DRIFF Alumni Spotlight: Joseph Covello
Still image from Covello’s award winning 2021 film ‘He Comes at Night.’
Since 2017, DRIFF has cultivated a space for audiences to engage with diverse filmmakers from the Durham Region, across Canada, and around the globe. Our Alumni Spotlight series highlights the impacts and achievements of past and present DRIFF filmmakers working in media arts today.
Joseph Covello is a Toronto-based writer and director. His films have screened at several festivals across North America, winning several awards in the process. Prior to directing, Joseph was a visual artist and art instructor, teaching painting and photography, as well as creating commissioned works for private collectors. Applying his artistic eye to cinematography, Joseph shot several award-winning short films that have played at festivals worldwide including Clermont-Ferrand, Vancouver International Film Festival, and Montreal World Film Festival.
Flashing back to 2019, his short film ‘Engaged to Be Engaged’ was selected as part of the DRIFF Official Selection. The film follows Lindsey, a hopeless romantic on the brink of proposing who must confront her true fears and insecurities as she imagines all the ways it could backfire. Meanwhile, her boyfriend Seth is facing a similar predicament.
The film meditates on the pressure couples feel to be constantly moving forward, whether that’s through accomplishments like marriage, babies, travel plans, or career goals. Covello handles the story with care to allow Lindsey and Seth’s inner worlds to play out on screen, giving the audience space to reflect upon their own experiences with heartbreak, love, and relationship milestones.
Covello has taken on several exciting projects since last appearing at DRIFF three years ago. We caught up with him recently to hear about all his recent filmmaking successes, which involve international awards, a new production company, and more.
First off, it's been a while! What have you been up to since your film ‘Engaged to Be Engaged’ was shown at DRIFF in 2019?
Since the screening at DRIFF, ‘Engaged to be Engaged’ landed a distribution deal. I wrote and directed the short suspense film ‘He Comes at Night,’ which premiered at LA Shorts International Film Festival last year and has since gone on to win Best Director at the Independent Horror Movie Awards 2021 and Best Young Actress at HorrorHaus Film Festival 2021. In 2020, I also co-founded Gravitate Productions with my Producer Krystle Ferdinand where we’re developing several larger projects. Right now, I am working on the script for my first feature film called ‘The Yellow Queen,’ a psychological horror which we plan to shoot in 2022.
I saw that your 2021 film ‘He Comes At Night’ had some great reactions from audiences and film festivals, particularly at the Independent Horror Movie Awards, where you won Best Director. What was your driving force behind making this movie?
I had written the first draft of ‘He Comes at Night’ a few years ago while I was working on another project and shelved it. When I started writing my feature film and I knew it was going to be in the horror genre, I decided I wanted to direct a short horror first. The great thing about short films is you have a lot of creative freedom to take risks.
The inspiration for He ‘Comes at Night’ came from my own childhood fears and imagination, which is ironic because we ended up shooting the film in my childhood bedroom. The film is about an anxious eight-year-old who wakes up to the terrifying realization that the monster under her bed may be real. And I can remember waking up in the middle of the night at that age, in that exact same spot and looking in the shadowy corners of the room, wondering if something was going to reach out and grab me.
What inspired you to start using film as a medium to tell stories?
Growing up I always loved to draw, which turned into a love of painting, so I thought I was going to be an artist. When I was around 10 years old my parents bought a video camera to take videos of our vacations. My brother and I started filming videos with action figures, then with our cousins. We would copy scenes from movies or commercials, anything that would make us laugh. Then in high school I took some media arts courses and the films got more elaborate. From then on, my mind was constantly generating ideas for films I wanted to make.
Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers out there?
The best advice I can give is to be ambitious and keep creating. Use what you’ve got, even if it’s just a phone, to go out and make something that you would want to watch. It doesn’t always have to be perfect, just keep learning and make the next thing even better.
What's one underrated film you think that everyone should see?
I love John Carpenter movies (‘The Thing’ is one of my all-time favourites), but I would recommend ‘They Live’ as a great underrated film.
What's one thing you remember about the last time you attended DRIFF?
When I went to DRIFF in 2019 with my short ‘Engaged to be Engaged’ I was blown away by how kind and welcoming they were to us as filmmakers. It was a lot of fun to meet other filmmakers and audience members from my own local area and see all of the great venues across Durham. It felt very intimate, but at the same time the calibre of films was very high, thought-provoking, and global in scope.
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Thank you to Joseph Covello for sharing generously throughout this conversation.
Hannah Polinski is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently based in Southern Ontario.
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Want to become part of a local film community and attend a film festival in Durham Region? The Durham Region International Film Festival’s events include an annual fall film festival in Durham Region, summer drive-in movie screenings in Whitby and DRIFF in a Jiff short film screenings in Oshawa. Visit driff.ca, become a DRIFF insider or follow us on social media at @catchthedriff for all the details.