Coming Home: 'The Dry Land'

America Ferrera and Ryan Piers Williams (Photo by Kimberley Jones)

The Dry Land's May 7 screening in Marfa marked something of a homecoming for the film, which was shot in part in Marfa in May of last year. Let's pause to do the math: It took writer/director Ryan Piers Williams approximately eight months to take his debut film from production to picture lock to a world premiere at Sundance in January. "Get much sleep in those eight months?" I ask Williams and his co-star, executive producer, and longtime girlfriend America Ferrera. They laugh in unison and shake their heads no.

Granted, Williams crammed a lot in before he started filming. An El Paso native, he spent two and a half years at the University of Texas Radio-Television-Film Department before transferring to the University of Southern California. Between Austin and L.A., Williams wagers he did about 10 to 15 internships, learning different crafts at institutions as varied as the Austin Film Festival and DreamWorks, even a mentorship with legendary Austin editor Sandra Adair. "As a director I felt like I needed to know everything I can about casting, developing, production," Williams says.

Curiously, writing was never part of the plan but rather something he fell into "by default," he says. "I just realized that if I wanted to make movies – to tell the stories I wanted to tell – I was going to have to write it."

The story Williams most wanted to tell was one not widely talked about – that of the terrible (and underreported) struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. After years of research, Williams set out to tell one very specific story – about the rage, confusion, and grief roiling, unarticulated, under the surface of a joyful homecoming for one vet (played by Ryan O'Nan). He received the full support of the military during production, and the film has since toured bases and Veterans Affairs facilities. While the reaction has been largely positive, some viewers have wondered, "How come?"

"A lot of times they come from a reaction of, 'Well, that's not what happened in my life; why didn't you do it this way?'" Williams says. "And it's usually a projection of what they've experienced [personally]. I think what happens is that the movie strikes a chord with people in whatever way, and I think a lot of times people want their story to be told. And that's okay."

"There was a woman at a screening at a VA conference," Ferrera recalls, "and she asked, 'Why didn't you make it [about] a woman?' And as a woman, I would love to see that movie. But that's not this movie. But what's great about it, it's like, yeah, why not? Somebody should go make that.

"It's about the spark being followed by a flame," Ferrera says. "Hopefully the film provides a spark, and our generation of storytellers will step up to the plate to make our Apocalypse Now, our Deer Hunter, our Coming Home and do justice to our generation's experience of war."

The Dry Land will screen as part of the Austin Film Festival's Conversations in Film in July (date TBD). It opens theatrically later this summer.