Even with the heavy subject matter, Cronenberg’s lighthearted attitude defined working conditions on set, making the 20-day Ontario shoot delightful. Filming in the fall, the team celebrated Cronenberg’s birthday and Halloween, which fall three days apart. Most of the cast and crew had prior relationships, including Baruchel and Hampshire who have known one another for 25 years, and Cronenberg brought on her photography team to help behind the scenes. 

“Coming onto a set that is so supportive and everybody’s there to do the same thing and make the project as great as it can be, that was the move for me,” says Cronenberg. “As Jay [Baruchel] said, make cool shit with your friends. And that’s what we were doing, you know, this idea that your grown-up job can be working with your friends and having a good time. It’s like going to camp and these people become your whole world and your best friends and you think, ‘I’ll never be able to survive a day without you when this is over.’” 

Cronenberg, who has made a name for herself as a photographer specialising in celebrity portraits — including the iconic album cover for Drake’s “Views” — saw directing as a “natural extension of photography.” When Sparaga e-mailed her with the script for Humane, subject line “Have you ever thought about directing a feature?”, she felt ready to take the leap. The 39-year-old had already dabbled in shorts and music videos, and working with actors as a photographer granted her a sense of what made them tick. Those skills translated seamlessly onto the director’s chair, but filmmaking opened the scope of her lens to a broader view. 

“When Michael sent the script to me it felt like a very unique premise with really wonderful characters and something that you could really dig into and spend the time creating this detailed world,” says Cronenberg. “Having come from the photography world, jobs happen very quickly. You’re in and you’re out. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve wanted to have more of an engrossing experience to spend more time actually being in the moment and create something that has the depth that a film does.” 

“Growing up watching my family make films, you understand how long of a process it is,” she continues. “You can’t just do it and be done with it. It’s going to be a part of you, part of the art you’ve created, part of what you’ve put into the world forever, so you have to really care about it. And if you don’t, you’re going to suffer because it’s such a long process.” 

Though her father, legendary Canadian horror auteur David Cronenberg, and brother Brandon Cronenberg, both specialise in visual-forward body horror, Caitlin has only followed their footsteps part-way, opting instead to focus on family drama and satire, while still revelling in speculative fiction and excessive gore. 

Where she truly aligns with her famed family is in their appreciation of independent filmmaking. Cronenberg shares that making a movie is harder than ever these days, with fewer projects greenlit each year and even less money allotted to each budget. As the industry becomes increasingly convoluted and corporatized, filmmakers have to jump more barriers to get to the stage where the creativity can finally take off. 

“I think about my dad in the early days of his career, grabbing friends and a camera and going and making a movie and having that movie feel like a real movie,” says Cronenberg. Like her father, Caitlin Cronenberg knows how to have fun on set while still making a final product with merit. In fact, supportive working conditions engender great filmmaking, and there’s an undeniable correlation between capitalist imperatives and the decline in film quality in the last 20 years.

“There are still people doing low budget, guerilla style films, and often they’re incredible, and that’s wonderful,” she says. “It’s also very hard to get a film made these days, and so I feel pleased and proud that I’ve done it, and I really hope I get the opportunity to do it again.”