Filmmaker Interview with Claudia Dzienny and Alla May

Great to be interviewing you both! Please tell our readers a bit about yourselves.

Claudia Dzienny is an Australian writer-director and comedian whose work blends character-driven comedy with emotionally grounded storytelling.

Her latest feature, Zombucha!, is a romcom that explores relationships, fertility anxiety, career pressures, and the realities of millennial adulthood through an unconventional zombie twist. Working alongside longtime collaborator Emma Leonard, Claudia is part of a female-led creative team committed to telling contemporary stories from a distinctly female perspective.

CrossBorder Films is a London-based boutique sales studio and production company founded in 2025 by producer and screenwriter Alla May. Built on nearly two decades of experience across the European film and television landscape, CrossBorder champions distinctive stories with cultural specificity and global emotional pull.

Thanks! What’s the name of the latest film you are working on?

How would you describe this film to a new audience?

Dreaming of a glow-up before starting a family together, an aspirational millennial couple get their hands on a kombucha strain that promises to kickstart a garage-brewed empire. Plans take a turn when the neighbourhood’s new favourite kombucha becomes sentient. How’s your microbiome?

Why did you want to make this film?

Claudia: I remember when the writer Emma Leonard pitched me the logline and I thought to myself “I wish I had thought of that.” – a pretty good start for wanting to make a film! As we developed the script together over the following three years, the process was such a joy and we uncovered so many things around the moments and questions immediately before and after becoming a parent, all bundled up in this absurdly ‘aspirational millennial’ package. It felt so timely and cheeky. I found myself very quickly at the pointy end of the third trimester (production) and giving birth to this bonkers thing!

Were there any challenges making the film? If so, what were they and how did you overcome them?

Claudia: There are always going to be personalities on set that need more management than others as well as the feeling that you always want more time and more resources – and we had our fair share of all those challenges, but by far the largest, most fundamental challenge was that we shot the film at my house.

This would’ve been a relatively smaller deal if it weren’t for the fact that I have two young children, a husband and two cats that ended up moving into my mum’s place for three months. But it wasn’t just us there. My mum, my 94-year-old Ukrainian grandmother, my sister and her children, as well as her (now ex) husband, with whom my sister began going through a divorce in the middle of production, our editor and his partner, my mother-in-law from Ohio and my best friend’s dog who needed dog-sitting. We were all staying at my mum’s house.

I was waking up in the morning, trying to be a normal mum to my boys, going through footage from the day before with Julien, our editor, then going down to set (my actual house) to shoot for the day/night (read: lovingly destroy my own home) then go back up to mum’s and kiss my kids goodnight (awake or asleep, but already usually asleep) and go to bed myself. Needless to say, the floors were completely resurfaced after we wrapped filming, and the grass outside has never been the same since having 90 zombuchas writhing on it at 3am one night!

When we were in pre-production, I remember a ton of people saying ‘wow, that’s a very ambitious project for that budget’ – they were right. But I like ambitious. When we moved our family out of my house, a base crew of about 50 bumped in for two months. Ryan (our lead) was staying in the house from New Zealand for the long haul with sporadic overnight company from various members of our producing team, sound team and art department, to name a few who would sleep in my kids’ beds.

Thankfully our immediate neighbours were all absolute legends about us filming, but we did get an angry guy from up the street come and threaten us a few times… which was pretty rattling until we had this incredible art/life moment where we were rolling up for the scene in the film where the angry dad character comes and berates our two leads for throwing a Thirsty Virgin kombucha launch party – and the actual angry neighbour from up the street drives into shot for us all to see from the monitor and starts delivering basically the same lines as our angry dad character. We were all buckled over choking on tears, it was so hilariously perfect.

Also, growing about 100 SCOBYs (the slimey monster that makes every bottle of kombucha you’ve ever consumed) at short notice was a very specific and tricky one, but not impossible as it turns out! I ended up making a completely clear SCOBY when I was experimenting with caffeine tablets and simple syrup, but that’s a story for another time!

What stage is the film currently in? And how can people get to see it?

Festival circuit. Following its premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Zombucha! will have its international premiere at Raindance on 21 June.

Claudia: I love working with other people, telling stories and laughing together. It’s the best possible way to spend my workday.

I love that it seeps into my non-work day – that when I’m deep in a project, it seems like every interaction I have with people, positive or negative, informs the feelings I put on screen. Making movies makes me more conscious of human nature and, I like to think, more accepting of others’ decisions.

Always questioning why someone would behave the way the do or did, what brought them to that moment in time makes for more three-dimensional characters on screen, but also has a very positive, empathetic effect in my everyday life.

We all get bent out of shape, but it’s hard to stay angry at someone when you frame them into all the textured context of their life. I love to involve others in storytelling and watch how they react – a favourite of mine is to ask couples to tell me about their first kiss. Sounds cheesy, but there’s usually a bit of a different take from each partner.

They’re suddenly very vulnerable, and watching the way they fumble their way through that answer together is usually pretty delightful for all involved, and very very human. I like to think I’m making positive propaganda with my filmmaking.

Not all sunshine and lollipops, but letting characters be who they are on screen – the good/bad/ugly bits too – then finding a way to make people feel human. Hopefully it helps everyone look at their angry neighbour and go ‘ugh look at this asshole’!

Then maybe stop and think ‘they’re just out here giving it a go too’ …and then maybe take them a cookie at Christmas and you’ll end up sitting in their living room sharing a glass of champagne? In storytelling, I always come back to the core theme of ‘all we have is each other’ – and if I have an hour and a half of people’s undivided attention in a black box, I really love the idea of reminding them of that. And reminding myself.

I have a background in architecture, so the visual expression side of filmmaking is a huge pleasure for me. It sounds silly now, but I remember when I realised how you can make space unfold with a dolly shot and it knocked my socks off.

That said, watching people’s body language and micro expressions when they’re processing a change in real time is impossible not to connect with – that usually steals the show for me, even if they’re feeling those feelings in the most striking space on earth!

Give people the chance to reflect on their own lives. Shake them up. Elicit a reaction. Horror directors like to make people jump, I like to make people laugh… then ambush them with a dose of heart that they didn’t expect.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out in the film career you have pursued?

Claudia: Make stuff. Be prolific. Make everything you can. Don’t overcook it – just get out there. You will only learn this thing by doing it, making mistakes and making little moments of magic. Accept that there’ll be stuff that sucks. Don’t shy away from it. I still have all my old glorious garbage on my website because it’s who I am and how I got here. This isn’t your magnum opus. Nothing you make will ever be perfect – abandon that idea for now and just follow your core mission of making people feel stuff. What is it that you want to make people feel?

Who would you love to work with and why?

Claudia: Rose Byrn – a brilliant, hilarious actress with enormous range and the comedy chops that dreams are made of! Bonus points because she’s Aussie!

What’s next for you in your career after this film?

Claudia: A feature film that I have written based around an icebreaker camping trip for new school parents that gets gatecrashed by aliens. A comedy, but it turns out I love to flirt with genre.

As a boutique sales studio, what was it about Zombucha! that made you believe it could connect with audiences internationally?

Alla: When Danielle Redford, one of the co-producers of Zombucha!, first pitched us the concept at EFM, we immediately felt that it sounded cool, fresh, and very distinctive. Then we watched the screener — and honestly, it was love at first sight.

What stood out was the humour, the genre-bending energy, and the way the story almost breaks the rules while still having a huge heart. It felt bold and playful, but also emotionally honest. Beneath the comedy and the madness, the film touches on issues that millennials are going through not only in Australia, but in so many countries: burnout, ambition, identity, anxiety about the future, and the search for meaning in a world that often feels absurd.

That combination is exactly what we love: a story that is entertaining and commercially alive, but also emotionally relevant. We believed international audiences would connect with that freshness and sincerity.

CrossBorder focuses on films from underrepresented markets. What qualities are you looking for when deciding which projects to champion?

Alla: We are genre-agnostic, but we are completely story-driven. For us, the story means everything.

Because of my background in script development and writing, it is very hard to surprise me with a genre film or a commercial film. I know the mechanics, I know the expected twists, I know how these stories are usually built. So when something genuinely surprises me, I pay attention.

We are looking for stories with heart, meaning, and depth. Stories that can entertain, but also reveal something about a different culture, mindset, or emotional reality. I am especially drawn to films that take risks with tone or genre — films that bend expectations, cross boundaries, or suddenly take you somewhere you did not expect.

For us, underrepresented does not mean niche or small. It often means undiscovered, under-seen, or underestimated. We want to champion films that have a strong voice and a clear reason to exist.

Why do you do this work? What does the role of a sales agent and producer mean to you personally?

When we launched CrossBorder Films with my co-founder Olga, the company was initially built around a development slate I had previously written and created. The long-term plan is still to produce that material over the next few years, while also discovering and supporting projects created by other filmmakers.

Because Olga comes from a marketing background, I pitched her the idea of also launching a sales arm — but doing it differently. I wanted us to help producers in a more thoughtful and personal way than what is often expected from traditional sales agents.

For us, representing a film is not just about taking a title to market and seeing what happens. We treat every film as if we are co-producers of the next stage of its life. That means care, strategy, honesty, and emotional investment. This approach was very intentional, and it came partly from my own negative experiences with sales teams in the past. I know how painful it can be when a film is not handled with enough attention or respect.

So the work is personal to me. A sales agent should be a bridge between the filmmaker and the world — someone who protects the film, understands its value, and helps it find the audience it deserves.

Looking at the current independent film landscape, what gives you hope about the future of emerging filmmakers?

Alla: The current independent landscape is still very difficult, and in many ways it remains unfair. The same risk-averse structures are still there, and many of the “big guys” at the top continue to follow familiar formulas rather than take real chances on new voices.

But what gives me hope is that filmmakers now have more tools to build an audience themselves, especially through social media and direct community-building. You can start creating awareness around an independent film long before it is released. That is powerful.

I also think audiences are proving again and again that they want something fresh. They are open to new faces, new voices, and new stories — not only franchises, sequels, or repeated formulas for so-called commercial success.

Right now, elevated horror is performing very strongly, but I also believe there is huge potential in crossover genres, romcoms and even in satires or ordinary human dramas, if they are given access to audiences. The frustrating part is that many buyers do not even want to test something fresh. But that also pushes us, as a sales company, to be more creative, more strategic, and more persistent in how we position films.

That gives me hope: the audience is there. We just have to find smarter ways to reach them.

What inspired your film career? Were there any specific films or events that really lit a fire within you?

Alla: I think my passion for storytelling began quite early. When I was in middle school, I was writing essays and reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the Strugatsky brothers at the same time. That combination really shaped my taste — from psychological drama to philosophy to science fiction and genre storytelling. It gave me a very broad sense of what stories can do.

I also grew up watching great films on VHS. The town I am from did not have a cinema until I was twelve, so most of my film education came from a VHS rental place. That is how I discovered Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Tarantino, Sidney Lumet, Garry Marshall, Paul Thomas Anderson, and many others.

But one of my strongest memories is watching Tarkovsky when I was only six years old. I was completely hypnotised. I think Solaris was the film that made me want to work in cinema. I did not know exactly what role I wanted to have or how I would get there, but I remember thinking: I want to make films that can make people feel like this.

That feeling never really left me.

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