Tzvi is a writer director from NYC. His debut feature film, Killer of Men, made on a $10,000 budget, premiered at the Woodstock Film Festival, which Eric Kohn hailed as “one of the best debuts of 2024” and Oscar-nominated director Ramin Bahrani said “Tzvi has created the definition of low-budget auteur cinema.” Filmmaker magazine called it “an eerily austere serial killer drama, with a (possible) science fiction twist.” In his free time, Tzvi writes short fiction, essays on cinema, and runs the monthly screening series Film Underground, focused on democratizing cinema. He can be found on Instagram @tzvi_shadowplayfilms.
Before every film shoot, I write a letter to my beloved cast and crew. I do this as a morale booster, but I also believe that it’s important for everyone to be in touch with the “inner story” of the film, from lead actor to gaffer, producer to P.A. Below are two letters I penned for my next feature film, The Down, set in a dystopian future, where melancholy has been eradicated and an illicit drug arises that resurrects the extinct emotion.
March 6, 2025 – The Down shoot part 1:
Dear cast and crew,
When I was a young man, I was studying to become a Rabbi. In our seminary, we were prohibited from all secular entertainment, since it was seen as a distraction from our intensive studies. At first, I was in heaven – there was something so beautiful about being completely disconnected from the world, to be fully immersed in what was in front of me.
Halfway through the year, I began to lose my mind. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was plagued by bad dreams, and I felt myself crumbling from within. So, I phoned my brother and begged him to smuggle me some contraband music to listen to. He heeded my cry for help and sent an MP3 player loaded with various tunes. One song was “Mockingbird” by Eminem.
I had never heard of Eminem and knew nothing of his music. Within days I found myself listening to it on repeat, alone, in the dark of my dormitory room:
“Hailie, I know you miss your mom, and I know you miss your dad
I can see you’re sad, even when you smile, even when you laugh
I can see it in your eyes, deep inside you wanna cry”
Like a knife, the song cut through me, through the fortress of numbness I had swathed around myself. And I couldn’t stop. I became addicted to “the down.”
And all those years ago is when The Down first came to me. That’s when I realized I craved the sad. I began to buy bottled sadness in bulk, in songs and movies.
This sounds bleak and depressing, but there is a happy ending. For it was the knife that was sadness that made me realize what I had to do in life. That there was a different path laid out for me. For without those dark days in the dormitory, without …
“I can see it in your eyes, deep inside you wanna cry…”
… I would not be writing this letter to you, I wouldn’t know any of you, and I would have never made this film.
Perhaps sadness is a vital part of the human experience – but not the destination. It is the antechamber to the great hall, where mockingbirds are singing and all those we loved and lost are waiting with open arms. Or, as Eminem said:
“But no more worries, rest your head and go to sleep
Maybe one day we’ll wake up and this’ll all just be a dream”
Together, as a family, let us create a cinematic antechamber for some other child alone in a dark dormitory, so they too can one day enter the great hall.
May 7, 2025
Dear cast and crew,
Tomorrow marks one of the last days we will all be working together on this fever dream called The Down. This particular scene we’re shooting is special to me, since I dreamt it many moons ago, in different incarnations, but it’s always been there, one way or another.
There is so much sadness in this world – you can see it in the crooked lampshade on a wooden bedside table, in the lone grey suit enshrouded in plastic hanging at the dry cleaners, in a discarded green sofa waiting on a curb in Bushwick.
In this sequence, we meet people who are crushed by sadness, who surrender to The Down; instead of running from it, they let it course through them, they become one with it, and although one should not wish such plight on one’s worst enemy, there is something beautiful about this tragic affair, about someone who fully embraces sadness, without any denial, without any compromise, who can feel it at its most intense frequency, who see can it in every crack and crevice on the sidewalk, in rainwater slowly cascading down the storm drain, in the forgotten names of forgotten lovers scrawled on the side of a forgotten playground.
So let us together, as a family, go back into The Down one last time. And when we step out of it, perhaps we will see the world anew – and understand that sadness is no foe, sadness is no malady, rather sadness is … our forgotten lover.
Best and be well,
Tzvi
Featured image is a still from The Down; all images courtesy Tzvi.
