INTERVIEW: The Long-Lost Power of Indie Art with "Withdrawal" Director Aaron Strand

The multi-hyphenate challenges Georgians to shift the narrative surrounding the local arts scene

Withdrawal director/writer/editor Aaron Strand

Indie. In both movies and music, the term has lost much of its original meaning. What was once a proud signifier of independent, unconstrained production is now often minimized to a marker of genre or aesthetic. As big-budget companies continue to misconstrue the label for their own use, filmmaker Aaron Strand is here to show that true indie art is alive and well.

Strand is the writer, director, and editor of Withdrawal, a $60,000 feature-length love story about addiction, art, and survival filmed in Athens, Georgia with an Atlanta-based crew. After an award-winning festival run, the film is beginning its “theatrical roadshow” right where it all started. The project plays at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre until February 5^th before heading to Ciné in Athens for screenings February 6^th-12^th.

Art Seen ATL had the pleasure of sitting down with Strand to talk about Withdrawal’s journey, but the conversation quickly blossomed into an hour-plus analysis of independent filmmaking, storytelling as resistance, and the legacy of Georgia art.

Strand has always been an artist, but his path to film is quite different. Before he had even graduated from NYU, he was already performing off-Broadway and making his mark in the theater scene, but underneath the bright lights was a dark secret: Strand had been an opioid addict since he was 16. At 21, his world fell apart. Addiction ultimately cut his time in New York short, bringing him back to his hometown of Athens to start anew. After getting sober, Strand found that the career opportunities of his college years never returned. Thus, he had to shift his energy elsewhere: “I had to figure out how to fall in love and enjoy the grind and beauty of making independent art because that’s always been accessible to me.”

Despite his own experiences with the Withdrawal’s subject matter, Strand makes it clear that the story is not autobiographical. The film follows lovers Viv (Millie Rose Evans) and Jay (Brent Michal) over a 12-hour period as they experience heroin withdrawals. If they stay clean ‘til sunrise, they’ll qualify for a medication and can leave town for a new life—if they don’t, Viv’s parents are scooping her up and sending her to rehab. As they fight to make it through the night, their relationship comes to life through a series of flashbacks, forcing the couple—and the audience—to retrace where it all went wrong. With stellar performances and mesmerizing visuals (the film thoughtfully switches between crisp digital clips and grungy DV camcorder footage), Withdrawal is a harrowing, heartfelt, and, at times, humorous tale that boldly stands apart from its predecessors.

The film started with a simple mission: to highlight the humanity of this underrepresented and overlooked population. “It’s not a majority of people that have experienced opioid withdrawals, and that’s a great thing, but there are millions of people who have,” Strand shared. “Those people are all worthy of our love and consideration because they’re humans.” As he studied the long lineage of addiction-based storytelling, the writer/director identified three key pitfalls he wanted to avoid while crafting his own contribution to the genre. First, he acknowledged that it’s tempting to slip into glamorization. It’s no secret that the silver screen can cast an alluring glow over the grimmest of topics, but there can be dangerous consequences when the portrayal becomes too enchanting. “Most of my time using drugs was really fun,” Strand chuckled. “It was the last few years where it was really not fun. The instinct to make it seem badass, I get it, but I want to try and resist that.”

On the flip side, steering clear of glorification can lead to an opposite dysfunction, something Strand refers to as “PSA filmmaking.” A rigid, message-oriented approach can leave audiences feeling “preached to,” instead of opening doors for genuine conversation. Not only are these films unhelpful in engaging viewers, they’re also a tired trope in the realm of substance-related cinema. These two problems unite to form a final obstacle. In addition to stigmas against real-life addicts, Strand asserts that viewers feel “narratively betrayed” by previous films, which leads them to resisting the subject as a whole. “The opioid epidemic has gotten so depressing and dark and disgusting, and it's like people don't want to think about it,” he explained. “Stories have not done a good enough job portraying it, and now people don't want to engage with it.”

“[Withdrawal] is shining a light onto an underrepresented group of people, one that doesn’t care about race, gender, religion—this disease does not discriminate in any way, shape, or form. Just on that basis alone, I think this is a window into a world that most people don’t know.”

To fight these factors, Strand set out to create a script that balanced the disturbing nature of Viv and Jay’s journey with levity. “The absurdity of life as a junkie is very high, like, it is ridiculous,” he explained. “You have to have comedy because the truth is that drug addicts are incredibly boring from a narrative sense because they don’t change.” Strand knew where the story would begin and end, but he wanted to craft the in-between with his lead actors. Twice a week for four months, Evans and Michal would rehearse in Strand’s home, discovering who their characters were and learning about the experience of addiction. “I was very hands on in the rehearsal process, and that’s how I am as a director, but these are Millie and Brent’s choices,” he said. “It’s their characters that they made, and those characters live, breath, and walk in their own world.” The finished script came together about two weeks before their production deadline (“Much to [producer] Jonathan Walls’ consternation”), and it was finally time to bring Withdrawal to fruition.

Without the requirements of higher-scale union productions, some falsely equate the grunt work of indie film to unsafe and unfair conditions. Strand, like many in the scene, has experienced the good, the bad, and the downright “miserable” sides of film sets. For his own project, he vowed to create a safe, healthy, and collaborative environment from the top to the bottom of the call sheet. “We went out of our way to make sure that [the crew] never worked longer than 12 hours a day, and they always had a 12-hour turnaround,” Strand affirmed. “And we never cut a single scene from our set.” All cast and crew members were individually interviewed before filming and assured that, while things may look different than traditional productions, they’d be taken care and given an experience they could truly be proud of.

Strand’s leadership philosophy is simple: honesty, transparency, respect, and a willingness to step in and do every job on set, even if it’s beyond the director’s chair. His hope was that by cultivating this atmosphere on set, the love would extend to the audiences watching the film: “I’m not really a spiritual guy, but I do believe that if you really pour that sort of intentionality into a project, it can radiate throughout space and time.”

Withdrawal certainly succeeds in conveying these principles of connection. From the minute the opening credits rolled, it’s instantly evident that this film exists on a different plane than stories we’ve seen before. There’s hard work and deep dedication in every conversation, paint splatter, and flashback. Strand reiterated that the project’s magic comes from its indie-pendence: “It has not been combed over by the high-concept storytelling minds of Hollywood. It has not been revised and refined to try to hit some sort of four-quadrant audience structure.” This is the appeal at the heart of Withdrawal. As major production companies—and even festivals that pride themselves on supporting smaller movies—hesitate to take risks on true independent cinema, Strand invites audiences to lean into the mystery and see what it’s all about. He likens it to jumping out of an airplane: “You don’t know where you’re going, and that’s the excitement of it,” he laughed. “But so often, the filmmaker can’t land you on the ground. I just hope that they trust that we’ve built a very good parachute [and will] jump out of the airplane with us. You’ll have a great time.”

In addition to his own creations, Strand is a movie buff and film history connoisseur. He’s the founder of Behind The Slate, a podcast that hosts live events in Atlanta with the objective of “making the greatest films ever made accessible to all.” For 2026, Behind The Slate is rolling out a repertory program called “Films Against Fascism,” a series that introduces audiences to themes of authoritarianism, resistance, and hope through storytelling. When curating the year’s lineup, Strand looks to steer clear from “generalized” themes, as he asserts that these stories (though impactful) can quickly be co-opted by oppressive regimes: “In some ways, the predominantly narrative form of high-concept storytelling that has really boiled things down into ‘Good Guys vs. Bad Guys’ is very easily adoptable by fascists.” Films like February’s pick, The Battle of Algiers, take a more complex and nuanced approach to these subjects, using the historical context of the story to spark conversations about politics past and present.

Moreover, Behind The Slate’s events are building a much-needed community and showcasing the importance of the moviegoing experience. With the rise of the multiplex in the mid-1980s and the supposed convenience of streaming, most theaters are far from the “third spaces” they used to be. Strand commented that smaller staffs, automated ticket machines, and computerized concessions are all factors that have stripped theaters from the humanness they once had. “It feels like a McDonald’s,” he joked. “They want people in and out. They make the inside as uncomfortable as possible so that there’s no lingerers. That’s what a cineplex feels like, and it’s such a disservice to the legacy of cinema.” Hosting these screenings through the Plaza and the Tara reinstates this lost art form of connection and unity. Strand hopes that these events are a bridge that links attendees to opportunities for tangible change, such as community action groups or mutual aid resource networks. “Films aren’t going to change the world,” he said. “However, they are very good at helping us process what we see, getting hope from those who have gone before, and most importantly, connecting with other people that feel the same way.”

Our interview with Strand concluded the way most interviews end at Art Seen ATL: talking about the importance of local art. As we chatted, Strand shouted out Athens-based artists SUDIE, Squallé, and LeeAnn Peppers, all of whom played key roles in Withdrawal and are active parts of their vibrant scene. He also championed one of the film’s sponsors, Nuçi’s Space, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention and mental health resources for artists in Athens. Strand began taking guitar lessons there when he first moved to Georgia in 2001, and their counselors were the first people he was fully honest with about his addiction when he came home in 2013.

From Atlanta to Athens to beyond, Georgia is an artistic force to be reckoned with. Throughout our discussion, we listed countless musicians, filmmakers, writers, painters, and other creatives who were all grown here in our home state. Strand emphasized that it’s unlike anything else in the world: “The cultural diversity, the variety of voices, and truly innovative, world-changing artistic movements that come from here are unbelievable.” Unfortunately, our thriving arts scene is often reduced to a “down home, deep South” stereotype that leads to Georgia’s exclusion from the conversation.

“Why is it that, in the long legacy of Georgia art—a state with some of the greatest artists in American history—why is it that the only consistent thing with every one of those artists is that they have to go get successful elsewhere for Georgia audiences to take them seriously? If we could answer that question, not only would that unlock a flood of funding to this market because they see that we actually support our own, but it would make things so much more possible here.”

For the first time, Strand put into words a frustration I’ve always felt but could never quite verbalize: “Why do we have to go out and conquer in order to come home a hero? [...] A film does not have to go to Sundance, South by Southwest, L.A., or New York and then be the ‘prodigal son’ coming home in order to be recognized as something of merit. It can happen within the I-285 perimeter. We could have scenes that develop in here, and yet, we still define our success by outside metrics.”

To Strand, the problem starts at home. In hopes of seeing change in our perception elsewhere, he emphasized that it’s crucial for our local audiences to participate and support the magic being made in their backyard. “[Georgia art] doesn’t get enough credit because for some reason, we also still fail at telling that story,” he stated. “It’s not even part of the narrative that we’re putting out.”

Whether you’re a casual cinephile or a frequent festivalgoer, whether you’re a mainstream music junkie or in the pit at every underground house show, the mission has never been clearer: it’s time for Georgians to “suit up and show up” (in Strand’s words) for our local artists. Withdrawal and Behind The Slate are two brilliant examples of what can happen when a community chooses to take the leap and support storytelling that advocates for a brighter future. 

One look at the history books will tell you: our state is a goldmine for independent art. It’s up to us to ensure that legacy continues. Community creatives like Aaron Strand are living proof that Georgia not only deserves to be part of the arts conversation, but that it is the arts conversation.

For more information about Aaron Strand and his projects, visit https://www.aaronstrand.net/. Follow @withdrawalfilm and @behindtheslatepod for more information on future screenings and events.