TISH FEST 2025: MEET FILMMAKER XANDER COPP, DIRECTOR OF CARTER

Xander Copp is an Indonesian-Dutch-Canadian filmmaker from Toronto. Specializing in the thriller genre, Xander's films have a precise, omniscient visual style, with hard-hitting themes and suspenseful pacing.  Xander’s first short film, THE BURGLAR (2019), a social thriller starring Emmanuel Kabongo and Samora Smallwood had notable success at the Toronto Black Film Festival, the Burbank International Film Festival, and the 53rd Annual Houston Worldfest.

With his latest short, CARTER (2024), Xander’s team adapted the H.P. Lovecraft short story “The Statement of Randolph Carter” into a paranormal thriller centred around the theme of grief.  The film is set in an abandoned cemetery and stars Carson MacCormac and Elizabeth Saunders.  CARTER had its World Premiere at the 50th Boston SciFi Film Festival in February and continues its festival tour with two screenings in Toronto and one in Pasadena, CA over the course of the next month.

Outside of his directing work, Xander has worked in the film industry for eight years, starting as a Production Coordinator in the indie and commercial space before moving into Visual Effects, where he has worked as the Lead VFX Data Wrangler and VFX Coordinator on Seasons 3 and 4 of Amazon Prime's hit series THE BOYS.  

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MEET FILMMAKER XANDER COPP, DIRECTOR OF CARTER

What made you fall in love with film? 

Visits to Blockbuster, Friday movie nights with my family, and making homemade videos with our old VHS camera.

What was the first film you saw in a theatre? 

The first film I remember seeing in the theatres was “The Emperor’s New Groove,” which is still one of my favourite animated films (and PC video games!) to this day.  

What do you love about the collaborative process of independent filmmaking and film festivals? 

I love building a collaborative creative vision – it’s one of the reasons I enjoy working with writers vs. both writing and directing on a single project.  Helping develop a script at its early stages without being fully immersed in it allows for a more objective approach to the work.  And bringing writers into the production and post process achieves a similar goal, leading to stronger product and more rewarding creative experience in my opinion.  Seeing your film play on the big screen at a festival is a magical experience, especially when you can meet other filmmakers and show appreciation for each other’s work.

As a filmmaker, what lengths have you gone to to achieve getting a shot, delivering a performance, or producing a scene? 

On CARTER, we built our cemetery set from scratch.  Our art team worked tirelessly, making over 30 tombstones out of foamcore and drywall mud, then transporting them from Toronto up to our shooting location in Oro Station.  In the week leading up to our shoot, the rain had transformed our “cemetery” into a literal swamp with a stream running through the middle of our set.  The aesthetic was perfect for the film but the conditions made for quite the challenge for both the cast and the crew, in addition to the lack of sleep from three straight night shoots.

What's next for you as a filmmaker? 

I have another short film on the docket that I’ll be shooting within the next year called WE ARE PROGRAMMED AND THEN WE DIE, which is another collaboration with John-Paul Kaczur one of the co-writers on CARTER.  It’s a sci-fi character drama about a suicidal novelist who’s prescribed a therapy robot.  We’ll be shooting it in Toronto and we’re very excited to bring this quirky, touching, and melancholic story to life.

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