Antonia Bogdanovich is a film director. In 2014, she expanded her short, the critically acclaimed My Left Hand Man into a full-length feature, Phantom Halo, which she co-wrote. It was a New York Times Critic Pick and was released in theaters and VOD in June 2015. A Director’s Cut of that film, newly retitled Sleep No More, is now out in theaters and on digital. She was a co-executive producer on She’s Funny That Way (2015) starring Jennifer Anniston and Owen Wilson and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and produced The Phenom (2016), starring Paul Giamatti and Ethan Hawke, and Six L.A. Love Stories (2018). She is set to direct the dramedy The Spectacular Brink of Life, about a Catholic boarding school for geniuses who build a series of rockets to in an attempt to reach heaven just outside earth’s atmosphere, which is currently in pre-production.
I never saw myself in the director’s chair. Never. That was a space that only my father filled. Scrap that. Let’s talk about the present. That’s where I want to live now.
But we do have to jump back in time a few years to get us to the present, so …
I moved back to my hometown of Los Angeles in 2019. I wanted to spend more time with my father, and was also tired of commuting from NorCal for meetings and work. Even though I have a love-hate relationship with L.A., I’ve always felt most at home in Santa Monica, moments from the ocean. I love the dirt, the grime, the edginess and the moments where people can be kind and smile at you. And seconds later, you can get cut off in traffic and give each other the finger.
The pandemic hit in 2020, and a WWII project I was set to direct fell apart. I got a 12-week old puppy, a trampoline for my son, who was in middle school, and marched along with fellow Angelinos during the Black Lives Matter protests after the tragedy that befell George Floyd and his family. I yelled at the rioters and looters who were setting fire to the historic Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, screaming: “Hey, you can’t do that – I saw Cypress Hill, the Circle Jerks and Joan Jett here!!!” When they started aggressively chucking beer cans at me, I realized I was on a bicycle in a mini skirt and this was a stupid very stupid idea. I took off and never looked back.
And I waited for my life to start. Life without filmmaking was so vacant.
I had to constantly remind myself what my mother had finally uttered to me about my film career, two weeks before she died: Never give up. That’s the key!
In January 2021, when local cafes had just started to reopen, I was introduced to a Serbian producer having coffee at a table nearby. We were introduced by someone who knew I was a filmmaker and that my grandfather was a Serb born in the former Yugoslavia.
Goran Milev was genuine, funny and passionate, and he loved my first full-length feature film, Phantom Halo. He wanted to put it back out, as the Director’s Cut – I was very reluctant and shut down that idea quickly. So, we started to develop a script I had about high-end international sex-trafficking. This was my passion project, a way to bring attention to sex slavery and also tell a story about two sisters trying to save each other in the criminal underworld of the international sex trade. We got some interest, and some financiers circling. And I dreamed that my life as a filmmaker would begin again. If I could only get back into that director’s chair, my life would be set.
Almost a year went by, though, and nothing happened. So, I secretly decided I was going to quit and signed up to get my certification to teach high-school science. Science was secure. It had equations I could solve. It had mysteries that had been discovered, deciphered, and proven. Why did I keep my desire to teach science a secret from my father and my family? Because I knew my dad would be really disappointed, and he would know how dark my life had become. He knew how hard I’d worked and I didn’t want to tell him I was giving up. Two days before my certification courses were to begin, I got a call in the middle of the night. The paramedics told me my father was unresponsive at the scene. The drive from Santa Monica to Toluca Lake takes 30 minutes without traffic; I got there in 10 minutes.
My father had already passed, but his body was still warm. It was gut-wrenching. I collapsed over his body, unable to comprehend what was happening.
I never made it to my first day of classes. I took care of family business, the press and the funeral. One thing was very clear: I had no business out of show business. Quitting film wasn’t an option – not now, not ever. At first, I thought I was driven in the spirit continuing my mother and father’s legacy. I know now that I was doing it for myself. This is who I am and I am done fighting it. I spent most of the rest of that year dealing with my father’s complicated estate. But all that time, I was writing.
At the end of that first year, my friend Goran sent me a surprise video in the middle of the night. It was a new ending to Phantom Halo. He had taken the time to play around with the edit, and I loved it. We were off to the races. We would get the director’s cut out and I would retitle it Sleep No More, the title my father insisted was “the only title for this film.” And he was right. There were many hiccups the first time the film was released and so it really never got out into the world – many independent films can suffer the same fate. I was so thrilled this film would have a second chance. Hollywood is filled with second chances, some even get third chances.
It was about that time that I was introduced to Josh Russell, a producer and writer who was based in North Carolina. He wrote a brilliant script that I’m attached to direct. He treated me like an equal, a fellow collaborator, and because of that I was able to prove to myself that I was born to do this job. I was ready to sit in the director’s chair again!
I now realize my life has always been in session, and I don’t have to continually live in my past anymore, filled with film lore, heartbreaks and tragedies. We can all create our own destinies, if we get out of our own way and just do the work. Whether we are actively shooting a film or not, we are filmmakers – that’s just a fact and I’m sticking to it!
