This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.

Anna Baumgarten’s Disfluency is fresh off its successful festival run and headed to the big screen. The film follows “Jane the Brain” (Libe Barer) who has spent her whole life being told that she’s destined for something great. As a shock to everyone, Jane flunks her final college class. She returns home to live with her parents (Ricky Wayne & Diana DeLaCruz) and older sister (Ariela Barer), but is hesitant to tell everyone why she failed her last class. Over the course of the summer, Jane struggles with PTSD from an incident at college as she tries to understand how to rebuild her life for the future she wants.

Ahead of the film’s theatrical run, Libe and Ariela Barer sat down with Film Obsessive’s Tina Kakadelis to discuss the journey from short film to feature, their sisterly bond on/off camera, and the power of language.

The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Film Obsessive: Libe, I’d like to start with you. You starred in the short-film version of Disfluency. Can you talk a little bit about the journey of the short to the feature?

Libe Barer: Anna [Baumgarten] sent the script for the short over to my team. She had seen me on a TV show that I was doing at the time. My manager said, this short came our way, do you want to look at it? I read the short and I thought it was a really beautiful, smart take on a subject that I was really interested in exploring. The short wound up being very different from the feature.

The short did festivals and did really well, and Anna said, we’re thinking about developing it into a feature, are you interested? I was like, absolutely. I loved the short, I loved working with her. Anna sent me the feature and she said, we want it to feel like it’s a summer fun movie and then later reveal what happened to this character, which I really loved. It’s a fun movie and then slowly you feel the rug being pulled out from under you bit by bit. It all felt like such a labor of love and I’m very proud of what we made. I felt invited as a collaborator along the way. For the whole entirety of the process, which is really nice.

That’s awesome. And Ariela, you also worked with Anna on a short film, right? How did you get connected with Disfluency? Through your sister or through Anna?

Ariela Barer: Yeah! Libe and Anna had made the Disfluency short together, and I loved it. I was a big fan. At that point, they were developing it as a feature. They had talked to me about coming in to play the sister character, but we weren’t really sure it was going to work out with scheduling. Anna wanted to make a short and we’d never worked together. I think Libe was in New York at the time and she said, why don’t we just try something and see how we like working together? It was so fun and I love Anna, so it was just so exciting to get to do a trial run before then making this movie together.

Is this the first time you guys have played sisters on-screen together?

Libe and Ariela Barer: Yeah!

And the ages are reversed, right? What was it like getting to flip that dynamic that you guys have lived your whole lives?

Ariela Barer: It’s so weird (laughs).

Libe Barer: I mean, it’s funny because I think, in some ways, it was kind of amazing. I think maybe everyone should swap as a social experiment. Pretend that they’re the opposite or swap the older/younger dynamic just to see. To live in the other person’s shoes a little bit. In some ways it’s very weird. There is a push-pull and it’s kind of difficult to give in at first. Once you do, it’s kind of amazing and has affected and opened up our dynamic as sisters in life in a really beautiful way.

Is the dynamic between Jane and Lacey similar to you at all? The sisterly bickering, even though you flip roles, still feels very earnest and very honest.

Ariela Barer: I don’t know how much we bicker.

Well that’s nice!

Libe Barer: We bicker!

Ariela Barer: Okay, I just spread misinformation on the internet (laughs).

Libe Barer: We fought a lot growing up. Now, we’ll bicker, but I think it’s hard to explain. I think it’s just such a beautiful thing you can only do with sisters. You could be at each other’s throats for half a second and then be like, where are we getting lunch? (laughs) It’s really never that deep.

Libe, your character is going through really intense PTSD throughout the film. How do you get in that headspace day in day out? How do you also take care of your own mental health while you’re shooting this?

Libe Barer: Yeah, that’s a good question. Major mental illness (laugh). No, I’m half joking. We shot this in 3 or 4 weeks and I’m in every scene, so I’m on set 12 hours a day. I just felt that I fully dove into this 1,000% and felt the repercussions of it afterward. I had my first in-real-life panic attack when I got back on the other side. Were I to do something like this again, I would approach it differently because I did realize how important it is to take care of your mental health in a way that, at the time, I don’t feel like I totally did.

I don’t think that the way that I did it is 100% necessary to do a performance like that. Going into the film, I did a lot of research and the story is very personal to Anna. She shared a lot with me and we had a lot of conversations about it and about PTSD. I learned a lot, and once I got as much objective understanding as I could, then it was as much 100% immersion as I could go. Then I dealt with the repercussions coming out the other side.

It’s interesting you say that because Florence Pugh has also been talking about something similar recently. About her work in Midsommar and now she’s like, I couldn’t do that again to myself. And Ariela, you’re on the opposite end of the spectrum. You get to be the comic relief, which is fun in itself, but did you also feel a weight on your shoulders in terms of having to be a source of levity that breaks up the intensity of the subject matter?

Ariela Barer: No, I hadn’t thought about that. I probably should have (laughs). I was just so happy to be there. I also came in late too so they had already kind of gotten in the swing of things. I think there’s just something about working with your sister. There is just this impulse, and I think that it’s also just how I deal with things in real life. I love to make an inappropriate joke and hope for the best. Just hope it lands. Hope you get a laugh and pull someone out of something. I do think that little bit of our dynamic was real in that my impulse is entirely to just keep it fun, keep it light. I felt for Libe. I felt the pressure on her, but she’s so good. This is great.

That is the younger sister impulse. I fully agree with you. The film was entirely shot on location in Anna’s hometown with Anna’s family homes as part of the set. Oftentimes, scripts don’t actually match up to where they’re shot. What did it feel like as actors to get to be there where the director intended it to be?

Libe Barer: It was really cool. It made it easy to really immerse ourselves. We were living on the lake too, or on different lakes. There’s a lot of lakes in that town, which is kind of amazing.

Ariela Barer: Remember we learned all the slogans? What was it? The “Live Laugh Love” equivalent in Michigan is “If you’re lucky enough to live on the lake, you’re lucky enough.” (laughs) I thought that was brilliant.

Libe Barer: There’s also “Live Laugh Lake.” There is definitely its own culture there. And it was really cool to get to immerse ourselves in it as we were shooting.

Ariela Barer: I had a lot of days off, so Kimi [Singer] and I would just actually go around Michigan and experience everything. We had such good sushi!

From the lakes?

Ariela Barer: No (laughs). I actually had quite a lot of fun. We were there for a month or three weeks. You were there for longer, but yeah, I got into it.

There’s this underlying theme of communication and the way that we talk to each other. How, when we talk, we don’t always listen. I was curious if through making this film and through learning sign language, if it has changed how you guys hold conversations in your personal lives.

Libe Barer: It’s interesting, it’s a good question. The thing that I definitely walked away with as I was learning sign language for the movie was the amount of thought and how deliberate you have to be with language. Not only the words that you’re putting together, but making sure the other person is receiving them.

Sign was a really interesting experience and an interesting way to communicate for a while. It definitely made me think about how deliberately I use my words and what that can mean on a bigger level.

Ariela Barer: I definitely left this movie thinking about filler words in very different ways. The “ums” and “likes” and all of these things that we can pass judgment on. In many ways, they are indications of social movement and relationships. I don’t want to give too much away about the story, but it’s also very gendered. It’s also rooted in systemic issues.

Just holding space for those moments, those filler words, those gaps in conversation and language was something I thought about. The movie definitely left me thinking about how I communicate and how I receive other people’s communication differently.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m sure you probably notice it when doing interviews all day. I’m sure that you’re thinking of filler words. Like, oh, I said “um” four times in that last sentence.

Ariela Barer: Yeah, that’s what I thought about! I might regret this, but I used to have a running joke that I found that more femme women interviewers would edit out my “likes” and “ums” and understand my sentence, or what I was trying to articulate. A lot of male interviewers would leave them all. Brutal. Hang me out to dry (laughs).

I promise I won’t do you like that (laughs).

Ariela Barer: That was one press cycle that I noticed it. I just thought it was an interesting observation. I was never paraphrased. No one ever disrespected what I was trying to say. It was just the “likes” and “ums” and how other people receive it. The gendered binary of that was interesting to me.

I think Disfluency could have been a whole film just on Jane’s language study. It plays a smaller role, but it is such an interesting exploration of language. That kind of brings me to how “I’m sorry” is something that’s repeated over and over again through the film. I’m curious, in terms of your own use of language, what does “I’m sorry” mean to you? Do you feel like it’s a way that you communicate genuine and sincere apologies or if it has, as the film kind of talks about, become this passive thing that is more placating than actually meaningful?

Libe Barer: It definitely made me realize how often I was passively saying “I’m sorry” and how interesting that is as a gendered thing. Women are constantly apologizing and taking on responsibility for things. You walk into someone and you’re like, oh, I’m sorry. Just the constant taking of responsibility and how, while we may not totally internalize the words, the sentiment is internalized in other ways.

I’ve really tried to stop the passively apologizing thing and be more deliberate in my apologies because I also think an apology is really important. I think taking responsibility when you’ve done something is important and so not to dilute that by constantly apologizing when I don’t mean it.

God, I remember when we were doing press before I also was very conscious in interviews and stuff about my filler words. I had forgotten and now I’m very aware again.

Ariela Barer: But the beauty of the movie is holding space for filler words as well. With so much less judgment. Especially the way “likes” are so gendered. I think part of the beauty is being aware, but also totally holding space for it.

One of the hardest scenes, but also one of the most impactful scenes, is the one that you two share in the police station. Can you talk a little bit about what that scene was like? Unfortunately, I feel it plays very close to what a lot of people experience when they go to the police after an experience like this.

Libe Barer: It’s funny because I remember when I first read it, I went to Anna and I said, why would she go to the police? Why would she expect that actual change would happen there? We talked a lot about how going to the police feels like the only choice. When it feels like that’s the only recourse she has or the only way to feel she’s doing something to make some kind of change. Ultimately, yeah, nothing happened. The answer to all of this doesn’t lie with the police.

It is, I think, important to show all the layers. It’s a really interesting and ultimately heartbreaking relationship to this that people have. A lot of survivors think that this is where they can get answers and help and ultimately, how ineffective that system winds up being.

And then as mostly an observer in that scene, Ariela, what was that like to be there? It’s not your character’s story, but you’re still present for it.

Ariela Barer: I think it felt similar in the moment as it does in the movie in that I recognize that, as an actor, Libe is doing something very difficult and something that I can only be there to support. It was an interesting exercise in a way because, on multiple levels, I just did not want to let Libe down.

I remember the way we shot it with me sort of in the mirror, but not fully present in the shot. It was very much Libe’s shot. There was just never any question of I can give less here or mentally check out. It was just about being a present listener constantly because what she is giving every take cannot be taken lightly and cannot be dismissed. It was quite simple.

Libe Barer: I think with that, Ariela was very much a part of that scene. I remember I felt so held, but also what Ariela was giving on the other side of it. You catch glimpses of her performance in the mirror. It was very alive, and the sister’s journey of watching her sister go through these things was very real and present.

It was about what Jane was going through, but there is a very real dynamic between the two of them that you’re seeing there that Ariela also did a really beautiful job with it.

The theatrical run begins tonight in Michigan, which is very exciting. Are you guys planning to attend any of the screenings?

Libe Barer: Yeah, I’m going to LA. I’m going to be in a couple of the screenings in LA, and then the New York one at Nighthawk.

Ariela Barer: I very much want to. I have another project right now that I have to be present for, but I would so be there in a heartbeat. I’ve been to a couple screenings of this movie and it is so great. It’s such a great group of people.

Everyone keeps saying movie theaters are dying, but I don’t feel like that’s necessarily true. What does it feel like to get to see this story and this work that you’ve done on the big screen, surrounded by friends, strangers, and loved ones?

Libe Barer: It’s kind of amazing. I mean, it’s crazy. You do this thing that you put all of yourself into. You know, we made this thing…it felt like we were alone on an island in Michigan. Then watching people receive it and hearing people crying in the audience at times. Hearing the way, in real time, people are affected by this story and what we made is really powerful and moving and overwhelming and reminds us why we’re doing this.

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