From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

My guest, writer-director, Avery-DeVernate, basically built a place for herself in the film world by marketing her own films.

Her terrific debut film was I Will Follow a few years ago, which got her a lot of attention.

Her newest film, Middle of Nowhere, won the best director prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Ava, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you.

But let's talk about, though.

Let's start with what I will follow.

I'm guessing in the making of that, you kind of recognize that you had to sort of

blaze a path in terms of marketing a film just because, let's just say, the conventional

marketers don't exactly know how to get films out to audiences of color, do that? Well, I mean, I was a conventional marketer for a lot of years. I mean, my agency had an agency,

and my background is as a publicist and marketer. So, yeah, I mean, I've seen all kinds of campaigns,

campaigns that land appropriately, and campaigns that are completely misguided. And campaigns that are just

are not really interested in reaching a certain audience. And that's valid, too.

If that's what they want to do, it's their money, it's their projects.

I think for what...

Wait a second. That's valid too.

They just are basically making just an empty gesture to get into an audience?

We make our own projects.

And that's kind of what my mindset is.

I'm not really interested in forcing people to do what I need them to do. I'll just do it on my own.

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