Livia De Paolis has been on-set since birth. Yet her immersion in the industry and understanding of what it means to be a filmmaker is as practical as it is poetic. Born and raised in Rome, Livia literally took her first steps on a movie set, which isn’t surprising considering that her grandfather founded I.N.C.I.R, the only privately-owned studio structure in Italy. Even at a young age, this Italian-born powerhouse always knew she was meant to tell stories. And now, her mastery in the art of storytelling can be seen in theaters and on home screens come June. Understanding how The Lost Girls film—a modern-day feminist Peter Pan spin-off—came to be will leave you thoughtfully provoked.

The journey to being a multi-talented director, actress, filmmaker, and writer started in her childhood. Livia fondly remembers her dad taking her and her sister to the studios on the weekends, where they’d play and peddle around on bicycles. Her family was more business-oriented than creative. “I grew up with the idea, knowing, that in order to make a film, that it’s not real. It’s not real, and that it’s built up, and you need a director of photography, and then it’s gonna get edited, and then there’s costumes and makeup, and, you know, all of that,” she reminisces. Though it wasn’t exactly a normal upbringing, she never questioned it or was consciously aware of how unique her circumstances were until maybe high school.

An avid reader even as a child, she became quite passionate about philosophy while in high school, leading Livia to obtain her master’s degree in philosophy from the Sapienza University of Rome. However, she admits with a chuckle, “I didn’t really think about the practical aspects of studying philosophy. I think, originally, there was this idea of doing an academic career. And then by the time I finished studying, I was like, ‘I don’t want to study all the time. I want to go to New York and like, be an actress and live life.” Which is exactly what Livia did—she was in her early twenties then.

“I kind of had this very liberating thing where I left everything and went to New York. I wanted to make it on my own. And I had a lot of fun, and a lot of struggle—like that artists’ struggle.” She was determined and more than willing to be entrenched in what the Big Apple had to offer despite the fact that getting established took a minute. “It took a few years, actually. When I started, I got a modeling visa, and then I started taking some acting classes, and then I started to just look around and see ‘What can I do?’ Like, I was very focused on wanting to work in the theater, but obviously, you know, having grown up in Italy, I had a very strong Italian accent,” Livia acknowledges.

Living the theater life was only a dream until she found Richard Foreman. Though now retired, “he was considered the king of philosophical theater in New York City.” Obviously, this was a perfect fit for the former academic, but she recalls that “it was strange theater. It was weird theater.” It was artsy, avant-garde, “political by its own existence.” Above all, it was a golden opportunity and “a good season.” Interning with Foreman brought Livia a new network and countless fruitful relationships. “Through that internship, I met my co-writer for my first feature film [Emoticon]. I met a guy that then became my roommate and then we started doing theater together,” recounts Livia.

“That was the beginning of the whole New York City theater time, which was a time in which I was completely immersed in it.” If she wasn’t making a show, she was going to see a show, or assistant directing on another show. “I was just living and breathing the theater life and making no money,” she laughs. “But I was kind of moving forward, right? I was starting to work with people that I really wanted to work with, and my English was getting better. I felt like things were moving.” She had obtained an artist’s visa at that point and it just felt like things were going her way. “And then 2008 happened.”

“Everybody had to take a step back, right? So I feel that that was a time where TV, the theater really changed. Like there were more stars, or big television actors wanting to do theater,” explains Livia. “The theater dynamic really changed. Because before, a lot of these companies were funded by just donors—just rich people that would just donate money. After 2008, there was a time where people didn’t want to donate money, like they didn’t have any money to donate.”

Before then, Livia always had two or three jobs. Fortunately, by then, Livia had gotten “an actual job” working for a documentary filmmaker who needed help producing a play. “So I had only one job. And then I was writing,” she shares, referring to Emoticon. “And then after that, I moved to Los Angeles,” where her circumstances changed yet again. “I had a death in the family—my aunt and my uncle died, and they had no children. It was very sad, but I actually inherited a little bit of money—I’m gonna be very honest here! And that kind of helped.” It allowed Livia to take another step forward. “I was pretty much burned out with the whole theater scenario,” at that point.

The Lost Girls is a book that stayed with me for a very long time.

She was itching to experience California. “I was like, okay, I’m gonna make a movie. Let me try LA. So I moved to Los Angeles for a while. I knew already how to make a film. I just didn’t know how to finance it. Like, the economics. I had no clue of that.” Never one to idle, Livia took a course on how to make an independent film. “And I figured that out, and then I really just used friends and family, some of my own money. I made it with whatever money I had,” finally manifesting Emoticon, her first feature film.

Livia had come to the West Coast to forge something new. “But the cast that I got for that, and even the crew or the collaborators, were all spilling over from the theater,” including the casting director, one of the producers, the writer, to name a few. “So the New York theater scene was really where it all began, right? And then these connections, these relationships fell over into making my first feature film … like all the cast was a New York cast. And it was, except from the young actors, everybody else was connected with the theater community. So that helped.”

Though Livia had come to LA with the admittedly naïve notion that she’d be able to just make her movie there, she says, “Then I moved back to New York, because the movie was actually shot in New York … Like all my connections are in New York. My illusion to be an overnight success had ended and I was like, ‘Okay, if I’m gonna have to continue, I’m not gonna get a job here. Nobody’s gonna hire me. If I have to continue generating my own stuff, then I’d rather be living in New York, which is where I feel the most at home and where I’m surrounded by a community of artists.’” To pay the bills, Livia started selling real estate, which she very much enjoyed, yet she couldn’t get away from the writing bug.

She had always been an avid reader. Approximately a decade earlier, back in 2003, Livia had read Laurie Fox’s The Lost Girls novel. “Right away I thought, ‘Oh this should be a movie!’ But I didn’t think I was going to make that movie. I was, you know, doing theater.” However, the manner in which it resonated with her was undeniable. “I read the book. I loved the book. I gave it to some girlfriends…it stayed there as one of my favorite books.” Yet she couldn’t help but wonder, “Maybe someday, who knows.” After Emoticon, when she moved back to New York in 2014, Livia met Laurie Fox and got the rights to make the film. “I thought, ‘What am I doing next?’ I think I’m gonna do that book.”

The story chronicles four generations of the Darling women as they struggle in the aftermath of their adventures with Peter Pan. But as fate would have it, life threw her another curve ball in the summer of 2017. “My mother got cancer, and so, basically, I kind of dropped everything and moved back to Rome.” Livia was her mother’s primary caregiver until she passed away in 2018. “So through that time, when I was looking after my mother, my obsession of making this film had not gone away. I still wanted to make the film. I hadn’t just dropped the film—I dropped everything else, but not the film,” going so far as to try casting it even while overseas.

“I started researching film financing in Europe, because it’s a different model. Now I know that there’s different ways to make a movie!” Livia giggles. “I was in contact with a Belgian film fund originally—I was investigating this whole scenario. So when my mom eventually passed away, I kind of followed through with the research that I was doing before, and through a friend of a friend…you know, like years of relationships, years of keeping in touch with people, eventually brought me to this company called Ingenious, which is in London,” who has a structure to help finance films. It turned out to be a very fortunate encounter—Livia went into the meeting with low expectations of what she’d get out of it, but she was pleasantly surprised. “The guy was like, I love this idea!” Soon, development of the film began.

It was great news, indeed, but it came with mixed emotions. Livia was still mourning the loss of her mom and wasn’t sure where she wanted to live after such an emotionally taxing chapter. “I didn’t move to London then. But somebody wanted to give me money, and that was in London. Also, I was definitely not ready to go back to New York and start hustling and working.” She allowed herself the time to figure it out, and spent about a year bouncing around from Italy, New York, and London. “By the end of the year, I said, ‘I’m gonna give London a try.’ And it went well, so I’m still here!”

At the time that Livia got the green light for The Lost Girls, financiers were beginning to become more aware of funding women-led films. The feminist nature of the story perfectly fit within this growing collective consciousness. An art house drama, The Lost Girls is primarily comprised of a female cast and presents a defiantly independent take on J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan. Livia not only wrote, directed, and stars in The Lost Girls, she even hand-picked its star-studded cast. Opposite screen legends Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson, the film also stars Julian Ovenden, Parker Sawyers, Emily Carey, Louis Partridge, Ella Rae Smith, and Iain Glen.

Livia’s journey with The Lost Girls illustrates the full breadth of how most things don’t just happen overnight. There are more than just strategic parts to organize—there are emotional components that go into it. Where we are in our personal lives influences what brings us to where we are currently, what we are ready to act on. “The Lost Girls is a book that stayed with me for a very long time,” something that doesn’t happen often with contemporary literature.

While the Peter Pan story is very familiar to us, as a society, we love its retellings. “Peter Pan and the magic flight that Wendy takes with him to the Neverland continues to resonate for generations, not just with women, with everybody, because it really champions the power of imagination.” Whether that is a coping mechanism or purely creative, the power of perspective is evident. Livia’s journey to The Lost Girls embodies what it means to play the hand you are dealt to the best of your ability—it’s a lesson in self-acceptance, reflection, forgiveness, and evolution. She is, without a doubt, an extraordinary filmmaker on the rise.

Features Editor Elisabeth Ross
Photographer Jemima Marriott
Stylist JO Shippen
Hair & Makeup Emma Osborne @onerepresents