When his daughter is marked for death, an ex-con teaches her how to survive in Director Nick Rowland’s thriller, She Rides Shotgun.

Rowland’s film tells the story of Nathan McClusky, a man who has made enemies after cutting ties with the powerful criminal gang he worked for while in prison. When the gang retaliates by putting a hit on his family, Nate picks up his shy eleven-year-old daughter Polly and must transform her from a timid little girl into a force to be reckoned with.

On August 16, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Rowland discussed the making of She Rides Shotgun during a Q&A moderated by Director Michael Mohan (Immaculate).

During the conversation, Rowland spoke about how the challenges of directing young actors affected his shooting style.

“This film — the whole time we were making it — was described as a ‘feathered fish’ because it’s not quite a drama and it’s not quite a thriller and that was a tricky balance to navigate. I tried to keep things quite loose a lot of the time because Ana [Sophia Heger] was ten years old at the time we were shooting. I did a couple of films with kids that similar age and you can’t expect them to sustain a performance over and over again. Even an entire take, just getting them to focus to sustain can be tricky and that locks you into coverage or tighter shots or things like that. It’s more about finding the moments. I was looking at a lot of French cinema and Jacques Audiard and Rust and Bone — films that felt naturalistic but surged into kind of expressionistic moments. I’ve always had this baseline of sort of a naturalism kind of spontaneity. So, I guess getting the performance out of Ana dictated the style of shooting.”

Rowland’s other directorial credits include the feature Calm with Horses; the movie for television Floodlights; and episodes of Hard Sun and Ripper Street. He has been a DGA member since 2023.