Exclusive: ‘Milkwater’ Writer-Director Morgan Ingari On the Importance of Representation

The debut feature film from Ingari celebrated its world premiere at the Brooklyn Film Festival this past weekend.

It’s hard to imagine writer-director Morgan Ingari, not on set. Upon viewing her first feature film, Milkwater, it’s like she was born there– her talent far beyond her years and experience. To say Milkwater is an impressive debut is an understatement: the film is so layered, so exceptionally acted, and beautifully written that it’s as though Ingari had lived it all herself and is just retelling her own experience. It’s that personal and that believable.

The film opens on twentysomething Milo (Molly Bernard) at her friend Noor’s (Ava Eisenson) baby shower. Noor and her partner are expecting their first child together, forcing Milo to evaluate her own life path. After a chance encounter at a bar, Milo on a whim decides to become a surrogate and egg donor for an older gay man, Roger (Patrick Breen). While Milo has the support of her best friend and roommate George (Robin de Jesus) and new love Cameron (Ade Otukoya), she becomes increasingly attached to father-figure Roger and begins to use her pregnancy as a way to stay in his life. The film is a coming-of-age story through finding purpose in pregnancy while exploring the underrepresented dynamic of surrogacy.

From LGBTQ representation onscreen to the importance of having all-female production department heads, Ingari delves deeper into the type of filmmaker she hopes to continue to be– and why being a determined woman should never be dubbed “crazy.”

The Knockturnal: What was the inspiration behind Milkwater, and why now to share this story? 

Morgan Ingari: My inspiration was initially from a separate script I wrote in college [at NYU Tisch as a Film & TV Production major]. But it was very different– it was about a young woman signing up to be a surrogate for a couple, and then the couple dies and she has to figure out what to do. Then I ducked it away from it for years. When I came back to it, at that point I was a little bit more mature as a writer. I also started researching it and found out that surrogacy contracts are so ironclad that that would kind of never be a dilemma that would exist, unless I wanted to write a legal drama which I definitely did not. And so then I started thinking about myself. As a queer person, the gift but also the burden of that is that creating a family is not this prescribed thing. Not that it is for all heterosexual people either, but in the queer world you are inherently going to grapple with that. Do you get an anonymous sperm donor? Do you have an open sperm donation? Do you have a biological child with a friend, or like a partner with the other partner’s brother? There are so many possibilities and all of them have their drawbacks and their benefits. So I started thinking about it from that lens: how could two people end up in this situation with each other, who were compelled enough to go through with this, but who didn’t know each other well enough such that it would be believable when this ultimately broke down?

The Knockturnal: I love that tension in the film, and obviously we see that both Milo and Roger are confronted with the question of “whose child is this?” There’s understandably a deep emotional attachment from both sides. I thought Molly Bernard especially did a fantastic job as Milo. How personal was the character of Milo to you? 

Morgan Ingari: The amount of family and friends who have watched this now are like ‘I can totally hear you saying things that she says’ is concerning. But I definitely think I pulled some of my worst fears about myself into her. I can definitely be kind of an impulsive ringleader but I think I have enough of a responsible inner voice to keep that stuff from going off the rails. When I started thinking about that, I was like ‘well what if I didn’t have those more controlling impulses of myself? Where could it go?’ I also certainly have my family but I went to boarding school [at Concord Academy] so I haven’t really lived at home since I was 14. So my friends are very much my other family, and in a lot of ways also raised me. When that’s the case, you kind of don’t have the guarantee of this family unit because people are growing up at the same time together, and they’re going to grow up and make their own decisions and take their own journeys. That can be very destabilizing when your support system starts making decisions that don’t act in the service of that, even if they’re good decisions.

The Knockturnal: We see that Milo tries to fit in with her changing friend group and find her own purpose through having a child. It’s a really interesting way to kick off the film. The surrogacy feels like a really impulsive thing, but it’s clear that her heart is in the right place. 

Morgan Ingari: Absolutely. Molly [Bernard] and I talked a lot about that in the rehearsal process because I feel like I had initially written Milo to be incredibly impulsive and flying off by the seat of her pants. But Molly had this idea that she’s not actually impulsive; she’s making what she thinks are calculated decisions. There is an internal calculus in her head, even if the decisions she makes are ultimately for the wrong reasons.

The Knockturnal: You touch on this similar idea of female character complexity being deemed “crazy” in your official director’s statement. I thought that was a really important distinction to make, especially coming from a writer-director. Can you expand on why that’s a passionate subject for you? 

Morgan Ingari: I think the “crazy woman” archetype is really frustrating to me. I certainly think that the way motherhood is portrayed– even just pregnancy– is frustrating and kind of demonizes that whole process when in reality someone making the decision to have a child is still just as complex. I also think that the freedom for women and female characters and queer characters to make mistakes and to be wrong and to just be richer for that is just really important in terms of how I view representation.

The Knockturnal: I’d love to also talk more about the ethnic representation in Milkwater. The ensemble cast feels so organic– Milo’s friend group feels like a set of real friends in real life, with diverse casting that doesn’t come off as heavy-handed or overly-intentional. What was the casting process like? 

Morgan Ingari: Molly was first cast. She was my first choice for Milo. I thought she would really just sing in that role, and she accepted. Our casting director Matt Glasner was wonderful. Matt suggested Robin [de Jesus] for George; he had worked with him before, and so did our executive producer. I really liked George’s voice and I could see so many different people playing him, but I think Robin was just so vulnerable and lovable and funny. It was really important to me that that character– especially because Milo is straight– was not going to fall into this “sassy gay best friend” stereotype. Robin did a wonderful job of not even going there.

I am a queer woman, which Milo is not, but I based the story in many ways on my best friends. Those are conversations that I’ve had many times with my best friends.

The Knockturnal: This is shockingly your first feature film. What was your journey to make Milkwater like? 

Morgan Ingari: Once we got our initial funding, I was like “we just need to set a date.” I AD’ed [assistant directed] a lot in college and some after, which I think was hugely helpful in us being able to pull this off. I certainly have many weaknesses but one of my strengths is that I can see the bigger picture of the moving pieces that have to happen to make a movie. So I was like “we just have to set a date and move towards it, and it can’t be after October because we have so many exteriors.” We set the date, and there were so many times during the pre-production process where we were like “there’s no way this is going to come together by that date.” And I was like nope, we just have to keep insisting on it and it will happen. Once you start pushing, everything goes. I think we got our corn maze location 48 hours before we started shooting it. We had an amazing group of people helping us who made it come together. We shot for 21 days in October. There are 23 crew members. It was definitely grueling. It was a quick turnaround and also we started off every week shooting at a bar because we had so many bar locations, which was a bit punishing because the call sets were 2 a.m.

The Knockturnal: The movie also looks extremely “expensive,” for a lack of a better term. Your Director of Photography did a fantastic job. 

Morgan Ingari: I will never work with anyone else. Maria Rusche was so fantastic. We had Maria, a gaffer, a key grip, and two ADs and that was our entire team. It’s gorgeous. She did a very good job sculpting out the spaces, making each apartment and each bar look different from one another.

The Knockturnal: I know you’ve been on the festival circuit multiple times before with other short films, but what does having a feature now in remote film festival feel like for you? 

Morgan Ingari: I’ve thought about this a lot, and I wrote an op-ed for No Film School the other week about it. The bummer about it is that getting to actually feel the audience enjoy your piece of work is an emotionally necessary release point after post-production, which can be isolating. So I know that we’re all definitely missing that. The silver lining is that many more people have access to see it. I have friends and family who never would be able to see it otherwise if we were screening in-person.

The Knockturnal: Lastly, what’s next for you? Do you have something else in the works? 

Morgan Ingari: I’m working on a pilot about summer camp. I am also polishing up a final draft of another feature I wrote, and then hopefully directing this very cool feature about three guys in kind of a polyamorous relationship. We’re hoping to shoot that this winter in New York, but we’ll see how the pandemic pans out!

“Milkwater” is also screening at the Lighthouse International Film Festival, streaming from June 16 – 20. The film was also associate produced by Natalia Rivas, who was previously covered in The Knockturnal.