Film Review: EAST OF WALL
by Karen Pecota

Kate Beecroft, USA 2025

Listening to filmmakers share their story about how they came to a project is so diverse and often by chance; so it is with first-time feature director Kate Beecroft. A Los Angeles based director and writer who graduated from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London has a knack for “unearthing the magic of those who don’t see talent with themselves.”

Beecroft prefers to street cast her projects. She gravitates toward finding actors from the public, outside of the typical acting agencies. This style of casting allows her to incorporate real people, non-professional individuals into her projects for a sense of authenticity, then helping them to perform as she deems fit for the narrative on camera. Beecroft’s gifting in this area allows her to create a natural quality of storytelling that is relatable to a larger audience, as in her latest project EAST OF WALL.

While traveling across America, Beecroft found this story by chance after taking a wrong turn on a road in South Dakota. “I pulled up to a rundown ranch and found Tabatha Zimiga and tribe of intimidatingly bold teenage girls thronging out of their trailer, heads half-shaved like warriors,” recalls Beecroft and adding, “eyeing me up and down.” Tabatha welcomed Beecroft and asked, “Want to see some real cowgirl shit?”

This was an invitation that Beecroft was ready to receive and ultimately turned her world upside down for the next three years. Beecroft shares, “They allowed me to be a fly on the wall of their barn and trailer, absorbing every inch of their daily life in order to write this script and teach them how to act.” Adding, “They trusted me to tell their unbelievable story of female resilience, what Tabatha calls, ‘The New West’.”

Beecroft collaborates with professional actors in EAST OF WALL but allows Tabatha and her ranch crew of teenagers to showcase their life in real time. A young, tattooed, rebellious horse trainer, Tabatha, loses her husband too early, leaving her in a financial quandary with a run-down horse ranch, to care for extended family members, while providing sanctuary for a group of teenagers who have lost their way, including her daughter, Porshia.

Beecroft enlightens the audience of a unique portrayal of “how the west is won” in a modern American Western, told by the women and girls who live it and their value of relationships, talent, and kindness to survive.