Stephanie Beatriz On ‘The Light Of The Moon,’ Focusing On Survivors’ Stories, SXSW [VIDEO EXCLUSIVE]

The Light of the Moon, a new film directed by Jessica M. Thompson, tells the story of a young New York City woman, Bonnie, who is sexually assaulted by a stranger during an evening out with her friends. Though she tries to keep the assault hidden, the attempt at secrecy breaks down the trust and intimacy with her relationship with her long-term boyfriend. Stephanie Beatriz, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine star who plays Bonnie, tells uInterview in an exclusive interview that one of the things that set this film apart from other movies about rape is that it focuses on the survivor’s story.

Stephanie Beatriz Video Interview

“The film is mostly about who you get to be after a traumatic event like that happens,” Beatriz told uInterview exclusively. “Are you just a rape survivor? How does it affect your relationships? How does it affect your life with your boyfriend? Do you tell your parents, do you tell everyone at work? How do you live in the world after something like that happens to you? I’ve just never seen a story that was so much about the survivor. Not just the act, but what happens after.”

Bonnie is a New Yorker who seems to be living a normal life. “She lives in Brooklyn, has a great job, she’s an architect. She has a boyfriend that’s kind of a good guy… [and] a great set of friends,” Beatriz said.

“One night she’s out, partying with her friends, like you do, she’s about three blocks from her apartment, and she’s attacked and raped,” she said.

One of Beatriz’s main motivations for taking part in this film was because it gave great attention on what the survivor had to deal with after the assault.

“I, unfortunately, have a lot of people in my life that are rape survivors,” the actress said. ” I have a really good friend who’s an incest survivor… she’s one of the main reasons I did want to be a part of this movie.”

“She said to me after she read the script, ‘I’ve never seen anybody tell my side of it. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I’m part of it, and it happened to me. Everyone talks about everything around it. The judicial system, or the act itself. But nobody talks about what it’s like for the victim,'” Beatriz said.

The actress thinks many films gloss over the survivor’s story, focusing instead on the assault itself, or the legal system surrounding it.

“I think part of the reason is, if you look at the ratio of women filmmakers and female writers in Hollywood, it’s not very high,” she said. “Jessica really wanted to tell this story from Bonnie’s point of view. She went so far as to make sure that our director for photography was also a woman.”

This choice proved to be pivotal in shooting the rape scene. “A lot of the times, the rape scenes in films are highly sexualized. And Jessica wanted nothing to do with that. She wanted this to be a traumatic, violent event.  And I think she succeeded,” Beatriz said.

“I think the more women filmmakers we have, the more specifically female stories are going to be told and told in a really truthful and honest way,” she concluded.

The Light of the Moon opened in theaters on March 12, 2017, to wide acclaim.