Isabel Cueva

Movie In The Name Of Freedom

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1499462/

Let’s talk about the torture scenes: You have to direct the other actors to hit you and hurt you. Describe that process. Do you think their approach was colored more by the fact that you were their director or a woman?

We had a stunt coordinator, but I’ll tell you some actors can’t really get into it. The guy who does the majority of the torturing/beating..it was really tricky because I couldn’t really get it out of him. I was almost worried because he wasn’t putting his body into the punches. He wasn’t selling them. And I had to give him more freedom, and told him to “go for it” because he was being too careful. So I took some real ones. And the whip? My hands were tied in the back and at times it caught me on the arm and it was fine because sometimes you need that for the reality. But the whip hit me and I was like, “Wow, that really hurt”. But it was good because I reacted. And that had to be there.