The filmmaker behind the documentary "A Want in Her" leaned heavily on "The Wizard of Oz" while shaping that project, and is now preparing to carry that same instinct for vivid, referential storytelling into narrative filmmaking. The creator confirmed the move into fiction in a new interview, describing it as a natural next step rather than a sharp break from the documentary work that established them.
"A Want in Her" drew repeatedly on the imagery and emotional architecture of the 1939 MGM classic, using it as a touchstone for its portrait of longing and its dreamlike visual language. That reliance on a familiar cultural text wasn't incidental. According to the creator, "The Wizard of Oz" offered a shared vocabulary that could carry complicated feelings without over-explaining them, a quality the filmmaker now wants to test in a scripted format where every image can be controlled from the outset.
The shift comes as documentary filmmakers increasingly cross into fiction, drawn by the freedom to invent rather than assemble. For this creator, though, the appeal seems less about escaping nonfiction than about applying its methods elsewhere. The same attention to real emotional texture that shaped "A Want in Her" is expected to inform the fictional work, even as the constraints of documenting actual people and events fall away.
From Found Footage to Invented Worlds
In "A Want in Her," the Oz references functioned as more than decoration. They gave the film a way to frame desire and yearning through images audiences already recognize, a strategy that can deepen a scene without a line of dialogue. The creator has said that working with such a well-known reference point taught them how much meaning an audience will bring to a story if given the right cue.
That lesson is likely to travel. Fiction allows a filmmaker to build those cues deliberately, planting symbols and motifs that pay off across a full narrative arc rather than emerging from the unpredictability of real life. The creator has described the transition as an opportunity to write the kind of references they previously could only discover and frame.
The documentary world has seen this path before. Directors who spend years observing unscripted behavior often find that fiction lets them pursue questions documentaries can only circle. What's notable here is the specificity of the bridge: a documentary that borrowed its emotional grammar from a fantasy film is now handing that grammar to a filmmaker free to invent the fantasy outright.
What the Move Signals
Details of the fictional project remain under wraps, and the creator has been careful not to overpromise. No title, genre or production timeline has been announced. What's clear is the intent: to write and direct narrative work that retains the curiosity and visual ambition of the documentary, while embracing the liberties that fiction allows.
For audiences who responded to "A Want in Her," the news offers an intriguing prospect. The film's use of "The Wizard of Oz" suggested a filmmaker fascinated by how stories we already know can illuminate lives we don't. In fiction, that fascination could take almost any form, from a straightforward drama steeped in cinematic homage to something stranger and more fantastical.
The creator's decision also reflects a broader moment in the industry, where the line between documentary and narrative has grown increasingly porous. Hybrid works and docudramas have become fixtures of festivals and streaming catalogues alike, and filmmakers are less inclined to treat the two forms as separate careers. Moving into fiction is no longer seen as a departure but as an expansion of a single artistic practice.
Whether that practice translates cleanly to invented characters remains the open question. Documentaries earn their power partly from the knowledge that what's on screen actually happened; fiction must generate its own conviction. The creator's bet appears to be that the emotional precision honed in nonfiction, combined with the symbolic fluency borrowed from "The Wizard of Oz," can supply that conviction.
For now, the announcement stands as a statement of direction rather than a finished product. The filmmaker who found a way to talk about want through ruby slippers and yellow brick roads is preparing to build a world where those references can be designed rather than discovered. Given how effectively "A Want in Her" used its borrowed iconography, that prospect is worth watching closely.
Source: Hollywood Reporter