"Stand behind your art, nobody will represent it like you."

5 Questions for YOU ME & HER's Director, Dan Levy Dagerman

We all know how hard it is for films made outside the corporate system these days. What are filmmakers to do?

I got to speak to the husband and wife filmmaking team, Director Dan Levy Dagerman and writer/actress Selina Ringel behind the recent release YOU ME & HER and was impressed by their commitment to not just overcome the barriers we all face, but how they turned it all into incredible energy and motivation. They found allies and partners. They were willing to experiment. They didn’t just try, they did. I couldn’t resist: I had five questions for them on how they got it all done so well.

I find it very exciting what you and Selina are doing with your new film YOU, ME, & HER. From the financing to the distribution and into the marketing, it feels like you looked at the existing system for each step and said it wasn't truly working anymore and you were going to do something different, take the good parts, and leave the rest behind. I am sure we could talk about this all day, but if you were going to name five things that most of us would find a bit unorthodox that you've done what would they be?

As we were wrapping up our festival run and looked out into the distribution landscape we knew we wanted to do something different. We have always felt very empowered making movies, but bringing them to audiences had always been a… different experience. We were proud of our film and wanted to make as big an impact with the release as we could. We were determined to take proactive steps into distribution to elevate our film and ultimately find its audience. Five things we did differently that I think proved very successful to elevate the profile of the film were:

THE FESTIVAL TRAILER: Over the course of our festival run we gained laurels, awards and reviews. I had always been cautioned not to release material before your film was available to the general public but on this film we leveraged these assets to cut a festival trailer and it got 100K views in two weeks. Releasing an early festival trailer—despite industry warnings—taught me that getting our film in front of audiences sooner helped build momentum, engage viewers, and ultimately helped shape a stronger, more impactful release strategy.

EVENTIZED SCREENINGS: From our reactions at festivals we knew our film was a conversation starter, and from early on we wanted to lean into the themes of the story to build experiences around the film. You, Me & Her, centered around a couple navigating a potential threesome and the husband being a budding entrepreneur in the cannabis industry, is a little spicy; so we launched our first screening event in the parking lot between The Pleasure Chest and their high end cannabis consumption lounge PleasureMed with Zomoz Mezcal, Tierra Rossa & Hotel Ysuri as our initial brand partners, we even gave away a surprise trip to Mexico. Ultimately we integrated everything we learned from this initial screening into our distribution plan which led to a tour leading up to our theatrical release eventizing screenings in Mexico City, Boston, New York, DC, Kansas City, Austin, Miami and LA which included giveaways with brand partnerships, receptions, red carpets, photo moments, and even giving away trips to Mexico at two of the screenings!

THE ALPHA TEST FOR ATTEND: After this screening we knew we wanted to do a theatrical release and reached back out to our team of investors to raise additional funds for marketing and distribution. When we saw a post John Fithian, the former CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, shared about an innovative new platform connecting filmmakers directly with theatrical exhibitors called Attend, we had to reach out. This led to an eight month process that ultimately led You, Me & Her to becoming the Alpha Test for the platform. As the Alpha Test for Attend we worked directly with the Fithian Group to distribute our film in 250+ theaters nationwide on Valentine’s Day.

THEATRICAL MARKETING CO-OP: In collaboration with Film Frog and Paper Airplane we started a marketing co-op with many of our theatrical partners. We created a small exhibitor fund to reach their Loyalty programs and collaborated on subscriber email blasts, social media posts, and paid digital ads.

BRAND COLLABORATIONS The You, Me & Her team sent over 1000 emails to find brands and products that relate to the themes of the film into our marketing campaign. We ultimately partnered with 20 brands that authentically aligned with the themes of the film. We raised around 100k in kind through these partnerships. Unique marketing initiatives with other brands include:

1. MEXICO GIVEAWAY | We are giving away 3 trips to Mexico on social media in partnership with Riviera Nayarit, Casa Selva, Imanta Hotel, and W Punta Mita. This incentive was to help promote the beautiful location we shot in but also to spread the word on socials about our film.

2. PROMOTION WITH FANDANGO | Buy 2 tickets get 1 free - “ Bring your third” special promotion being sent as an email blast and featured on Fandango ticket sites.

3. CHILDCARE STIPEND | Our Partnership with Bumoparent gave parents discounted child care all over California to parents who wanted to watch our movie and get a well deserved date night , which thematically aligns with our film as well! Bumo Parent is a child care company with over 15,000 location partners, we also offered Childcare stipend to couples who wanted to go see the film at different eventized premieres all over the nation.

4. CURATED INFLUENCER BOXES | To decentralize our social media campaign and augment our voice in markets we sent out 250 curated boxes with presents from Our 20 brand partners to influencers ranging from 11M followers to targeted micro influencers.

And I have to thank you for one of Influencer Boxes. I am quite happily making my way through the gummies. Not sure about what do with the furry handcuffs, but to each their own!

But back to you… You've been making films on a consistent basis for a while now. Starting with shorts and moving into features. It seems like you never stop, which to me means you don't let the barriers get in your way. How do you keep that stamina up?

When I first started I had tunnel vision on one project, for me personally I found this would often lead to frustration and dead ends, so while I was pushing these projects I began developing more and being open to inspiration and opportunities that would come from within my community. Having a slate of projects we’re working with keeps us nimble, allows us to be able to pivot based on the interests of who we’re working with and to keep moving forward incrementally.

Now we have a slate of projects we are constantly pushing and only succumbing to the bliss of project tunnel vision as we push a film into production or most recently into the marketing and distribution phase with You, Me & Her. When we’re pushing a film into production, we’ve learned to make it happen by setting a hard deadline for the shoot day, greenlighting the production at a low budget threshold with the hope of raising your target or even ideal budget along the way, and relentlessly working toward this goal as we bring the project to fruition. In this way we make the project inevitable and have had success.

Keeping the stamina up is tough, it can be an exhausting lonely road, we are so grateful Selina and I have each other! Throughout the process of producing and ultimately, marketing and theatrically distributing You, Me & Her we have learned the importance of taking the process step by step, allowing it to grow incrementally, with each piece building on the next. When you confront a barrier how do you maneuver? When we confront a barrier, we try to pivot creatively and find a way around it!

Selina recently wrote a book called Be The Train: the mindset and tools you need to make your first feature film, that is about this mindset you need to make a feature film, really the mindset you need to relentlessly pursue any entrepreneurial creative career. One of the things we really stand by is adjusting to what’s in front of you, pivoting and sometimes that means re-writing the script to fit a different budget, re-casting an actor to stay on schedule, re-thinking the parameters of the story to keep things moving.

The story is at the forefront of every decision but we also know how much gets stalled or stopped and we put a high priority in keeping momentum and the workflow moving.

How has such a prolific output affected your creative process?

I think in some ways it has made us incredibly fast problem solvers and taught us that setting hard deadlines and creating momentum step by step as you begin to collaborate with others is the key to getting projects off the ground. Having time is a luxury but we also know momentum is short lived and we try as much as we can to capitalize on it. When there is too much time on your hands it’s easy to drop the ball or get discouraged so having constant deadlines forces you to stay creative and stay in a constant problem solving mindset.

If you could pinpoint what you learned on your prior movie that you applied to your most recent, and what you learned from the most recent that you are most eager to apply to your next, what would that be?

The most important thing we learned from our last film, Single Mother By Choice, which we sold directly to HBOMax, was that we wanted to make more of an impact with our release. Single Mother By Choice was truly an indie miracle, we tracked Selina’s pregnancy in a fictional story through the height of the pandemic and were excited to double our budget with the acquisition. The only issue was that it went up on the platform with no promotion so we never knew how people would find it on the platform.

For our latest film You, Me & Her we were determined to make more of an impact and reached out to our investment partners to secure additional financing for marketing and theatrical distribution. This was huge for visibility and ultimately changed the scope of the impact our film is making today.

In the future I would look at every project with two start dates: The production start date and the release date. I think it is important to look beyond festivals to how we as filmmakers are going to bring our films to audiences.

For all our future projects we are factoring raising additional funds and consider marketing and distribution into the equation from very early stages of development.

If you were giving advice to your younger self, what would it be? How would you encourage them to change the steps from the ones you have taken?

Today, If I was to give advice to my younger self, I would encourage him to take each and every one of his films all the way to the audience. Stand behind your art, nobody will represent it like you.

I would also focus on community building. Share every step of the way and create a fanbase, people who care about you and what you are making.

Selina Ringel and Dan Levy Dagerman are the husband-and-wife filmmaking duo behind Two Hands Productions, known for crafting poignant, boundary-pushing narratives in independent cinema. Their latest feature, You, Me & Her, opened theatrically on 250+ screens this Valentine's Day as the Alpha Test for the Attend platform. They previously collaborated on Single Mother by Choice, a critically acclaimed film documenting Selina’s real-time pregnancy journey during the COVID-19 pandemic, which earned the Best Indie Feature award at Film Threat’s AWARD THIS! in 2022 and was sold directly to HBO Max. They are both repped by manager Doug Warner.