SIFF 2025 Spotlight: A Chat with Monarch City Director Titus Richard
Interview: Titus Richard, Director, Monarch City
NadaMucho.com Film Critic Tim Basaraba caught Monarch City at this year’s 2025 Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). Here’s his chat with director Titus Richard. – Editor
NadaMucho.com’s Tim Basaraba: I caught the world premiere of your first feature film, Monarch City, at SIFF this year and really enjoyed it. It was also great hearing you speak after the screening—you mentioned the actor who played Sam quite a bit. Can you tell our readers about your relationship with Paul Eenhoorn and why his name came up so often?
Titus Richard: Paul was really the driving force of Monarch City being made. We had worked together on six different projects in the seven years we knew each other. I knew of his work when I met him, but I didn’t realize he lived in Washington. Paul is originally from Australia and I’ve always loved Aussies. Just good people. I think Aussies have this great naturalistic approach to acting. Paul was a writer as well and was always writing scripts, so we were constantly trying to get stuff off the ground. Sadly, Paul died suddenly in 2022. Monarch City is Paul’s final feature film. Losing him left a big hole for me. I lost a great artist, collaborator and friend — and I know I’m just one of many — Paul was very loved. Our film is dedicated to him. It was bittersweet that we premiered at SIFF because that’s where Paul had always hoped it would premiere. Although he wasn’t there physically, his spirit was absolutely there. I could feel him flipping me the bird from another realm with that mischievous grin on his face.
NM: I could feel the love you all had for Paul at the screening—Monarch City will forever stand as a great reminder. The film clearly was a labor of love, and it sounds like it took quite a while to complete after the initial shoot. You wrote, directed, and edited it yourself. Wearing so many hats is common in indie cinema, but for your next feature, would you consider focusing on just one or two of those roles instead of all three?
TR: Yes, absolutely. I love the collaborative process. However, I am a writer that only really writes stuff that I plan to direct. Editing is another story. I did not originally plan to be the sole editor on Monarch City. I almost drove myself mad editing this film. That’s something I will change with the next one. Editing is such an important part of filmmaking and I think it’s important to have someone else in the room with you to bounce ideas off of and trade philosophies with, in regards to each scene, but also with the overall approach. As a writer/director, I’m usually so close to the material by the time we get to the editing stage that I definitely think it’s beneficial to have another editor to come in with fresh eyes.
NM: In my NON-SPOILER review, Nada Mucho » Hovering Over Heartache in Monarch City, I compare your film to a mixture of Sean Baker and Terrence Malick. I know projects like this tend to take on a mind of their own and comparisons such as this are subjective—but going in did you want to emulate any specific filmmakers as a way to set a tone for Monarch City?
TR: I actually had the opportunity to work with Terrence Malick as an additional editor on A Hidden Life (2019). That was a massive, pivotal experience for me. Just learning under someone like that who I’ve admired for so long was really special. Terry is so kind and patient with his material, but is also very unorthodox in how he approaches every phase of production. I also love, and really appreciate, the fact that he’s still a truly independent filmmaker. During that experience I was just a sponge. There was so much that I learned that I wanted to apply to Monarch City. Some things I would do again and some I would not, but I was glad I got to experiment and try some stuff out.
Sean Baker is another filmmaker I greatly admire. He’s such a lover of movies. I’m very inspired by how determined he’s always been as an independent filmmaker. I’ve had the chance to talk with him before and it was fun to realize we have some similar approaches and methods. For instance, he said he doesn’t start with a rough cut and that he usually goes straight to a fine cut — I always thought I was crazy for doing that.
NM: Wow, working with Malick sounds like a master class. In regards to you and Baker—starting with a fine cut must force you to make decisions in the moment, without the reassurance that you can always cut it later. That’s got to add both anxiety and excitement to the editing process.
TR: Haha, well it’s still “fine”, not final. I know, at least for me, it’s hard to get a real feel for the pacing and tone of a scene without some sound design in there.
NM: I found it interesting that a film focusing on such desperate and desolate characters has almost no on-screen violence. Was this a conscious choice?
TR: Yes, I would say it was conscious, with the caveat that there were one or two violent scenes in the original script. I always wanted the film to have a documentary feel, in the sense that it wasn’t afraid to break structural rules like a documentary. There are all these rules and parameters in narrative filmmaking and I wanted our film to feel like it was free of those. That said, there’s not usually much violence in fly-on-the-wall documentaries so that felt more fitting for our film and more true to the characters.
NM: Yeah, even though there was no violence shown, the scene where Lil Rip and his buddy are parked in the car and talking about the video of a fight that left someone paralyzed really stuck with me. The callousness and lack of empathy seems like a survival skill for today’s youth.
TR: I’m glad you caught that. It was a very small moment, but an important one for me. Social media is a strange thing, especially for a generation that was born into it. Social media is a place where fictitious lives are believed to be reality and real life, like the violent video they’re watching, is viewed as a video game.
NM: I assume this film was shot digitally but coming from a short film and music video background was there any thought to shooting this on film?
TR: Absolutely. That was the hardest decision for me. I had always planned to shoot Monarch City on 16mm, that’s how I initially visualized it, and I tried hard to make it happen. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t pull it off with our budget. With the locations we had, all the textures and the rust, I really didn’t want it to have a clean digital look. We were able to get a hold of a great set of vintage Zeiss prime lenses though and that helped a little with my heartache of not shooting on film.
NM: It’s a real bummer that the only filmmakers who can afford to shoot on film are Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino. The characters of Lil Rip and Lord feel almost like an “artist’s journey side quest” within the main narrative of Sam, his daughter, and granddaughters. Why did you choose hip hop—rather than rock or metal—to tell that artist journey part of the story?
TR: Well, we do have some metal in the movie from the great Native-American death metal band, Mutilated Tyrant, but I definitely feel the hip-hop scene in Seattle is underappreciated. I also wanted to make it clear that these kids don’t really have any specific genre they stick to — everything is a vibe. A lot of the music in the film is in there because of Raz Simone. I really liked what he was doing as an artist in Seattle with Black Umbrella. I could see a natural actor in him, so I was really hoping we could get him in the film. After Raz agreed to be in it, he was very supportive and gracious and said we could use whatever music of his we wanted. There is a pretty eclectic mix of music in the film though — we have music from Raz and Mutilated Tyrant, but also some internet/soundcloud rap, an up-and-coming blues/folk artist from Australia (Jamey Foxton), some music from Paul Eenhoorn’s old band, and even some Jandek!
NM: I loved how loud and all over the place the soundtrack was—big in the sound mix. It sounded great at the Uptown Theater during SIFF. Were there any films you caught at the festival that you’d recommend?
TR: I love to hear that. Thank you so much for the time. There were so many great films at SIFF this year. Seeds was excellent, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight was powerful and had a phenomenal performance from the 8-year-old actress, Lexi Venter. If you wanna see a movie that’s bold, isn’t afraid to break the “rules” and is also shot on 16mm, then make sure you check out Courtney Stephens’ Invention. Also Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions was wild and brilliant, and Robinson Devor’s Suburban Fury should be required viewing for everyone, especially in 2025.
NM: Great suggestions, Titus—can’t wait for your next feature film. Keep us at NadaMucho.com in the loop on when and where we can expect it.
