Meet Millie Y. Xu, Winner of the Focus Features Best Film Award

Millie Y. Xu won the Focus Features Award for Best Film for THE VISIT at the First Look Awards ceremony.

In the psychological horror film, THE VISIT, a withdrawn teenager Edith (Eloise Payet) struggles to acknowledge that her mother is terminally ill until a gruesome stranger uproots her unconsciousness.

We asked Xu to tell us a little about the inspiration for her film, the artists who influenced her, and her plans for the future.

Follow her on Instagram: IG: @millllllllllie @the_visit_film

How did you find Marie Lessel’s screenplay and what made you want to direct it?

THE VISIT was a very personal story for both Marie and me. I was competing for a chance to direct one of the three graduate capstone films at USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2023 and I was looking for a script to pitch. Marie saw my director’s reel and kindly reached out to me. She told me that she really liked my style and had a script that might be up my alley. That was the first draft of THE VISIT. The script at the time was quite different from what the movie is now, and since it was a first draft, it obviously needed work. My body froze when I saw the words, “the Pale Figure,” on the pages for the first time. Words, images, sounds, and all sorts of ideas instantly flew into my mind. I was gushing with excitement, couldn’t stop thinking about the Pale Figure character, and had multiple dreams about her—she just reminded me so much of my grandma. I saw making THE VISIT as a chance to cope with the long-suppressed dread, grief, and regret I felt when I lost my grandma. As I continued to read, I just knew that Marie felt the same towards her lost one when she wrote the script. I realized that I had to direct this movie. Grief is private and universal at the same time.

Your film brilliantly uses the horror genre to tell a deeply personal story. What makes horror so interesting to you as a genre?

As a director, my niche genres are psychological fiction and horror. I was obsessed with the horror genre at a very young age. That’s the short answer. Now, the long answer is that horror taps into fear, and to me, fear is the demon behind all negative emotions—anger, sadness, hate, shame, grief, you name it. Negative emotions and fears are what make us unique. Think about it. Happy things are quite universal—money, sex, power, material goods, etc., but each and every one of us fears different things on earth. When I was little, my parents never really taught me how to cope with my fears and negative emotions. One of my dad’s favorite sayings was, “Crying is useless and emotions are a sign of weakness.” So that was exactly what I did. I denied my emotions. But I think we can all agree that the tricky thing with hiding negative emotions is that the longer you suppress them, the more they are going to come back and haunt you. If burying my emotions didn’t work, I needed to find another way to channel, embrace, and explore my negativity. That was when I got into the horror genre. Writing and making horror are my ways to cope with and examine my negativity. I channel all my fears, negative emotions, twisted thoughts, and sometimes unfathomable obsessions into my work. Filmmaking is my therapy, and, by doing it, I celebrate my dark side.

How did you find your cast?

I had a casting director because we had an unreasonably short amount of time for pre-production and casting had to happen quickly. The creature character was the hardest to find because when casting started, we already designed the creature's looks and my special effects makeup team was already working on some of the prosthetic pieces. That meant whoever we cast not only needed to be good at creature acting, but she also needed to meet the requirements for the body. Luckily, I met Nikiya Palombi through my casting director. She did her creature crawls and it gave me the creeps! She was so incredibly in sync with what I had in mind for the Pale Figure character that I even had her play the Mom. The Mom/Pale Figure character is a complicated and multi-faceted one—she acts like a monster but has human intentions. Nikiya brought that out perfectly in her performance.

Eloise Payet who played Eddie was also discovered through my casting director. She had such great instincts and unique charisma that I knew she would immediately get the audience on her side. Both actresses wonderfully brought my vision to life and I’m grateful that I had them on the project.

What was your biggest lesson working on THE VISIT?

Have a clear vision, plan ahead, and know when to fight for your vision.

I have an auteur style and approach to filmmaking and a strong, vivid vision of the films I decide to direct. As such, it sometimes gets hard to convince people to believe in some of my “crazy” ideas. For example, the surreal dream sequences and the mutant cockroach motif in the film were additions to the original script that not everyone was a fan of, and it was difficult to execute them because of realistic and logistic reasons. Every time I considered giving up on those ideas, I reminded myself of what my producer, Søren Anderson, told me on day one—he believes in me and wants me to stand strong in my vision, even at times when I don't have everyone's vote. Søren's words slowly became my motto throughout the entire process, and I'm glad I took an unwavering stance in my vision because the dream sequences and the cockroach motif turned out to be some of the best elements in the film.

As an emerging filmmaker, who are your influences?

People! It's the people I meet in my day-to-day life and my reflections of my authentic experience with them.

I grew up in different parts of the world, so I have a natural empathy for diverse human beings and stories. I love stories that are authentic, novel, and sometimes outlandish, but also have universal themes that speak to the sophisticated and paradoxical truth of humanity, emotions, and human relationships (both intra and interpersonal).

I believe the essence of film as a medium is stories, and the essence of stories is people. People are so unique and different. People are amazing. People excite me.

I also take much inspiration from filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky, Robert Eggers, and Ari Aster.

What was the first film you saw that made you want to be a filmmaker?

There were two films. When I was 4 years old, on a very hot summer night, I was playing with dress-up dolls with my twin sister, Yuki, in the living room. Our dad was watching TV and babysitting us. Dad fell asleep and the sports program he was watching eventually ended. What followed on the TV was a screening of the movie Chucky, which was incredibly inappropriate for a preschooler like me to watch. Since my dad was asleep, nobody turned the TV off. I obviously got really scared watching the movie, but my eyes couldn't move away from the screen since I was so intrigued. So, with my dad's loud snoring and my twin sister playing with dolls, the 4-year-old me finished watching a horror movie on my own and in tears. When my dad woke up and found out I was crying, he told me that whenever I see a horror movie in the future, I should imagine that there are dozens of people holding a camera, equipment, props, and lights, making that movie—it isn't real. I was still scared, but I got even more intrigued (I was at an age when I really thought there were tiny people dancing and dying in that big black box called TV.) I think that hot summer night was one of the most life-changing moments in my life, because I later became a filmmaker, and my twin sister became an apparel designer. I fell in love with movie magic.

The second film that significantly influenced me was Midsommar by Ari Aster. I was already majoring in filmmaking in college but at the time I hadn't really thought much about becoming a filmmaker professionally. Midsommar blew my mind. It was so different. I love how Aster interweaves stories about interpersonal relationships and human empathy into a horror narrative and creates a deeply layered story loaded with intricate details that work as a means of exposition. The way he explores dark, twisted, and complex themes of grief, trauma, and the deterioration of sanity in insane circumstances was really inspiring to me. I have wanted to become a film director ever since.

What does winning the Focus Features Best Film Award mean to you professionally and personally?

Winning the Focus Features Best Film Award isn't like winning any other award. It is rewarding and encouraging to say the least. It tells me that all the effort I and my crew put in and all the hardships we had to overcome were worth it. It tells me I have a voice and I might have an audience to market to. And it tells me I'm on the right path and I should keep doing what I'm doing. Making films is hard, and becoming a film director professionally is even harder, but I think I'm now one big step closer to my dream. Thank you, Focus Features.

Are you working on a feature film? What is it about?

I'm developing two features, and one of them is going to be my debut feature. Firstly, I'm adapting THE VISIT into a feature. You can view the short as a proof of concept. The feature is going to have the same status quo and ending as the short, but there are many thematic moments and complex relationships from the short I want to explore and expand on in the feature—for example, the backstory of Eddie and Mom's relationship, the absent fatherly figure, Eddie's precociousness, characterization of the Pale Figure, and the liminal horror elements in the film.

The other feature I'm developing is also a psychological horror film called MAMA (working title). It comes from this thought that I've always had in mind: when you love someone so deeply that when they die, if you can choose, would you want to bury them in a cold tomb, or would you rather keep their dead body at home and care for them as if they’re still living? Crazy idea, right? The Torajan tribe in the mountains of Indonesia literally does that, and that inspired me to write MAMA. The story of MAMA follows an emotionally troubled and socially isolated 32-year-old man, Tommy, who has "mommy issues" and shares an unhealthy but symbiotic relationship with his toxic, abusive mother. Upon his mother's sudden passing at the beginning of the film, Tommy secretly harbors his mother's dead body and hoards her belongings, feeding, cuddling, and nurturing her corpse like a child, as if it could come back alive—until the dead body physically becomes a monster. In the film, Tommy stuck in his false reality and obsessively caring for the dead body, is unknowingly raising a monster. It all builds up to the final moment when the mom monster becomes so powerful that she intends to consume Tommy and take him back into her womb, which is when Tommy realizes that by clinging to his traumatic past with his mother, he gave birth to the mom monster himself. Now the question becomes, will Tommy ever let go of his mother's death and forgive the scars she gave him, or will he be completely consumed by the shadows she left behind? Tonally, MAMA is The Whale meets Barbarian.

Both features are really personal to me. THE VISIT deals with my poignant experience of how I lost my grandma, and MAMA touches on my relationship with my mother, addressing issues such as obsessive mom-child attachment and emotional incest. I hold both projects near and dear to my heart.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.