Interview: ‘An Army of Women’ Director Julie Lunde Lillesæter On Re-introducing Austin To Its Own Landmark Sexual Assault Lawsuit [SXSW 2024]

SXSW has a long tradition of programming Texas stories into their Film & TV Festival, but fewer films were fit for a more powerful world premiere than An Army of Women. One of this year’s Documentary Feature Competition selections, the film follows an Austin-set class-action lawsuit that dared to suggest an undeniable truth: that a discriminatory bias against women is the driving force behind why sexual assault is rarely prosecuted by federal authorities. Though it made headlines on a national scale, many Austin residents are likely unaware of the case and, more importantly, the battle 15 women made to have their assault experiences – and the experiences of countless other plaintiffs – be acknowledged in a court of law.

This is what happened to film producer and director Julie Lunde Lillesæter. She moved to Austin from Norway and was living there for a year before learning about the lawsuit, which brought a dark reality to her otherwise comfortable life living in what she thought was a progressive city. She soon became interested in exploring the lawsuit’s future through her skillset, filmmaking, and worked closely with the film’s subjects to portray both the scope of the lawsuit’s importance as well as the intimate details of women continuously processing their own life stories in response to adversity. The result is a moving film that gives voice to countless women who had yet to have their stories be fully heard.

Geek Vibes Nation sat down with Lillesæter to discuss the project’s origins and how she approached portraying the film’s wide array of subjects. Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Last year, I remember watching Plan C at SXSW, which was about continued access to the abortion pill, and it was very powerful watching that film in Texas for obvious reasons. I felt a similar feeling watching this film, but even more so because this is 100% an Austin story. For this film to have played in front of a SXSW audience was really, really powerful. This is all to preface the question: what was the reaction when you learned that this was going to play at SXSW and what do you hope Austin audiences got out of this film?

I was very happy when I learned that we were going to SXSW. Like you said, it’s something really special to screen a film like this, especially in the city where the film takes place. So, it’s really meaningful to me, and it’s very meaningful to all the women who are in the film. I worked on this film for almost five years and there are still so many people in Austin who haven’t heard about the lawsuit, who haven’t heard about all this effort, or the changes that are happening. I really hope, after screening at SXSW, that more people in Austin understood what was going on and that this amazing lawsuit actually happened here.

You’re right, the world doesn’t really know about it, including myself before watching the film. When were you introduced to it? I’m interested in your timeline from learning about it to then deciding to direct a film about it.

I’d lived in Austin for about a year when I learned about the lawsuit. I’m originally from Norway, but I moved to Austin with my husband who’s American. At first, I really loved Austin. It felt very safe and nice and progressive. Then, I learned about the lawsuit on a local news story. I was really shocked. I had naively thought that when assaults happen there’s a system in place to handle them properly [and] make sure it doesn’t happen again. I read this lawsuit and I realized that the system is really, really failing women, and there didn’t seem to be much interest from the police or prosecutors to change it. The lawsuit received quite a bit of pushback and I became interested in following it to see what the outcome might be and to see whether or not they could succeed. That was about a year after the lawsuit had been filed, so not that much had happened yet. They were waiting for a judge to make a decision on whether or not to dismiss it. That’s when I came in. I met some of the plaintiffs who were introduced to me by the lawyers and we started filming pretty quickly.

That brings up a whole other question. Access to the subject is crucial and you have to establish a relationship with them for the film to work. Sometimes that can go really well, sometimes it doesn’t go super well. Was there any hesitancy when you first spoke with them? It’s a personal issue and having a bunch of cameras in front of you can make that even more daunting.

When I met with the lawyers [Jennifer Ecklund and Elizabeth Myers], I wanted to understand what they thought. Did they think a film like this, about their work and about the plaintiffs’ work, was something they wanted and if that was something the plaintiffs wanted? Both of them were really interested in the idea of documenting all of this work that was happening. Then, they decided to ask the plaintiffs if anyone was interested in meeting with me. The ones who were were Marina [Garrett] and Hanna [Senko], who then became the lead protagonists of the film. I think they thought it was an interesting thing to be a part of. Both of them wanted attention to the issue, but I saw that for them it was also a way of processing what they had been through. So, they were both extremely generous with me and let me join them for their speaking engagements and advocacy work and then, after a while, more personal life things.

What you just said about processing things, that becomes a part of the film’s narrative. Did you anticipate that?

No, I did not. It was very moving to see. I think, for Hanna, having a camera with her and having to always put words to her experience and her thoughts and her emotions forced her to process things. It was really wonderful as a filmmaker to be allowed into that process. We spent a lot of time together, me and Hanna. We filmed a lot of things and you only see just a little bit of it in the film. It has been a really beautiful journey with her, seeing her process her own experience and coming to terms with her assault and also accepting that what happened to her actually was wrong and should have been taken seriously.

I think that having Hanna and Marina as the protagonists must have come naturally given their involvement, but I imagine it was a more daunting task to capture the scale and scope of all the other plaintiffs without stretching the story too thin. I’d love to hear a little bit about how you went about featuring them, not just in terms of the pacing but also in terms of aesthetics and editing.

It was challenging. I knew that Marina and Hanna would be the lead protagonists, the ones that take us through the story, but I also knew that the group was much bigger. We invited any plaintiff who was interested to be interviewed. Everyone had the chance to do so, and some chose to join and others didn’t. That was, of course, completely fine. It’s a lot to be a part of a film like this. One of the thoughts from Jennifer and Elizabeth was to put together a diverse group that had very different experiences with sexual assault in order to prove that, no matter what, no cases were accepted by the courts. Age or race didn’t matter, nor if it was an assault with a stranger or not. They really put together a group of very different assaults and women from different backgrounds. I wanted to show that. Stylistically, I didn’t want it to be sit-down interviews, talking heads style, because it is a really information-heavy film. It has to have some sort of visual representation because otherwise the viewer will just be bombarded with dialogue. I thought that the one thing they all have in common are all these documents and papers and police files, so we were able to blend it together with Mary Ruth’s paintings and her case files and make that a recurring theme in the film.

There’s one other character in this film that really stuck out to me and that is former Austin District Attorney Margaret Moore. At the very end of the film, you include a statement from her in response to the film itself, which I found to be an incredibly bold decision. I think that a lot of documentaries are coy to feature the opposing side, even in a statement. How did you decide to include that and, as an extension of that question, how did you approach acknowledging her in the story without taking the limelight away from the other subjects?

For me, it was important that this is a story told from the plaintiffs’ perspectives, so it didn’t make sense for me to have an interview with Margaret Moore. I wanted to show everything through the eyes of the plaintiffs, and they weren’t going to go out and interview Margaret Moore. They didn’t even get to meet with her. She didn’t want to meet with any of the survivors. So, I decided that I would show her in the same way they saw her, which was through the comments that she made through the media. I wanted to include her in a way that you would understand why she made the decisions that she did. I could have easily cherry-picked some quite shocking quotes from her, I could have done that to make her more of a villain. It might have been more interesting as a viewer, but I also wanted people to understand her reasoning for why she wasn’t taking these cases, which was mostly rooted in Texas law. Then, as for the statement, I think it might be a bit of a European thing. [chuckles] It’s quite common in Europe to give people the right to reply when there are accusations against them. I know I wasn’t required to do it. The police department and the district attorney’s office settled the cases and gave official apologies. They acknowledged what happened, but Margaret Moore was out of the DA’s office before the settlements. I felt like she was the only one who didn’t actually have the chance to either apologize or say what she felt about it. I thought, “We should just ask her.” I think it’s interesting for viewers to understand her perspective.

Do you think your experience being Norwegian informed any other parts of your process on this film?

I’ve been thinking about whether an American filmmaker would do this film in a different way. I don’t really know what the answer is, but I do know that this is a film that’s going to be broadcast in Norway and Sweden and Germany and France and Denmark. I know that it needs to make sense to viewers there. They don’t know the American system. They don’t know what a district attorney is. I knew that I had to make the story simple enough that it would be understandable for a European audience. I think that might have influenced the decisions I made and how I told the story in that it had to be more of a universal story.

An Army of Women held its World Premiere as part of the Documentary Feature Competition section of the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.