Name: Sheila Atim
Notable past credits: “The Woman King” and Barry Jenkins’ “The Underground Railroad.” Atim is nominated for this year’s EE BAFTA Rising Star award.
Sundance project: Director Raven Jackson’s “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt.”
The magic of Sundance: “There’s something quite magical about the setting here, and I think that really lends itself well to a festival, particularly where people are trying to be really ambitious when it comes to their vision and their projects,” says Atim.
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Lending some love to the short film program: “I saw the midnight shorts. We were supporting a film that’s written and directed by Oscar Boyson, ‘Power Signal,’ which was a brilliant film,” she says. “It’s a really difficult format to be able to create an arc within a short span of time. To engage people and film something with story and meaning and keep it succinct isn’t easy.”
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What brought her to Sundance: Atim stars in poet and photographer Raven Jackson’s feature filmmaking debut, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt.”
“The film really takes its time. And that can be a nerve-wracking thing in terms of how an audience is going to react,” says Atim of Jackson’s lyrical project, which had premiered several hours earlier on Sunday. “[The audience] was engaged, they were locked in. One thing I love about Sundance is everyone’s so behind all the projects and everyone just loves film and filmmaking. Independent film often is a labor of love, so there’s so much goodwill in the room.”
What the film is about: Produced by Barry Jenkins, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” is a nonlinear portrait of a Black woman in Mississippi, set during different periods in her lifetime. Atim stars as the woman’s mother.
“I found the script to be sensory,” she adds. “There was a lot of space in the script, which is always interesting as an actor because you get excited about the prospect of filling up that space or creating a context to that.”
Her take on the red carpet: After the festival, the British actress was headed back to London and the fervor of awards season. Atim is up for the BAFTA’s Rising Star award, and continues to support the broader awards campaign for her “The Woman King.”
“It’s fun, I really enjoy these things when there’s a creative element to them,” says Atim of her approach to red carpet dressing. Last year, Atim donned Prada for several red carpet appearances, as well as British designers including Emilia Wickstead and Erdem. “It’s not just about the red carpet, it’s about creating a look alongside the stylist and hair and makeup artists — that’s the part about it I really love. It’s about bringing it back to some creative source, so it all feels like it’s tied into the same thing — it’s tied into my work, it’s tied into me as a creative person.”
What’s next: Looking ahead, the actress notes that she wants to take a bigger involvement in her projects, through producing or joining the conversation at an earlier stage than casting.
“I’m really interested in that side of things, and how things get made,” says Atim. “Which is another great thing about coming to Sundance. Because it’s a labor of love, you see how hard people had to fight to get funding for their projects and get them off the ground, and get people to believe in them as artists,” she adds. “I’ve been really inspired by projects like Raven’s. So, I kind of want to do something for myself.”