Director Andrew Patterson's big screen journey has been unconventional to say the least. With his debut feature film, The Vast of Night, Patterson patiently watched as his film was shopped around the festival circuit, landed a spot at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, going on to win the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. It was then acquired by Amazon Studios, where they were going to give it a proper release in 2020, but then the pandemic happened, and most audiences had to discover this bright new talent from the comfort of his own home. In this time, where we were all locked away in our homes, Patterson went back to an old script he was developing, one about an eccentric, beloved, blue grass-playing beekeeper and his estranged former foster daughter, their reconnection, and the passing of a touch between a business and the bloodlines you make along the way; The Rivals of Amziah King. In writing a draft that was close to 360 pages long, Patterson, a former editor before he turned writer-director, slowly stripped his epic down to the version that he wanted to put on the big screen; a sprawling tale that features people, a town, a culture, an environment he grew up around in a small town in rural Oklahoma. This baked in familiarity and personality resulted in his script impressing many, including the actor who plays the titular Amziah King, Academy Award winner Matthew McConaughey, who is a revelation in the film, as well as his co-star Angelina LookingGlass, one of the best discoveries of the year. Together, this acting duo brought to life the unique, brilliant vision of Patterson's expansive second feature and in result, was a rousing success at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, with buzz building from the moment it screened. After being acquired by Black Bear Pictures, the world finally gets to see an Andrew Patterson film on the big screen, which, per my review from SXSW, is still "one of the best films of the year so far," and announced the director as "a serious name to be reckoned with in the world of cinematic storytelling," as well as high praise for McConaughey, who delivers "one of the best performances of his career and his best work in over a decade." In a recent conversation, Patterson and I spoke about the process of getting the film to the big screen, the patience it took to trust the studio, and his work as an editor shapes new role as a writer-director. We also spoke about recreating the world of Oklahoma in Alabama (where the film was mostly shot), his collaborative process with his crew and two lead actors, as well as his thoughts on the state of independent cinema, and the stories he wants to tell going forward, no matter how big or small they might be. Insightful doesn't begin to describe Patterson, a growing voice in modern cinema that's open to unknown possibilities that lie ahead, willing to still look optimistically at this business after an atypical start to one's cinematic career; humming along to his next project much like bees in his latest film, waiting for his chance to deliver something special yet singular like his first two features. The Rivals of Amziah King is currently in theaters from Black Bear Pictures. You can listen to this interview wherever you stream podcasts, from iTunes, iHeartRadio, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music and more. You can also listen on the AW YouTube page. Music: "Quill" from Matthew McConaughey and Ben Hardesty (intro) and "B-3" from BoxCat Games Nameless: The Hackers RPG Soundtrack (outro).
