Longtime music video maker Director X, aka Julien Christian Lutz, who helped lift fellow Canadians Justin Bieber and Drake to pop music stardom, is making his feature directorial debut with Undone.
The Canadian racial drama stars Stephan James, Sarah Jeffery and Steven Love. Lutz directed Bieber’s “Boyfriend” video and the “Worst Behavior” video for Drake, and has also lensed videos for Kanye West, Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea.
Now he is directing a feature film script by Floyd Kane, who produced the Roy Dupuis-starrer Shake Hands With the Devil that was shot in Rwanda. Undone stars James as Mattie, Jeffery (The Descendants, Rogue) as Jayme and Steven Love as John in a drama about three high school students in Nova Scotia facing a community torn apart by racism and a trail of devastation.
Kane tells The Hollywood Reporter that Undone was originally set to be a period drama about a true-life Halifax high school riot in 1989. But recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and the death of Eric Garner in Staten Island convinced Kane and Director X to make Undone contemporary.
“It’s the same fact pattern. It’s just different actors,” Kane says of a discussion about race he hopes to spark with Undone. The Canadian indie comes from Freddie Films, Circle Blue Films and DHX Media, with Kane, Amos Adetuyi, Michael Donovan and Mark Gosine producing.
