Summary

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff chats with American Sweatshop lead Lili Reinhart and director Uta Briesewitz at SXSW 2025.

American Sweatshop delves into the dark side of social media moderation, showcasing the toll it takes on content moderators.

Reinhart and Briesewitz discuss the dark side of the internet, what about the World Wide Web brings them joy, the freedom of independent filmmaking, and how Riverdale allowed its cast to explore the industry.

On the surface, the job of a content moderator sounds noble: to ensure that a social media platform is deemed safe for public usage. However, moderating content is far from glamorous, and American Sweatshop isn’t afraid to address the profession’s dangerous side. Serving as the debut feature of Severance director Uta Briesewitz, the mystery thriller is a gritty take on the toll of social media, as told from the eyes of Daisy (Lili Reinhart).
By day, Daisy and her co-workers watch the worst the Internet offers and ultimately decide which content gets removed. Just as Daisy thinks she’s seen it all, one violent video catches her attention, prompting her to leave the isolated comfort of her computer screen and go on the hunt for a potential criminal.
Collider’s very own Perri Nemiroff had the opportunity to speak with Briesewitz and Reinhart at SXSW 2025 at the Collider Media Studio at the Cinema Center. Throughout the conversation, the two discuss what sparked Briesewitz’s interest in creating the film, how her work as a director on Severance influenced her approach to American Sweatshop, what Reinhart enjoys about working on an independent film, and how Riverdale affored her the opportunity to excel wearing multiple hats on her latest productions.
‘American Sweatshop’ Shows the “Worst the Internet Has to Offer”

“Turning the camera around, away from the screens that we all look at, and just looking at the human suffering was very, very intriguing to me.”

Image via Plaion Pictures

PERRI NEMIROFF: Because we’re talking about a film festival debut, our audience might not know about American Sweatshop just yet. Uta, I’ll give you these wonderful honors. Can you give us a brief synopsis of your film?
UTA BRIESEWITZ: American Sweatshop gives us an insight of content moderators, who are usually young people who sit in a large room like an office space, and they watch videos or images of the worst that the internet has to offer. It leaves a mark on them. It can lead to PTSD, it can lead to sleeplessness, and in some cases, even suicide.
I feel like even just hearing you describe it that way is bringing me back to that setting and making me tense up a little!
You are directing from Matthew [Nemeth]’s script here. When that script comes your way, I’m sure it’s very exciting and a great script, but what space did you find in it that you thought you could fill in a way that’s unique to you as a storyteller?
BRIESEWITZ: Just my own background and how important images have always been to me my entire life growing up. That also led me to be a cinematographer first before I became a director. I also wanted to become a painter, and I still paint. Images always spoke to me and were really, really important. To have a movie that deals with what images do to us, especially the bad ones, was very intriguing to me. For once, turning the camera around, away from the screens that we all look at, and just looking at the human suffering was very, very intriguing to me.
On another personal note, I got the script around the time when my husband and I were discussing when is a good age to give our kids a smartphone, and I couldn’t help but think, “Am I going to hand my kids something that opens the world to them, inspires them, and shows them everything that’s out there and it’s a great tool to connect with their friends, or am I giving them something that will majorly damage them, and I’m not even aware when it’s happening?”
Lili Reinhart on the Good and Evils of the Internet

“The access we have to such imagery all the time around us is a really interesting conversation.”

Image by Photagonist

I’ll throw a question inspired by that to both of you. Your movie does deal with the darker side of social media and the internet, but there’s also so much good out there and community. Can you each tell me the last thing you saw on the internet or any social media platform that put a smile on your face or brightened your day?
LILI REINHART: Oh man, I always need my phone in these interviews to reference. I end my night with a TikTok scroll, but not a doom scroll. It’s always good. I laugh the most on TikTok than any other social platform. I have a great time on TikTok. I think it was something where it was like—this sounds so strange—it was a sad egg laying in bed, and it was like, “When your boyfriend hasn’t asked you to be your egg for Easter.” Where else would I see something like that? So, it’s just the stupid little memes and the things that I see on TikTok that make me laugh.
Mine is always TikTok videos of people voicing their pets. Nothing makes me happier than that.
BRIESEWITZ: That sounds awesome. Now I know what to search for because I think that would very much crack me up. I have to say, I have two moderators—my daughter and my son—and they send me links to Instagram videos that they like, so I know it’s always something positive and funny. Actually, just walking here, I was talking to my daughter about the video that she had sent me. She has a cockatiel. She loves birds, so it was a video of a cockatiel making these little noises, and it was describing how you climb on a little stuffed tiger. It was like, “You take the dominant right foot, and then you slowly start moving up.” It was very cute, and we were laughing and talking about it.
It’s always animals!
REINHART: Or eggs.
Or eggs!

Image by Photagonist

I’m gonna tie the social media element into you signing on, Lili, because one of the things that I remember doing for Hal & Harper is, I’ll always scroll through people’s social media to see if there’s anything about the movie they’re promoting, and when I scrolled through yours, you seem to use that platform for ways to connect with people that could make them feel seen. Given all of your social media experience, when you signed on for this movie, what are some high priorities you had for yourself in order to use that experience to bolster the film?
REINHART: To be honest, I think this is sort of a good opportunity. Hopefully, if and when the world gets to see the film, it will just open up a really interesting conversation. That’s what I was interested in. It’s not even what I’m posting on my own socials, but just the conversation that the movie lends itself to, which is you watch the movie, and then you wanna go talk to someone about it. You wanna go share. In the movie, these characters are sharing what video they’ve seen that’s stuck with them, and I think we all have a video that we’ve seen or an image or something that we’ve seen that scarred us or traumatized us, and that’s crazy. That’s not something that was happening, obviously, before the internet. Things were traumatizing people, but just the access we have to such imagery all the time around us is a really interesting conversation. I think that was something that really intrigued me, as I’m just an honest and open human and I like to have these kinds of uncomfortable conversations. That’s not why I did the film, but it’s an opportunity to do a film that actually says something and sparks an uncomfortable conversation. We like when people say that the movie left them feeling a bit unnerved. I think that’s, to us, success because it’s supposed to.
‘Riverdale’ Made Lili Reinhart Feel Like She Could “Conquer the World”

“It really does give you a beautiful opportunity to connect and have a really wide reach.”

Image via The CW

Lili, this is a really big question, but it is crossing my mind because we just saw each other at Sundance for Hal & Harper. I saw Camila [Mendes] here last year for Música and she’s coming in this year for another movie. I saw Cole [Sprouse] last year for one of his movies, and he’s coming back in this year. And then I’m watching Madelaine [Petsch] run around and produce a trilogy of horror films. What do you think it is about the Riverdale experience that left you all with an interest in independent cinema, wanting to shepherd it, and also gave you all the tools you needed to actually make it happen?
REINHART: Well, I think Riverdale was the tool that gave us dedicated, passionate fans, and with that, you kind of feel like you can conquer the world. It really does give you a beautiful opportunity to connect and have a really wide reach, which is really helpful when trying to produce or create something, obviously—easier than doing it, you know, when I was 19, and no one knew who I was before Riverdale. So, I think we all just somehow have found ourselves either on the producing side or in the indie market. When you’re on a commercial television show for so long in your 20s, you want to do something different—or not—but I think a lot of us really felt we wanted to explore these other avenues of our careers. I’m very excited, and I’m very happy to see everything that everyone around me does, and I watch everything that they do. Me and Camila are missing each other by a day, so that’s a bummer, but we always laugh because it’s like we’ll end up in Venice together. It’s like, “How are we both here at the same time?” But it’s lovely, and I’m so glad and happy that I get to still see them.

15:00

Related

“I Just Burst Into Tears”: Cooper Raiff Says Lili Reinhart’s ‘Hal & Harper’ Performance Is Indescribable

The cast joins us at Sundance 2025 to discuss how they tapped into some heavy emotions for the eight-episode series.

Uta, this is your first feature, but you’ve had so much TV experience. Did you always have the itch to direct a feature, or was the decision to direct one now tied specifically to this script?
BRIESEWITZ: It’s kind of funny. I always joke to my husband about, “I’m doing what you dreamt about doing once you finished film school, that you’re doing your first feature.” But my career, I had such an exciting ride, how quickly I was able, almost straight out of film school, AFI, to get a show like The Wire and being the cinematographer on a show like The Wire. Then all the other things that followed—working with the Russo Brothers, Brett Anderson, and Jay Cast. It was just such a great ride. I was almost too busy to really step back and say, “Oh, you always wanted to direct a feature.” I always kind of jumped on what presented itself to me at this point.
I feel like if you are in the film business, you have to have an open mind. On the one hand, you have to stay focused on what your goal is, but my goal kept shifting. Cinematography was so intriguing to me that I wanted to explore it for a while, and then I felt like, “I explored it. Now I really wanna dig into working with actors.” So, I moved into directing.
I was fortunate enough to be on some of the greatest TV series—Severance, of course, is on top of it—and then I felt like, “No, let’s go back to the idea of actually doing movies and direct a film.” I felt like, “Wow, that was a couple of decades since you went out of high school.” So it’s just maybe an unusual path, but it always comes from an intense passion that I feel for something. Now my passion just really goes to, “I wanna tell stories that are important to me. I wanna explore them the way that I wanna explore them,” and that led me to American Sweatshop.
It’s not that I have not been given scripts throughout the years for features, and some of them were studio features and fully financed with $35 million or so, but I felt like I didn’t want to do them. I didn’t want to tell the story. It was not about making a good paycheck. I felt like, especially with my first feature, I wanted to do something that mattered to me.
Your instincts were spot-on.
Uta Briesewitz Came Straight from ‘Severance’ to ‘American Sweatshop’

Image by Zanda Rice

I have two follow-up questions. You brought this up a little, but I’ll just further emphasize your television filmography …
REINHART: Insane.
You’ve worked on so many of the very best shows. With every single TV directing experience, you likely learn something new and it all adds up, but while making this movie, is there any particular past TV show that was weighing on your mind the most, or influencing how you approached directing this feature?
BRIESEWITZ: I came straight out of Severance. I finished Severance, and a couple of weeks later, I traveled to Germany. So Severance definitely was on my mind, and it’s a different setting. In TV, sometimes, there are a lot of rules. I always kind of accept certain rules; other ones, I just kind of wanna break out of. Even as a cinematographer, when I hear something like, “Oh, we shot one close-up, and now do the matching close-up on the other side.” If somebody takes out a measuring tape, I feel like it doesn’t matter; it just needs to serve the actor and the performance. It doesn’t matter if it’s the exact same distance and the exact same lengths. It doesn’t matter. But I understand why these rules are being applied. Severance really, really breaks out of this, and that was always something that was so exciting for me, also, working on the show, that you just find shots that serve the moment and the actor and what you want to feel at that point.
Definitely, that feeling I took with me to American Sweatshop. Because if cinematography or coverage becomes too formulaic, it’s always predictable. You see one shot, and you know what the reverse is gonna be, and that makes me check out a little bit. I always want to be curious about what the next shot is. So, that’s definitely something I applied on Severance, that I just looked for a shot that interested me as coverage, instead of just, “Let’s get out the measuring tape.”
REINHART: The formula of TV.
When you were talking about making the jump from cinematography to directing, you emphasized that you wanted to direct actors. I feel like we’re accustomed to using the phrase, “What did the director bring out of the actor,” but I love the fact that it goes both ways. What is something about working with Lili that brought something new out of you as an actor’s director?
BRIESEWITZ: When I say “I wanted to direct actors,” it’s more like I want to work with actors—let me phrase it that way. Because I also think sometimes, as a director, you have to know when to stay out of the way, and when to run the set in a way that supports the actor, because actors are incredibly smart. They understand if a camera is in the right position right now to capture what they are performing. If you put it in the wrong spot, it can tick them off. So sometimes, I feel like, my job is quietly communicating without speaking much with the actors, watching the performance, deciding where I put the camera, what I do with the camera, and giving the actor space to explore. I have notes. Sometimes, they’re technical, and sometimes we talk about something else, but sometimes, I also hold back because I can see that an actor is working on something. I feel like, as a director, directing doesn’t mean you have to give a note after every take—not at all. It just sometimes means, like, “Let’s just keep the camera running, and whenever you’re ready, you go back into another take.” For me, it’s just really being sensitive on set so you can sense what the vibe is. I have to say, I always feel so connected to my actors. When they suffer, when they go through something, it does affect me. So, me crying behind the monitor is not a rarity. That happens quite often.
I respect that so much, especially with many of the things you go through in this movie, Lili.

Image by Photagonist

What were some of your goals or specific things you wanted to do when playing Daisy before watching the video and then after so that, as the viewer, we can feel the weight of how that has changed her?
REINHART: I think I wanted to tap into the obsession that comes. It’s kind of like a weird obsession, but also disassociation that happens when you see something traumatic. Either you can’t get the image out of your head, or you need to disassociate completely, or both. And I think before Daisy sees this video… I guess that’s a good question. I didn’t really think too much about it. Then, post-video, depending on the scene, she’s either trying to disassociate and not think about it or drown it out. She smokes a lot of weed. She’s always consuming content or trying to find sexual connections with people in her real life just to kind of keep herself busy. Or she’s at work in this environment and kind of has to—the term “lock in” is very Gen Z, but like, when you’re sitting there at a desk having to do your job, even then, trying to disassociate from what you’re looking at. And as a content moderator, when you’re watching traumatic, violent, graphic, pornographic, everything videos, I don’t know how you could disassociate. I guess you see that in our other character, played by Daniela [Melchior], but Daisy’s a little bit more unable to disassociate but trying to.
Speaking of the video, Uta, one thing I was especially curious about was figuring out how much of it to show so the audience understands and gets enough, but you don’t essentially fall into the trap of doing what the movie is addressing.
BRIESEWITZ: Daisy obviously sees a video that deals with sexual violence against a woman, and that’s a very tricky subject for me in general, also as a television director. When it comes to showing women being abused, I have the standing by now that I feel like sometimes it’s portrayed in a way that almost feels like it’s advertising it a little bit, and that’s something I really step away from and try not to do. So, for instance, to play up the sexuality of that scene or to poke more interest, I could have shown an exposed breast. I could have shown all kinds of things. I could have shown panties slowly being lowered. I said, “I want none of that.” I have suggestive shots like just a leg being moved, but again, it’s all in the audience’s imagination of what’s happening, and that’s way stronger for me.
Also, showing it in a reflection in Lili’s eyeball gives me the opportunity to tie two things together: the information of the video and the human suffering in the same shot. At the same time, it creates a little distance from the violence, but since it’s so hard to see, you lean in even more. Usually, a reflection creates distance, but in this case, you lean in more because it’s hard to make out what’s going on there. That was always my conceptual idea of how I would deal with it. I knew I had to give the audience some clear images so they could actually get hooked, so they could understand what that trauma was.
I have to tell you, shooting that video, we handled it as sensitively as we could. I talked to the actors, specifically to the girl, of course, Sonia, who is also here at the festival, and the other two gentlemen in the scene. I told them that even if they were ever uncomfortable at any point, they could take a break. I remember my female assistant director, Nelly [Hoefke], said to me afterward, “I couldn’t even watch. I had to turn away,” even though we’re just hinting at things. We’re just hinting.
I’ll squeeze in two more questions. This one may seem a little random, but I’m always looking at the tiny details and some particular things that caught my eye were in the therapist’s office, or whoever’s associated with HR. There’s specifically a dying plant and a stuffed cat. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired that set dressing?
BRIESEWITZ: I have to tell you, in retrospect, I was thinking, “Was the dying plant a little bit too much?” But I wanted the dying plant—it was just a little bit too dead. But I love Tim Plester so much. He did such a terrific job as a therapist because I wanted to have an actor that, when you come into his room, and he’s your therapist, you want to go like, “Are you okay?” [Laughs] You see that he suffers with the people there. He is worn out by this job because he is deeply frustrated that he can’t really offer any help, and he has to offer the building blocks and the coloring books and everything. He has to go through that checklist, and he knows it’s doing nothing. He feels like such a fake. And in a certain way, broken souls always meet there. Then, later on, with Daisy, it’s a different challenge when she speaks to him, and he becomes a little bit more alive in that conversation. But Tim just so beautifully, for me, conveyed the sense of empathy being broken in this environment, as well.
Indie Filmmaking Allowed Uta Briesewitz to Answer to No One But Herself

The two share what brought them joy on the set of such a heavy film.

Image by Photagonist

I’m gonna spin things around to wrap up here and lean into the positive because it’s a very heavy movie, and rightfully so. You’re making a lot of points that I think should be weighing heavily on minds, but I also think that there is so much joy to be had when you’re on an independent film set, and you’re getting the opportunity to essentially make movie magic. Can you each recall the single moment of making American Sweatshop that filled you up with the most as an independent filmmaker?
REINHART: There’s a scene where I’m running, and there’s a camera on a little golf cart following me. I’m running, and it was at midnight, and that’s really not that late comparatively, but it was a long day. I was also dealing with some health issues while we were shooting this movie. Everybody’s sitting around at the end of the day, and I’m sprinting, doing it like five times, but I think I looked over and Uta and the writer were both like, “Fuck yeah!” It’s like, “Yay!” There’s just this sense of camaraderie with indie filmmaking. It’s not just like, “Cut! Okay, bye. I’m going home.” It’s more like, “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.” There’s just something a little bit more intimate about it, and that’s the intimacy I felt and feel when I’m on an indie film.
BRIESEWITZ: We celebrate the moments because do you remember how excited I got when we did the shot of the reflection in the eye? I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is the movie! It’s working, it’s working!” I remember I was freaking out. But to answer your question, I actually had several moments during prep and on set where my training was telling me, “Okay, I want to make a decision on this, so who do I have to run this by?” Basically, the answer was “nobody” because there is no studio. You’re the studio! And that was always like, “Oh my gosh, yay! This is great, this is great! I can do whatever I want!” And that was awesome.
Special thanks to our 2025 partners at SXSW, including presenting partner Rendezvous Films and supporting partners Bloom, Peroni, Hendrick’s Gin, and Roxstar Entertainment.

American Sweatshop

Release Date

March 8, 2025

Runtime

100 minutes

Director

Uta Briesewitz

Writers

Matthew Nemeth

Lili Reinhart

Daisy Moriarty