From Law To Lights, Camera, Action: Sauda…
From law to lights, digicam, motion, Sauda Johnson-McNeal is redefining what it means to lead and love your self out loud with her debut function movie. The powerhouse attorney-turned-filmmaker is making her debut with Love The Skin You’re In, a soul-stirring story that options acquainted faces and spotlights therapeutic, heritage, and hope.
Love The Skin You’re In/ Source: Courtesy
Premiering Opening Night at the La Femme International Film Festival in Los Angeles, Love The Skin You’re In is impressed by McNeal’s own journey, explores household, caregiving, and the braveness to select self-love instead.
When Sauda Johnson McNeal first arrived at the University of Southern California to examine theater, she envisioned a future formed by storytelling, but not essentially by law books or movie units. Yet today, the achieved attorney is making her debut as a filmmaker, author, and producer, boldly stepping into a new chapter of artistic expression.
“I realized I had an entrepreneurial spirit,” McNeal told BOSSIP. “Acting was my passion, but I also knew it would be challenging to make a living. So I decided to go to law school to empower myself — to be able to finance anything I wanted to do.”
Source: Courtesy
That choice grew to become the inspiration for a life constructed on self-determination. After opening her first law firm in New York and later relocating to Los Angeles, McNeal balanced her legal profession with a calling to inform genuine, emotionally resonant tales; the type she hardly ever noticed portrayed with nuance in Black households on screen.
“I tried to get my projects financed by others,” she told BOSSIP. “It didn’t happen. So I decided to go against the norm; to invest in myself and believe in myself if I was ever going to get this dream started.”
That leap of religion included crowdfunding and resulted in Love the Skin You’re In, directed by Kenn Michael and produced by Kimberly L. Ogletree.
Love The Skin You’re In/ Source: Courtesy
The uncooked drama follows Sasha, an acclaimed photojournalist on the verge of a major worldwide award. While Sasha makes use of her artwork to uplift ignored communities, she secretly battles the weight of childhood trauma and an unrelenting need to please everybody.
When her estranged father — performed by Obba Babatundé — returns home on dialysis and refuses therapy, Sasha’s world begins to unravel.
Love The Skin You’re In/ Source: Courtesy
Between caring for him, managing rising calls for at her girls’s empowerment heart (based by her grandmother and mom), and dealing with a best good friend who oversteps, Sasha believes she will deal with it all. But when both the middle and her profession come under menace, she’s pressured to ask herself the movie’s central query: will she keep sacrificing herself, or finally select therapeutic and say “no”?
“Part of the story is part of my story,” McNeal told BOSSIP. “When I was in college, I went through some of the same self-injurious behaviors that my character experiences. It came from a lack of self-love. Once I healed, I wanted to create something that would help other Black women — women who look like they have it all together but are really carrying so much inside.”
Love the Skin You’re In doesn’t draw back from robust topics.
It explores household caregiving, mental health, and the braveness it takes to select self-love, all while difficult stigmas around habit and therapeutic in Black households. The movie stars big names just like the legendary Marla Gibbs, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Flor De Alcis, Blythe Howard, Kareem Grimes, Marcus Mitchell, Adilah Barnes, Jacqueline Flemming, and Kyrie McAlpin.
Love The Skin You’re In/ Source: Courtesy
“Marla was incredible,” McNeal told BOSSIP about the icon. “When she took a pause during her lines, someone tried to feed her the next one. She stopped and said, ‘I got this.’ And she did. She came in fully prepared — a true icon.”
McNeal credit producer Kimberly Ogletree, casting director Leah Butler, and her Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. sisters for serving to convey the project to life.
“Kimberly told me, ‘If you want this to be a classic like Soul Food or Love Jones, you need the right cast.’ And she was right,” McNeal said to BOSSIP. “It really came down to relationships, networking, and sisterhood. So many people believed in me, even when I didn’t have the big budget to match.”
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The movie will make its debut on Opening Night at the La Femme International Film Festival in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 16, with a purple carpet event at 5 p.m. adopted by the screening from 6 to 8 p.m.
Beyond pageant accolades, McNeal hopes her story resonates on a deeper degree.
“If even one woman watches this movie and decides to go to therapy or realizes she’s not alone, that’s success for me,” she told BOSSIP. “We all go through things, but the message is that you can still thrive. You can still love yourself in the midst of it.”
As she prepares for Love the Skin You’re In to take its next step, McNeal said she’s overwhelmed by gratitude for the outpouring of help and the assumption others have shown in her imaginative and prescient.
“Oh, I’m elated and I’m humbled and I’m so happy,” McNeal told BOSSIP. “I already have a couple of people reaching out who are potentially interested in distributing it. I could not have done this by myself — there’s no such thing. Everyone came to the table believing in me, and some even lowered their rates because they knew what this film represents. On the last day of filming, Marla Gibbs came up to me and said, ‘We need more films like this.’ That meant everything. I thank my team, and I’m just so happy.”
The post From Law To Lights, Camera, Action: Sauda Johnson-McNeal Details Her Debut Feature Film ‘Love The Skin You’re In’ [Exclusive] appeared first on GWN.