, we go from a serious and slower-paced day at school straight to a more stylized museum sequence that feels faster-paced in its editing style. We bounce out of that faster pace into a more serious and tense scene that plays dry with no music and very long shots of Malik and his mother (played by Jurnee Smollett). Having a background in different genres really helped in finding different ways to play with the ebb and flow of our boys’ journey and convey the story we were trying to tell.
What can viewers expect to see from you next?
We Grown Now will be released in theaters on April 19th, and I have another exciting project that will be released later this year!
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