*Courtesy of Louisa Connolly-Burnham / Thimble Films 2024.*

With awards season just around the corner, Top Film caught up with writer, director and star of the highly acclaimed short film Sister Wives.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham’s Sister Wives has collected accolade after accolade, winning big at festivals such as the HollyShorts Film Festival (Best LGBTQIA+ Film Win), Brighton Rocks Film Festival (Best Director Win), Sunrise Film Festival (Best British Film / Best Director Win), and the Cindependent Film Festival (Best International Film Winner).

TOP FILM: How did this project come to you? I believe you watched a documentary not too long ago that inspired you to make this film.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “It’s called Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey by a group of female filmmakers. I really, really loved the documentary. I was so fascinated and became a bit obsessed with this community [Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or ‘FLDS’], so I started doing my own research on them and realized that nobody has made much about them.”

Connolly-Burnham referenced ‘Under The Banner Of Heaven’ (2022) starring Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones, as the FLDS are briefly showcased.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “I was so fascinated by this group of people because the men can have as many wives as they want — some of them have as many as 80 wives. I just got curious really. I was wondering, if in any moments of loneliness or abandonment, whether any of the women had turned to each other. There was also the aspect of gorgeous costume design and hair, wig, makeup. I felt like there was a lot to dive into, and I wanted to be the person to do it.”

TOP FILM: Why was it important to show a queer love story in this narrative?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “The queer love story felt like a natural route to go down because this society is running out of men — they’re basically kicking out all the young boys. The older men want the younger women. There’s actually a really bad epidemic of young male mormon homelessness in Utah from this group of people. There isn’t enough men to go around, so naturally there must be love stories between some of the women — whether it’s out of necessity, whether it’s out of being closeted. So it felt like a really natural direction for me to go in.”

Connolly-Burnham discussed being queer and how that impacted her decision to craft the film.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “I’m also a queer filmmaker, and I’ve wanted to make a film within the LGBTQI space. When I watched the documentary and that idea formed, I thought; now’s the time!

*Louisa Connolly-Burnham as Kaidence, Courtesy of Louisa Connolly-Burnham / Thimble Films 2024.*

TOP FILM: You’re so passionate about this project. How do you ensure the cast and crew share the same enthusiasm as you?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “A lot of the films I make are incredibly dark and quite heavy. But I make a conscious effort for the set not to feel like that. I’m also very lucky that I’ve worked with a lot of the same crew on all my films. They’re my friends really… We hang out off set and on set. We always have open communication, there is no hierarchy on set. Everybody is free and open to query things, to challenge things. We want to make it a safe space.”

On Connolly-Burnham’s prior films, a mental health coordinator and intimacy coordinators were employed to ensure a safe working environment at all times.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “My sets are often ninety-percent women because we’re often making female-led stories. That always naturally creates a type of sisterhood. I come from an acting background so I think I’m quite energetic. I try to lead with a lot of positivity and energy and fun — sometimes people can take it all a bit too seriously. These films, they’re not real, we’re playing pretend so let’s have some fun with it.”

TOP FILM: You’ve known Mia McKenna-Bruce (co-star) for years at this point, how did that friendship begin?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “We have a kids TV channel in over here [England] called CBBC, and we grew up together on that channel on different shows. But I’ve known her since 2012, so we have a lovely level of comfortability and safety and silliness.”

*Mia McKenna-Bruce as Galilee, Courtesy of Louisa Connolly-Burnham / Thimble Films 2024.*

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “And Michael [Fox] who plays our husband, I went to primary school with him. So I’ve known him for twenty-five years.”

*Michael Fox as Jeremiah, Courtesy of Louisa Connolly-Burnham / Thimble Films 2024.*

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “I introduced Mia and Michael in a rehearsal in London before we went to shoot, so they could get to know each other a bit more. It was really useful to have that level of friendship.”

TOP FILM: When you’re writing the screenplay, did you always have them in mind for these characters?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “They were both my number one choices to be honest — from the moment I started writing it. When we got them it was a dream come true. They were everything I thought they would be and more. They elevated those characters to new stratospheres.”

TOP FILM: You wrote, directed, and starred in this project. Did you feel like only you could tackle this story because of your specific vision for it?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “I’m sure there are lots of people who could’ve tackled the story, I just knew how I wanted to do it. I’ve done the acting and directing thing quite a few times, so it didn’t feel like a hugely daunting task. I will say that Sister Wives was a big beast for a short film, so there was definitely more to think about than ever before, but I knew exactly how I wanted to do it. It made sense for me to do it. It didn’t feel too overwhelming.”

The director commented on the surprising reveal within ‘Sister Wives,’ when a cellphone is brought out by Galilee — after the audience is convinced the story takes place in a bygone era. Connolly-Burnham was heavily influenced by M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Village’ (2004) for this particular moment.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “The Village is one of my favorite films ever. I’ll never forget the moment those characters stumbled onto the road and a car goes by — just thought that was so cool. Love that you can trick an audience like that — because they love it as well, they want to be surprised. The thing is, with the community the film [Sister Wives] is based on, from the outside looking in, you could be tricked or confused into thinking that they are living in a different time period. It’s easier to watch films like Sister Wives if you think it’s a period drama because you have that natural element of time to distance you from the trauma. It makes the trauma and travesties more palatable if you think oh, it’s not happening now. But it is. The FLDS do live like that today in 2024. These things are happening.”

Connolly-Burnham comparatively used Sister Wives to touch on aspects of what’s happening in today’s modern world in regards to women’s rights:

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “This isn’t worlds away anymore. This is running in parallel to real life.”

Like all great films, the setting in Sister Wives is a major player in crafting the tone and feel of the short.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “We found it on Airbnb. We shot it in Surrey [outside London], which is bonkers! I knew we wanted a log cabin — I just wanted to lean into the idea that it [setting and story] was old. When I found that log cabin on Airbnb, I was like; that’s perfect. It was on water, and before finding that location I had written a scene of them jumping in water. So when I found that log cabin essentially floating in a lake I was like brilliant! We shoved an American flag into it and everyone seems to have bought it.

The also crew got immersed the atmosphere:

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “There was ten cabins on the sight. The whole crew stayed there. So we were literally in a cult [jokingly]. We were living and breathing this set. I slept in Kaidence’s bed. It was amazing.

TOP FILM: There was a big absence of score in this film until the love scene. I noticed a lot of the score that does come in is electronic. We [audience] would assume the score would use traditional orchestral instruments but there’s a lot of ambience and synthwave that are fused into this narrative. Can you explain why you made those choices?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “I feel like everyone approaches period drama similarly. Like you said, more orchestral, classical, strings, piano, flute. I wanted to see something different. I wanted it to be something contrasting — add a layer of it’s actually 2003, not 1803… I also wanted it to feel a little bit sexier, almost like a second heartbeat beating in your chest when the synth comes in and the bass — it should feel electronic and contrastingly contemporary. I feel like that music represented those women and what they were feeling.

TOP FILM: Am I right in saying the composer is your fiancé?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: [Jokingly showcases ring] “We’d like to get married next year but we’re shooting the feature version of Sister Wives next year. I’m trying to decide: how many gigantic projects can I take on in one year? And I don’t want my wedding or debut feature to overshadow each other!

TOP FILM: How did you direct him?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “With great frustration and impatience! I love my fiancé very much but he would agree that we don’t work together very well. We’re both very similar in our passion and ideas. He’s also not a film composer, he’s a musician, pop-indie songwriter-producer. He has to adapt to what it means to be a film composer. I also have to be patient that he’s new to it. But no one makes film scores like him. He’s made four out of five of my film scores because he’s the only one who seems to deliver exactly what I want.”

James New (Connolly-Burnham’s fiancé) composed Sister Wives after he was sent four clips from the film by the director, accompanied by specific notes to follow. New also received a custom song playlist by Connolly-Burnham to assist his creativity and set the tone for the score.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “I have a musical background as well. James and I are actually in a band called Virens together, and I’m a singer. He loves and hates that about me because I’m incredibly picky with music.”

TOP FILM: Everyone has an American accent in this film, did you do any accent training beforehand?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “Mia is a wizard at accents — one of those actors that just gets it. And Michael went to an amazing drama school here in London called the [The Royal] Central School Of Speech and Drama, so he’s had training. And I was just hoping for the best really!

TOP FILM: Are we going to see any of your original songs in your future film projects?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “We actually pitched a Virens song for the finale of Sister Wives but it just didn’t quite work. And you do have to think; I’m writing it, directing it, producing it, and acting in it… and I also sing the theme tune? [Laughs] I think we can relinquish some control here.”

The writing for the Sister Wives feature is complete, and the full-length film is currently casting, alongside initial conversations with distributors, sales agents, and production companies.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “We’ve had lots of interest. It’s really exciting.”

The filmmaker also spoke on the crazy early stages of getting the film off the ground:

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “We knew we wanted to shoot in January because you get all the best crew — no one has any other jobs in January. We were aware that the SAG strike had finally been fixed and that all of these projects that had been sitting and ready to go again were about to begin. And that also included losing our actors as well as our crew. So we really wanted to shoot in January. I only got the team together in November.”

Adding to the chaos, the journey to receive funding proved to be a stress-inducing aspect of journey. Connolly-Burnham wrote Sister Wives in January 2023 and did a lengthy funding application process with the British Film Institute (BFI), which the director was not granted.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “When I didn’t get BFI I lost steam with it. In England, there’s only so many funding initiatives, so in my mind I wasn’t, at that point, hugely educated on; well if you don’t get BFI what the hell do you do? I’d already done a Kickstarter for a previous film. I didn’t want to do that again because there’s only so many times you can ask your Nan and your Dad and your cousin for a tenner!

On a more simplistic note to wrap the interview, we posed everyone’s favorite question to the director; What is your favorite film from 2024?

Louisa Connolly-Burnham: “Oh, can I have two? I love ‘Kneecap’ and ‘Love, Lies, Bleeding.’

Sister Wives is a heavy contender for Oscar season, and prelimary Academy voting begins on December 9, 2024 at 9am PT. The Oscar hopeful could land a nomination in the Academy Award category for Best Short Film (Live Action), after taking home several awards and landing even more nominations across international film festivals in 2024.