“Sweeney sardonically leans into the asinine reality of the changing laws in the US which now mean women can face prosecution for the disposal of a miscarried foetus as she constructs a visually exquisite world where a young bride, not necessarily ready for a baby and swept up in the mayhem of a wedding rehearsal dinner, finds herself miscarrying. There is a dreamlike quality to the film reflecting the bride’s dissociation from what she is experiencing until a pivotal moment women all over the world will recognise when that much-needed female support comes to find you in a bathroom cubicle.” - Director’s Notes

It’s 1994. I’m four years old. The footage is grainy but you can see I’m hysterical. I scream through snot and tears, “But I wanted it to be in the same one!” My dad, a former teamster, baffled by Baby Kubrick, has cut too soon on the last take. It’s the first of many “tapes” — puppet shows, musicals, absurdist comedies, reenactments of infamous ‘90s commercials. From the moment my dad came home with the JVC VHS-C camcorder that realistically we could not afford, I was hooked.

I am Rachel Sweeney, a writer, director, actor, and songwriter from the suburbs of Philadelphia. I like to describe my approach to filmmaking as picking at scabs. Reopening my own old wounds, I dredge them for materials, writing about topics that no one talks about but everyone wants to — using humor to normalize and humanize. I learned my story-telling skills from my Pop, a Jewish WWII vet and South Philly’s neighborhood dentist. I have a unique voice that marries absurd, laugh-out-loud comedy with heartbreaking tragedy. I create relatable and entertaining stories from underrepresented and misunderstood experiences and issues, imbuing a semi-autobiographical authenticity in everything I make. 

My debut album is a twelve-track exploration of grief recorded in my family home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It will be coming out next year along with a hybrid visual album-documentary of the recordings shot on 16mm, Super 8, and Sony handycam.

My latest short film, Fish Bowl, is an unabashed and hilarious exploration of unwanted pregnancy and miscarriage. It was an official selection at Whistler Film Festival, where it received an Honorable Mention for Best International Short, LA Shorts International Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival, Sun Valley Film Festival, and SOHO International Film Festival, and others. The story is inspired by struggles with fear of pregnancy and fertility in my own life. After spending ten years trying desperately not to get pregnant while at the same time receiving news about possible infertility in the future, I decided to make a film about miscarriage that was definitely pro-choice, necessarily graphic, and demystifying of a topic so diligently and damagingly hidden. The film puts self-discovery rather than shame at the center of the story, and has been extremely well received. 

While living in Brooklyn, I shot Dead Girl, a 28-minute short film based on my experience as an actor playing a dead body. Dead Girl screened at festivals worldwide and doubles as a pilot for an anthology series about women who play dead girls. The treatment for the Dead Girls series earned me a spot as a top-twenty semi-finalist in Sony Pictures’ Rising Storyteller Search. I continued studying theatre with Lee Brock and Seth Barrish at the acclaimed Barrow Group and studied improv and sketch comedy at The Upright Citizens Brigade. I also performed stand-up and sketch comedy and turned the jokes I was telling in bars (and some stages!) into films, borrowing camera gear from fellow PSU alums. This is how this theatre kid became a director. (Remember that crying four year old?) Weekend film shoots making shorts like “Who Farted?” and “28 Pills Later”. These shorts have been featured in HuffPo and WhoHaha, and one sketch, “Cheers,” premiered at Boston’s Women in Comedy Festival. I was also the Post Production Coordinator for Showtime’s Billions, interned at Maven Pictures (now Maven Screen Media), sold high-end chocolate to celebrities and the like, answered horrendous customer service calls for a dystopian startup, and, of course, waited many a table. My then-fiance and I left New York to travel the country in a Ford Econoline 350 cargo van before moving to LA.

Before LA, before Brooklyn, I grew up in PA in the ‘90s, surrounded by Yiddishkeit humor and idolizing Barbra Streisand — the actor-turned-writer/directer with a nose like mine — and making my aforementioned “tapes.” I have always been both behind and in front of the camera. As a girlkid in the 90s, directing also seemed to me like something women did when they were “allowed” to, after achieving some level of massive stardom — like Barbra. I come from the theatre. I hold two degrees, one in English from Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College, one in Acting from the Penn State School of Theatre’s conservatory program (no, they weren’t happy with the dual focus). At school and then in the theatre scene in New York, I learned everything about acting — the actor’s language, process, Meisner, Stanislavski, Practical Aesthetics, classical, contemporary, emotional recall, objective, motive, tactics. I love it all. In college I directed Mamet and Shakespeare. In my 20s, I realized I could make indie shorts without a budget and could “let” myself direct. Everything I’ve learned so far — this vast toolkit of shared actors’ language and technique — has made me a better director. I’m more comfortable directing actors than breaking an egg (and I bake!). With a background in theatre, I pride myself on my ability to work with actors, and seek to create safe spaces where all members of the artistic team can thrive. Being at the helm of a collaboration is my happy place.

Nowadays, I split my time between LA and my childhood home outside Philly, making art with friends and family, including my husband, Chris, and dog, Fish.