A lone woman finds herself squaring off against two trespassers in Director Julian Higgins’s thriller, God’s Country.

Based on James Lee Burke’s short story “Winter Light,” and his own short film of the same name, Higgins’s feature version tells the story of a college professor who finds herself drawn into an escalating battle of wills after she confronts two hunters who claim they’re just passing through.

On September 18, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Higgins discussed the making of God’s Country during a Q&A moderated by Director Chloe Okuno (Watcher).

During the conversation, Higgins spoke about working with actors. “A big part of the process for me is whenever I rehearse or have actors in the room, I finally understand what is in a script. You think you know, but then when you show up and you can’t deny when it’s working or when it’s not working. A big part of this script process is 'workshopping' this as you would in a play. We gathered some actor friends and we spent months on this. I basically saw every scene of the film on its feet with the actors off-book. This all evolved by making the script much deeper.”

Higgins’s other directorial credits include episodes of Guidance and House. He has been a DGA member since 2012.

You can listen to Higgins' Q&A by clicking the podcast episode embedded below. You can find more DGA podcast episodes here.