“I think she enjoyed fighting adults, drinking fake beer, and throwing things around all day,” says Paris-based director Simon Cahn of Nova Mittleman, the pint-sized star of today’s Directors’ Cuts super-short. “She’s the daughter of a friend and was six when we cast her – it was her first time acting.”

The film is a composite of dailies from Cahn’s video for Hanni El Khatib’s “Come Alive,” shot on a “tiny tiny” budget in the streets of LA. “I always loved the art of screen tests,” he says, and sees the film portraits of Nova – playing a mini Grim Reaper on a cute rampage – as a “surreal, funny version of them.”     

Having co-written and co-directed award-winning short Mourir Auprès de Toi with Spike Jonze in 2011, Cahn travelled across America as part of Station to Station in 2013 – an experience captured in The Last Boxcar for NOWNESS – and was shortlisted for the Young Directors Awards at Cannes that same year. 

Other music videos by Cahn include London-based We Are Shining’s “Hot Love” and Jamaican-born songstress Denai Moore – “but most importantly,” the young director says, “I’m now developing my first feature film, called Oscar.” Fingers crossed that there’ll at least be a cameo for Nova.    

Ananda Pellerin is a London-based editor and writer.