Communist Girl Director on Comedy, Socialism and Marxism – The Hollywood Reporter

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Leah Cameron is proud of The Communist’s Daughter have a shameless socialist streak, even though its far-left Canadian web comedy is a far cry from Russian bread lines and iron-fisted Stalinism.

“I’m excited for the comedy that comes from the black and white thinking that some people have in America, that communism is the enemy,” said Cameron, who created, presented and directed the recent winner of the coveted Cup. from the world of web series. The Hollywood Journalist.

In his native Canada, where snowbirds vacation in Cuba and Russian cars are popular with local motorists, the word socialism has nuances of meaning. “I wanted to do a show where even if the quest for politics and the neighborhood becomes petty and stupid, we can still see the positive in the ideals of socialism and Marxism, and they are worth fighting for,” he said. Cameron added.

The Communist’s Daughter – which takes place in 1989 during the Ronald Reagan era, just as the West and capitalism were on the verge of winning the Cold War – depicts the McDougald Bolshevik family struggling against this political tide. The personal and the political come together in the main character, 15-year-old Dunyasha, played by Sofia Banzhaf, who is mortified as her Marxist father picks her up from school in a Russian army vehicle spitting at the water. moment when she falls in love with her high school idol, played by Kolton Stewart.

The McDougalds, led by neighborhood Pinko parents played by Aaron Poole and Jessica Holmes, in their crazy adventures, aim less to push political radicalism and more to have outsized dreams of a wealth-sharing society in a workers’ paradise. “My father went through a Marxist phase, calling himself a communist at the height of the Reagan 80s. It just seemed normal to me, ”Cameron recalls.

She added that the series – in part a political satire, an evocation of 1980s America and its devotion to consumer capitalism – is more of an exaggerated account of her high school years in Toronto, delivered with gentle sarcasm and a witty mind. During his youth, Cameron’s father drove a Russian-made Lada 4X4 and ran (unsuccessfully) for political office, which is echoed by Dunyasha’s father, Ian, in the web series doing campaign in local politics by espousing sentimental illusions of socialism on the doorstep.

Sophisticated satire in The Communist’s Daughter comes from the obvious fact that Ian McDougald, a modern-day Don Quixote, denies the collapse of communism just as the Berlin Wall falls and chooses to keep his family in an ersatz reality.
“Because the 1980s was a time of consumerism, Reaganism was all about tax cuts for the rich and there was a lot of American Ra Ra Ra and American military might and all of those things gave more to the family. to oppose, but also made them feel more like weird ducks, ”Cameron explained.

The challenge in The Communist’s Daughter was to portray the McDougalds with humor and heart and move beyond the veneer of petty communism for what that ideology calls for, including less inequality and more social progress for ordinary people.

Here, Cameron’s prank of the daughter of happily married Communists caught between fitting in high school and singing the praises of socialism, highlights the elaborate illusions and lies many people construct to fight back-to-back culture wars. several decades. “I was delighted to find the comedy in there and how we on both sides of the political spectrum stereotyped people,” she insisted.

Cameron has argued that the lost world of Soviet Russian Communism and Reaganomics is far enough away for his web series to play for fun. “The economics of runoff, who thought that was a good idea? It didn’t work out so well, did it, ”she insists.

Cameron adds online public reaction to The Communist’s Daughter was frank, whether from the right or the left. “It can be like, ‘I’m a communist. I feel personally attacked “or” it’s dangerous. This is how (the Communist dictatorship) begins, “she explains.

The Communist’s Daughter is produced by Lauren Corber of LoCo Motion Pictures, Josh Gal, Emer Connon and Cameron, with Natalie Novak of Natalie Novak Films as a producer.

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