Oscars 2024: Nazrin Choudhury On One Mother’s Urgency to Cross State Lines for an Abortion in ‘Red, White and Blue’

We interact with strangers every day, but we don’t know what they are going through. It’s a theme that is threaded through a few of this year’s shortlisted short films, but Nazrin Choudhury has cultivated a snapshot of an increasing problem in the United States with her Live Action Short Film contender Red, White and Blue. Abortion has always been a hot-button topic in this country, but Choudhury yanks it back to a humane and homegrown level. Starring a remarkably restrained Brittany Snow, Red, White and Blue shows how one single mother races against the clock to find the healthcare that she needs.

**We go into some spoilers in our conversation, and Red, White and Blue should be experienced as blindly as possible. We have linked Choudhury’s film below. Please watch it and then scroll back up to read our conversation.**

At the start of our conversation, I expressed just how deeply Choudhury’s film affected me. There is such an honesty to how she introduces us to one family who could look like any family you know. Brittany Snow’s Rachel holds a positive pregnancy test in her hands in the first few moments of the film, and we can feel her frustration. I know that I knew dozens of women who looked like Rachel or who might find themselves in the same circumstances.

“We wanted to tell a human story about a family in Arkansas that has to deal with this, and, hopefully, we tell it in such a way that it doesn’t matter if it’s your direct reproductive rights that have been affected or not,” Choudhury says. “Our hope is that it lands with you, and you will feel seen and heard by it. It matters to everybody, and that’s why we titled the film Red, White and Blue. It affects everyone who lives under the flag of the United States of America.”

The casting of Snow was key. We have seen her in so many crowd-pleasing films, and she feels like our sister or our friend. In a way, Rachel is an Everywoman who we can put ourselves onto. Perhaps you see a younger version of your mother when you see Rachel finishing her side work at the diner where she works. Maybe you just know her as the smiling face that you see when you get your morning coffee. That relatability is so key for us to be pulled deeper into the emotional implications of the story, and Choudhury could not speak more highly than the dedication that Snow brought to this film.

“Rachel (Brittany Snow) comes from a socio-economically deprived background, and she’s living paycheck to paycheck,” she says. “That’s a case for a lot of people, and, I think, that’s why a lot of these rollbacks to healthcare have a double, if not exponential, effect. I wanted to lean into this very recognizable character from our daily lives. Even though Brittany is this magnetic, beautiful star, we wanted her to fade away into this character and for you to almost forget you are watching Brittany Snow, and, instead, to go on a journey with this character as if you are right there with her.

Brittany wanted to lean into that too. She knew who this character needed to be. She, like me, recognized the character of Rachel Johnson as someone we might or could all know. These are the courageous women who are singlehandedly holding down the fort and she wanted to pay tribute to that. We were so aligned and on the same page about every aspect of the film. It made my job as a director so much easier and incredibly fulfilling. She was able to interpret exactly what this needed to be from the script and in discussion with me. Through our collaboration and our deep, mutual respect for one another, we were able to translate from this from the script to the screen in exactly the way we both wanted. Her performance, as well as that of Juliet Donenfeld’s, is so mesmerizing and powerful that I defy anyone not to be blown away by these two actors.”

After I saw Red, White and Blue for the first time, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen Snow portray a mother before. It’s a small detail that I kept remembering every time that I’ve seen it. Her ease with the young actors who play her kids never feels artificial or put on. It’s natural and easy, and it’s another shading that lends itself to the successful chemistry.

“Brittany has talked about the fact that this is her first playing a mother even though she is in the age bracket of someone who might have kids,” Choudhury says. “She loves kids. The chemistry between her and Juliet and Redding [Munsell]–and even Sloan Muldown, who plays the younger version of Juliet’s character–makes them feel like a real family. This is a short film with a short film budget and schedule, and having this combination of actors was phenomenal. It was us feel like we were rooting for a family that we believed in. The bond they built off-screen really translated effortlessly to the scenes. Every single actor who played a role did so because they are deeply in touch with their humanity. Even though this is my directorial debut, I am really mindful about working with people who are not only great at what they do and delivering on the screen but who are also just really good people.”

Since Rachel lives in a state where abortion is not legal, the waiting room is bustling and busy when she arrives. Rachel has scrimped for every penny to pay for this procedure, so going back home is not an option. I was so scared that she wouldn’t be able to see a doctor before the clinic closed or there would be too many people ahead of her. When Rachel speaks to the receptionist, Sarah, the emotions take hold of us. There is a simplicity and straight-forwardenessd to the dialogue and the direction that should be applauded. We all experience interactions where we have to face the scariest moments in our lives, and that is a reason why Red, White and Blue is so uncompromising in its ideals.

“Even the writing of that exchange was delicate,” Choudhury says, carefully. “Everything that came before and everything that came after would service that moment. To just have everything you thought challenged in that moment that would make you go back to watch it a second time and to see the entire breadth and depth of the story that we were telling is something that was very important to me.

In that moment, Jud Tylor—who plays Sarah, the nurse/receptionist, is really us as the audience. The myriad of thoughts and emotions that she is feeling is the mechanism by which we, as the audience, might also be feeling. It was important to hit home that this procedure should be available in your home state. You should only have to drive ten or fifteen minutes–a half hour at the most–to receive this kind of healthcare, and it shouldn’t be such an ordeal. The reasons why someone might requite this procedure is an ordeal already, so to have this second ordeal and lack the choice put upon someone was important to land. I also wanted to stress the lives of these healthcare workers who are performing such an enormous service for all of us, but they are overwhelmed. If you can’t get this procedure in your home state, then you have to go elsewhere and suddenly the system is overwhelmed and resources are stretched beyond belief. The system is breaking, if not already broken.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpJmxsSRedw