Cynthia Garcia Williams About five years ago, with over a decade of experience in the mental health industry and the notion she’d retire in the field, Santa Clarita resident Cynthia Garcia Williams decided to totally change the plan.  Now, at 53 years old, it’s all coming together.  “My husband had actually gone back to school to get his MBA,” she said in an interview. “And when that happened, I told him, ‘I think I’m going to write a screenplay. And because you’re going to be so busy, I’m going to teach myself.’ And I thought it was going to be so easy and I’d just go on YouTube and watch a couple videos, and voila, I’d be able to create this screenplay. That’s not what happened.”  Williams has since gone on to learn how to write a screenplay. In fact, it was her writing that got her into a directing program, which then led to her being hired to direct her first feature film, “We’re Not Married?” The movie, which she screened before a crowd of film executives and sales reps last month with hopes of earning a distribution deal, is now set to screen at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24, during opening night of the La Femme International Film Festival at Regal L.A. Live in Los Angeles.  According to Williams, she didn’t start writing amazing screenplays right out of the gate. She said she’s embarrassed to say she actually sent her first script to these two producers, embarrassed because the work had serious problems – for instance, a whole page of straight dialogue and no action.   Williams would join a number of writing groups. She was writing nonstop. And she was learning.  “One of the writing groups had a lab — a director’s lab,” Williams said, “and the founder encouraged me to join it. I said, ‘I don’t have any desire to be a director.’ I’m a cinephile for sure, but I didn’t know what a director actually did.”  Cynthia Garcia Williams directs a scene from “We’re Not Married?” in 2024. Photo courtesy of Bahareh Ritter Screenshot Williams admitted she was scared to join the lab. But she took this woman’s advice and submitted a writing sample. She and five others, she said, got in, each of them getting to work with mentor figures.  “They literally taught you directing 101, from beginning to end,” Williams said. “And so, I created a movie called ‘Dukkha.’”   “Dukkha,” she said, is a Buddhist concept for suffering. As part of the director’s lab, Williams was tasked with writing a short film script with a theme in mind. The theme was nirvana.   “So, I’m in recovery,” Williams said. “I’ve been sober over 23 years, and when they said ‘nirvana,’ the first thing I thought of was drugs, because that’s what you’re looking for. Well, that’s what I was looking for. And I thought, ‘Well, what keeps you from that?’ And then I did research into it, and it’s the suffering, the longing, the lack of responsibility, our minds not ever being satisfied with things the way they are and the inability of humans to take responsibility for their actions. That’s what I wrote on, and the film I made swept their awards.”  Those awards included a jury award and an audience award. It was upon earning such accolades, Williams said, that she learned she was a director.   Since then, she’s directed four more short films and her feature debut, “We’re Not Married?” The feature was not a movie she wrote. It came to her by way of the same woman who introduced her to the director’s lab. The script was written by a Black woman, and it was meant to include an all-Black cast.   Williams met with the writer and asked for her intentions.  “I told her, ‘If you’re looking for a BET (Black Entertainment Television project) or something like that, I might not be the right person,’” she said.   Williams is Latina and said she feared she was taking a job from somebody else.  “She (the writer) was like, ‘Well, let’s make it yours. Let’s make it a story that you feel you want to tell,’” Williams said.   With that blessing, Williams filled the cast and crew with Latino people, and she even did a rewrite with the writer to incorporate Williams’ Latino mentality.  “She allowed me to put some Spanglish in there,” Williams said. “The score is definitely heavy Latino-sounding. That flavor is what I brought to the script.”  “We’re Not Married?” (not to be confused with the 1952 Ginger Rogers/Marilyn Monroe film “We’re Not Married!”), written by Rae Lashea and Williams from Lashea’s original screenplay, stars Danielle Larracuente, Joey Nisivoccia, Eric Roberts and Lisa Vidal. According to press materials, it’s a tale of love, laughter and legal twists about two couples who are bound together in marriage during a whimsical ceremony by an eccentric reverend who, come to find out, wasn’t licensed.   Williams said that she, her producer and others involved with the film have been meeting with executives and sales agents to find distribution.  “I think if I walk away from this with representation,” she said, “it’s a huge win for me. Because it’s also going to find me more work.”  And then her gamble to walk away from her former career will have paid off.  “When your heart is not in mental health,” Williams said, “you really shouldn’t be doing it. I was burnt out to a certain extent, but my mind just — I just had no desire to do it anymore. And that’s not the position you should be in to do mental health.”  She said that she’s sometimes gotten down on herself because she’s not always contributing financially, but her husband is quick to shut down that idea, asking her if she’s having fun.  Cynthia Garcia Williams directs a scene from “We’re Not Married?” in 2024. Photo courtesy of Bahareh Ritter “I’m always like, ‘Yes, I’m having fun,’ and he’s like, ‘Then all the rest doesn’t matter. It just matters that you’re still enjoying it.’ And I really am. I love being on set, I love the long hours, I love the craziness of it.”  “We’re Not Married!” is set to screen at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24, during the La Femme International Film Festival at Regal L.A. Live in Los Angeles. For details, go to LaFemme.eventive.org/welcome.  Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].  The post Faces of the SCV: Local resident flips the script, directs first feature film after career switch   appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.