Tribeca 2024: Ripe! (by Tusk) | Interview with Kerry Furrh and Olivia Mitchell

Kerry Furrh and Olivia Mitchell, better known as the creative directing duo Tusk, returned to the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival with their brand-new short film. In 2016, the directors presented their film Girl Band; now their latest short film Ripe! just won Best Narrative for the shorts category of the festival. Ripe! happens to be executive produced by the soccer superstar and wingback player of the National Women’s Soccer League, Kelley O’Hara. The short, which had its world premiere at the festival, tells a queer story that follows two young women, Sophie and Gloria, played by Raina Landolfi and Rita Roca, as they develop feelings for each other after a competitive moment in a pickup soccer game. Also, one of the girls has a boyfriend and breaks her crush’s arm. Film Fest Report caught up with Furrh and Mitchell to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community and discuss how O’Hara became attached to the project.

Kristin Ciliberto: What inspired you both to tell this story?

Kerry Furrh: We’d been doing a lot of commercials and music videos, and we were pretty burnt out. We had been trying to do some writing and get something finished, so we took a trip to Spain and started writing the story that we thought of while we were there. It was like, finally, some breathing room. We always wanted to do this but had never been able to make something queer. We pitched it on music videos and commercials, but we decided we just had to make something ourselves. The story came to us while we were in Spain. We met this waitress who ended up playing Gloria in the film, and she inspired us to create this character. A combination of things came together, but ultimately we wanted to tell a queer story that felt like a dream, like romance, a genre that we’re pretty obsessed with.

Olivia Mitchell: That covers it. I mean, Spain is so inspirational. We were sitting at this quiet rural farm at midnight, feeling lots of things after not having written a scripted piece in six or seven years.

Kristin Ciliberto: Kelley O’Hara is an executive producer and a renowned soccer player. Why was it important to bring her onto this project?

Olivia Mitchell: Yeah, she is the perfect partner. We still can’t believe it, but essentially, we had started writing and dreaming up this project, the two of us with our key producer, Cookie Walukas. We found this wonderful production company to partner with in Spain called Japonica Films. We were looking for our final partners to solidify our team and bring this story home. Our executive producer, Luke Anderson at Juxtapose Studio, had this idea. He said, “My friend from college is Kelley O’Hara,” and obviously, no more explanation was needed. She would be such an amazing partner for a queer soccer story. We had seen her play soccer. Then we also saw a viral article about her jumping over the stands and kissing Kameryn Stanhouse after the World Cup. It was something that informed our coming-out process.

Kerry Furrh: It definitely had such a huge impact on us at that age when we were very closeted, and it just felt so right to have her.

Olivia Mitchell: Years later, the fact that somebody had this idea—Luke had this great idea, knew her, and could bring her to us—allowed us to do a pitch presentation for her, saying, “Here’s our story. Here’s why it matters to us.” She and Kameryn were immediately super supportive and wanted to be a part of it. It’s been great ever since.

Kristin Ciliberto: I love the support she’s been giving because she’s posted about it a couple of times on social media. I’m happy that she’s able to come to this project and give her voice.

Olivia Mitchell: She’s such a cool and authentic person and partner, and it’s surreal.

Kristin Ciliberto: Is there any chance you both want to turn this into a feature-length film? That’s common for most directors to do, to take their short film and eventually expand upon the story.

Kerry Furrh: That was the goal going in. We wrote the feature first and then we wanted to prove the aesthetic and style we had on the page. It reads one way, but I think the execution and our lens on it really needed to be shown in some way. We’d done it before with a short film that we made that was actually at Tribeca, and then we sold it as a TV show. That formula worked for us. That was the intention from the beginning.

Olivia Mitchell: We were just saying before this conversation that we’re trying to manifest shooting the feature film version a year from now.

Kristin Ciliberto: Well, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it does happen. The film has a soft look to it, and it heavily focused on Sophie. It gave a sweet and honest vibe as she’s discovering herself. Can you talk about the cinematography process for this film?

Olivia Mitchell: Oh my god! We would love nothing more than to talk about our cinematographer, who is the most talented angel. He’s amazing. His name is Pablo G. Gallego, and he’s based in the Canary Islands in Spain. He was connected with us by Japonica Films because Gerard Rodríguez, Laura Fernández-Hormigo, and Frank Lucas (some of the producers of the film) had worked with him before.

Kerry Furrh: We reached out to Pablo and said, “Hey, we love your work.” He already had a stark style with very bold colors and stark lensing. He had such a clear style already, just in his personal work or other projects he had done. He sent us back this full letter analysis of the script, saying, “I’m a Gloria. I can relate to her so much and I would love to do this.” He wrote out how he would approach it and how he felt about it. We were like, “This is amazing!”

Olivia Mitchell: We usually have to beg people to get on more calls to iron it all out, but he was right there.

Kerry Furrh: We started talking with him, developing a language. We discussed different lensing, what sort of look we wanted, and colors. In our work in general, colors are so important, and we set a palette for this. He helped figure out how to bring those to life.

Olivia Mitchell: It’s hard to shoot mainly with natural light in an interesting way.

Kerry Furrh: But it has a high-key look to it on such a low budget, and that was mostly achieved by using mirrors. We used mirrors to reflect the sun and create lighting that would otherwise cost us thousands of dollars. Instead, we just adjusted the mirrors based on where the sun was. The sun moves, so we had to keep shifting them.

Olivia Mitchell: There was so much creativity and thought in every detail. Everybody comments on the soft, glowy look, which is partly due to the production design, the clothing, and the lensing.

Kerry Furrh: We had this filter and were limited with resources. It was the black promist filter, which is a common filter used. Usually, you use it on a small scale, like a quarter or eighth of the diffusion. We only had an eighth or a full. We didn’t have the in-between, so we put the full in and did some testing. It made it look very soft and dreamy. We decided to commit to it because an eighth wasn’t enough, but we didn’t have the option for half. In color correction, we ended up pulling back some contrast so it still felt soft but had some contrast.

Olivia Mitchell: From the start, anyone who joined the project was aware that Tusk likes colors and we always want something sculpted in a specific way. For lesbian stories, there’s often a lot of darker, drama-heavy stories. We were excited to make something happier in the lesbian film genre.

Kristin Ciliberto: What does it mean to both of you to return to Tribeca? I know you both had Girl Band at Tribeca in the past. What does it mean to show a new film and to be back again?

Kerry Furrh: It is such a different experience.

Olivia Mitchell: Full circle. I mean, we weren’t out the first time at Tribeca, and we were right out of college. We didn’t know much about Hollywood.

Kerry Furrh: We didn’t know much about ourselves either.

Olivia Mitchell: We were so far behind where we are now. It’s such a surreal thing to come back. What is it, eight years later?

Kerry Furrh: Yeah, it was 2016.

Olivia Mitchell: Tribeca kicked off our careers.

Kerry Furrh: It helped us. We’re working directors. We make our living directing, and I feel like Tribeca was a huge part of that. Coming back to it with our second narrative film is amazing.

Olivia Mitchell: But also being out. Our early 20s versus our early 30s is a very different feel, and it’s really refreshing.

Explore our exclusive coverage of the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival here.