Amy Seimetz has been kicking around as an indie-level director-writer-actress for a good seven or eight years, but before seeing Upstream Color at last January’s Sundance Film Festival I hadn’t paid much attention, to be honest. Seimetz says very little in Shane Carruth‘s film, but sometimes (or should I say often?) a certain mystique arises when an actor holds back and just settles in and the camera just stares. On top of which Seimetz looks a bit like Juliette Binoche in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is a roundabout way of saying she’s obliquely hot.

Amy Seimetz in Shane Carruth‘s Upstream Color.

So naturally I wanted to speak with her about Sun Don’t Shine, a dark-toned drama she wrote and directed. It opens on 4.26. Here’s the mp3. I had this idea of Seimetz being a kind of reflection of her Upstream Color character, someone a little vague and imprecise, a woman of few words, etc. So it was a slight surprise to speak with this friendly, fully confessional, almost bubbly-sounding voice on the other end.

Seimetz mentioned that she was going through some “really rough” personal struggles during the shooting of Upstream Color and that maybe some of that came through.

The clip below was shot by Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson during the 2013 South by Southwest Festival. I’m having trouble paying attention to what’s being said because I’m so fascinated by that construction-site backround. A covered chain-link fence, tractors, tools. Where the hell are they doing this interview, in someone’s back yard in some nondescript Austin neighborhood?

From the Sun Don’t Shine press notes: “[The film] follows Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and her boyfriend Leo (Kentucker Audley) on a tense and mysterious road trip through the desolate yet hauntingly beautiful landscape of central Florida. From the outset, the purpose of their journey is unclear, and the motivations behind their heated altercations and shady errands are hazy, but sporadic moments of tenderness illuminate the loving bond between the two that exists underneath their overt tensions.

“As the couple travels up the Gulf Coast past an endless panorama of mangrove fields, trailer parks, and cookie-cutter housing developments, the disturbing details of their excursion gradually begin to emerge, revealing Crystal’s sinister past and the couple’s troubling future.”