With the summer season upon us, there’s a plethora of loud blockbusters on the horizon. But loudness doesn’t always dictate quality. In fact, a quiet, intimate new film from A24 and writer-director Savanah Leaf may leave a more lasting impression on you than those other high-profile summer releases we’ve been reading about all year.

Earth Mama is a profound, coming-of-age drama set in the San Francisco Bay Area, depicting real-life issues surrounding parenting and the unfortunate politics that surround those who don’t have a lot of money in their pocket. We watch with perpetual tears in our eyes as 24-year-old mother Gia (Tia Nomore) struggles through a third pregnancy while trying to maintain a relationship with her two young children, who have been forced into foster care.

We recently caught up with Savanah Leaf, young actor Tia Nomore, and veteran Erika Alexander, who plays a motherly, counselor-type role in Gia’s life. We learned much from an insightful group interview, such as the inspiration behind such a gripping story and Leaf’s intention behind the fantastical elements sprinkled throughout Earth Mama.

Expanding a Parent’s Story into a ‘Collective Voice’

Despite the often dreamy feel to Earth Mama — and we’ll get to those virtually silent sequences focusing on Gia’s headspace — it’s easy to see that Leaf’s powerful debut feature is laced with real-world inspiration. Even if you’re not a single mom, you can feel for Gia as she navigates a cruel world that refuses to give her a second chance with her family.

“The first draft was kind of a direct reflection on me meeting my sister’s birth mother for the first time,” Leaf told us. “And she really impacted me when I was 16 years old. And I essentially just felt like I really connected to her and felt like she was like me in many ways. And so I wrote the first draft, and then went and made a documentary with a friend of mine. And that documentary was kind of like emotional research.” She elaborated:

I got to meet some people that were going through having their children in the foster-care system, some women that had just given their children up for adoption and were feeling a lot of things, and physically, as they were doing that, and also some women who were the result of those kind of situations. And that kind of created and expanded the film into kind of a collective voice.”

Tia Nomore and Erika Alexander Shine in Earth Mama
A24

For an actor who’s completely new to the scene, your first role is automatically a unique experience. But for a gripping, thought-provoking performance by Tia Nomore, it’s safe to say her prep process would stand out even if she had done juicy roles before Earth Mama.

“The thing that stood out the most about this was the amount of research,” said Nomore. “Savanah would text me articles, or when we’d see each other, she’d have literature for me. I think she found out quite early that I’m very tangible with how I like retaining information. I had a notebook, and I would log through [my character Gia] as well… And [Savanah] would be like, ‘This is a really intense read, but I think it’s important for you to know that it could happen, for this role in particular, just to know that this type of energy exists in the world, not too far outside of the one we’re creating.'”

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And then there’s Ms. Erika Alexander, a veteran household name who moviegoers will recognize from hit projects like Wildflower and Get Out. She commented on her own real-life story and how it played such a pivotal role in preparing her for her counselor persona, Miss Carmen, in Earth Mama: “My mother is a social worker, and so is my sister. My mother is also an orphan, so is my father. My mother was adopted out to a woman when she was four, she had her half-sister taking care of her after her mother had a stroke.”

“And then a rich Black woman — I say ‘rich,’ meaning more well off than the people in her town in New Mexico — started taking care of my mother. And then when the half-sister said that she came for her and said, ‘Listen, You’ve been taking care of my sister, but I want to take her back,’ she said, ‘Well, you have to pay for all my clothes and the food and everything,’ and she couldn’t fight it. So the court gave my mother to her new mother, and adopted her out. And unfortunately, she was a very sick woman, and tortured my mother for years, literally beating her. That’s my mother’s story. It’s not mine. But it became part of my story because you are a part of your mother. And my father was also an orphan. I never knew that it would come to a head in this space, that I would need to know those stories in order to have some kind of compassion with the characters in the film. But I realized very quickly that Miss Carmen comes from my awareness of how they grew up, and certainly how my sister and my mother were social workers.”

Gia’s ‘Escape Moments’ and Future Projects
A24

Earth Mama is a beautiful balance between realistic depictions of a tough society and more fantastical sequences, where Gia “escapes” to the forest and feels one with nature. “I think what’s nice is everyone kind of takes their own thing away from it,” said Leaf regarding those Mother Nature moments.

“But I think one thing that I would hope people take from it is this idea that we’re from this lineage of Black women, or Gia is from this lineage of Black women,” continued Leaf. “And she’s yearning to connect to both sides, what’s in front and behind her. And at times, she wants to break the trauma chain. And so it serves as both an escape and as like a nightmare at the same time. It’s haunting her, but it’s also her escape. And I hope people take that away, knowing that she’s part of this lineage, and she’s dealing with that as well, as kind of trying to figure out what she’s going to do with her unborn child.”

Coupled with those “escape” moments are extended shots that eerily zoom in on Gia, and the sound will often drown out. We’re sort of entering her headspace in moments like these. “There are a lot of voices around her that are sometimes her thoughts, and sometimes it’s just distractions or what’s going on around her the world,” said Leaf. “And so I think that’s part of Gia’s character… it felt like just part of the language.”

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Tia Nomore then added more insight into the challenges behind those non-dialogue scenes. “I couldn’t see the monitors or anything, so I never really knew which take you would use. I knew which ones felt best to me. And most of the time, it was when I was just feeling my feelings,” said Nomore.

“I knew that the cameras were rolling, but I couldn’t go anywhere. So I had to just feel, and I think a lot of those like close-up shots where you kind of see it in my eyes, too, I’m kind of looking for somebody to be like, ‘Cut!’ Being with others was easier. I think just being still and actually letting the feelings come out of me and knowing that somebody is recording, it was hard and uncomfortable. But I knew what it was for. Like that scene where we were just driving for a long time in the dark, and I was just crying that day because I kept saying to Savanah, ‘I really miss my kid today. I really wish I was driving home.'”

Future Projects
A24

Looking ahead, the trio behind Earth Mama have other projects they’re certainly excited about. “In the fall, there’ll be a movie called American Fiction with Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown and Tracee Ellis Ross,” said Alexander. “That’s a comedy, and so I’m looking forward to that. I’m also writing a scripted series for Audible.”

“I’m finishing my album, which is going to be my third one ever in my career,” added Nomore, who is also a musical artist. “It’s a very important and vulnerable piece of work. So I’m excited to share that next year.”

And attention, Los Angeles residents: Leaf has a project that’s currently on display in your area! “I’m part of a group show at Hauser and Wirth in downtown LA. It features seven Black women artists and their films, including people like Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson and some people I really respect and love. And so I made this kind of nine-minute short film about a retired athlete,” said Leaf, who is a former Olympian herself. “And I’m really excited and proud of it. So that’ll be up for the next six weeks, alongside the Earth Mama release, which I’m really excited about. I’m actually in [the short film] too, which is weird because I don’t think I would ever normally imagine myself in that space. But out of resources, I ended up doing it. So I’m really excited and nervous for everyone to see it.”

From A24, Earth Mama hits theaters July 7.