THE FIXATE & BINGE PODCAST, with Host, Joe Curdy: Deep dives into cinema and storytelling with voices who create it · Joe Curdy

From SXSW to Netflix: Writer and Director Freddy Macdonald’s Wild Ride With His Swiss Alps Thriller -- SEW TORN!

·58 min·3 clips

MacDonald says his father taught him stop-motion at age nine and that they write and direct together as a father-son team.

1. THE FIXATE & BINGE PODCAST focuses on Freddy MacDonald’s SEW TORN, a Swiss-set thriller now on Netflix. 2. Host Joe Curdy speaks with writer-director Freddy MacDonald, whose father Fred MacDonald co-wrote and produced the film. 3. The episode asks how an 18-year-old filmmaker turned a 2019 short film into a Netflix feature. 4. MacDonald says he made the short film in 2019 and later expanded it into the feature released in 2025. 5. He explains that his father taught him stop-motion animation when he was nine and that they have written together ever since. 6. The conversation covers the confusion caused by having two writers named Freddie and Fred MacDonald in the same family. 7. MacDonald describes the AFI application prompt that required a five-minute, no-dialogue story about a change of heart. 8. He says the original short centered on a seamstress who encounters a drug deal gone bad and uses thread in a Rube Goldberg-style scheme. 9. MacDonald notes that Joel Coen responded to the short and told him to turn it into a feature. 10. He says the team wrote 22 drafts of a linear version before throwing it out and finding the structure through Run Lola Run. 11. MacDonald says the feature was shot in Switzerland, partly because his mother is Swiss and he attended Zurich International School. 12. He names Bad Ragatz and Vatis as the production locations, with Vatis described as a village of about 200 people. 13. He says locals opened their homes to the production and helped with the shoot in the Alps. 14. MacDonald says the film includes a first explosion of its kind in Switzerland, done with permission from an elderly store owner. 15. He explains that thread became a central metaphor for choice, consequences, and the ties between a mother and daughter. 16. MacDonald says the film’s look is meant to feel tight and contained, with the mountains reflecting the protagonist’s emotional stuckness. 17. The interview is conversational and detailed, with Joe Curdy reacting strongly to the casting, the festival path, and the age of the filmmaker. 18. MacDonald speaks plainly about being relieved the film found its home on Netflix and that he no longer wants to watch it after the long edit. 19. People who like indie filmmaking stories, Swiss locations, and process-heavy interviews will want this episode. 20. People who want only a short review and no behind-the-scenes detail may skip it.

As heard by us

A contained thriller origin story shaped by place, adaptation, and local production.

Freddy Macdonald presents Sew Torn as a contained thriller about a seamstress trying to keep her fabric shop afloat, with the mountain setting adding a sense of pressure and emotional confinement.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the backstory behind a Swiss Alps thriller that grew out of a short film.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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