2026 RIIFF Filmmaker Spotlight Series: One Night, Directed by Maggie Sophie Brown and Tyler Morris Brown
Article Written By Cristina Sepe
One Night, written and directed by siblings Maggie Sophie Brown and Tyler Morris Brown, is an emotional short about the uncertainty of connecting with new people. Columbia students Margaret and Will meet at a diner and hit it off after having a good conversation. As they continue to get to know each other throughout the night, there is a clear spark between them. One Night allows us to watch closely as we follow the characters’ small journey, even when they eventually leave the diner to hang out at Will’s house. Overall, Margaret and Will showcase what it’s like to experience dating pains, exposing the nuance behind trying to “find your person.”
Cristina Sepe: What inspired you both to write this short film?
Maggie Sophie Brown: Our short takes place in a fictionalized version of Columbia University that is not so fictionalized because we named it Columbia University. The idea came about because I was talking to Tyler about this experience that I had, and just getting some big brother advice. And then he was like, “No way. This same thing happened to me.” And like, I was done really dirty in the same way, and so we started talking.
It sort of opened this dialogue between the two of us of, what does it feel like when you think you have a connection with someone and you’re so excited because you finally have found someone that you think understands you and gets you, just to have the rug pulled out from under you…Maybe it’s that you are a hopeless romantic and put some stuff onto the situation, [or] maybe it’s that person really did just do you dirty. So we kind of wanted to talk about the nuance of that. And, um, yeah, it was a bonding moment- an unfortunate bonding moment. That’s when we started to realize that this is not a singular experience whatsoever. I feel like not a lot of people talk about it because it’s not fun to talk about how something just came in like this and destroyed you for a couple months.
Tyler Morris Brown: The majority of people who come up to us after the screenings we’ve had [say that] this is exactly what happened to me, and I’ve never heard anyone else talk about it before. And I didn’t talk about it to anyone because it was embarrassing for me. And then Maggie [told me her experience] late one night, and I was just like, wow, this exact same thing happened to me as well.
CS: I feel like this short was a glimpse of what it’s like to try to connect with others. Is there something you hope the audience learns from watching this short?
TMB: I mean [it’s] less about learning something from it, [and] more just the takeaway [of] something that you can relate to; that’s the main thing. When we made it, we just really wanted to convey these emotions about how Rain’s character is feeling to everyone. We really just wanted to hit home and also be out of nowhere, as well, because it’s like Jackson is such a sweetheart, and he is the nicest person in real life, and the nicest person in this movie all the way up until the end. He’s so funny. He’s so charming. You fall in love with him. You fall in love with their dynamic.
And then, as Maggie said, the rug just gets pulled from underneath. And we really just wanted people to sit with this feeling afterwards. When you see the push-in of Rain in the diner, we just really want people to feel what she is feeling.
MSB: When something like this does happen, I feel like there’s always this narrative of, “Oh my gosh, did I read way too much into this? What is going on?” You’re so confused, and you look back through all the signs. The film is constructed in a way that if you watch it again, you’ll see that, no, she’s not crazy. She asks questions…and he chose to omit certain things. I think that was really important to us. Like, the nuance of [her] having this moment, and she doesn’t even know what she’s feeling, and she’s processing this, and she feels so sad, but she’s also, like, “Wait, what?”
I think it’s also confusion and a little bit of just sadness at the situation because it’s so exciting to have a crush on someone and to have a connection. Just being in college, you don’t always meet your people right away. There’s this narrative of, oh my god, college could be where I meet my person, and this is so exciting. And then you meet someone, and you think it’s gonna happen, and then there’s this disappointment of, a little heartbreak or something.
CS: What went into finding your main actors/actresses? What specifically were you looking for in Will and Margaret as characters?
MSB: Yeah, so we kind of have a crazy story of how we came to work with Jackson and Rain. It started out because Tyler and I went to this super crunchy granola elementary school that was, like, 100 people in the whole elementary school. And one of our friends, Kai, is an actor now and had taken acting classes, I believe, with Jackson. And so we called him up…and he was like, you know what? I know a guy. He’s a super lovable guy. No one would ever suspect him of doing something like the script.
And so we sent Jackson the script, not knowing him…we didn’t know that it was gonna become what it had become. And we had our first meeting with him, and it was just Jackson and I at the diner, and the second he walked in, I was like, “Oh, this is the guy we’re casting.” It was a gut feeling.
There’s sort of that famous Hitchcock quote that I think is like “90% of directing is casting,” and we really feel that that’s true, because we got so, so lucky with Jackson…[he] was so excited about the whole process…he sent us seven names of girls that he knew and that he had met through working in the industry and through acting classes, and Rain was on the list, and we met her at the same diner. Then she walked in and was so chill and funny…but they literally both hopped on board with us to do this project for free, donating their time, their energy, everything, with two people they didn’t know, because they said they both read the script and really liked it…We won the lottery with them. They are amazing.
CS: What was it like to make this film together? What was your favorite part?
TMB: I mean, it was honestly just the best experience. We have such a perfect age gap for siblings, in my opinion, which is like two years [or] 22 months…So, we’ve been pretty much best friends our entire life growing up, and we’ve always been there for each other and been through everything together. It was so easy to work with each other because we kind of have this weird sibling telepathy…The writing process was so fun because we wrote it at our parents’ house in the kitchen.
The only thing that we had to think about for a bit was more just, how do we condense this to a one-night experience? And it ended up working great like that. And I love films that take place over a short amount of time.
We kind of had three main locations…we really just wanted to establish their dynamic as just like fun, flirty, where can this go? And then once you get back to the apartment, that uncertain feeling of, “Okay, we had a great time for an hour in the diner. Now I’m back at this guy’s apartment. How do we break the tension?” Then it goes from that to the bedroom scene. We really wanted to show just two people having a nice time together. Personally, I am not a fan of hookup scenes in movies…and I love a tasteful portrayal of just two people bonding.
MSB: What was that? 20 minutes that we got to steal that bedroom scene in? Yeah, we had already wrapped sound, and we had wrapped a bunch of people…and I looked at the [director of photography], and I was like, “We need to get this.” And Tyler was like, “We need to get this.” It was very run-and-gun…it all came together, and I’m really glad we got those shots, because those are some of my favorite moments in [the film].
TMB: The ending wouldn’t hit the same without it.
