Twenty-six-year-old identical twins Socratis and Diamantis Zavitsanos often finish each other’s thoughts and sentences, although Diamantis talks a little more than his brother. Socs and DZ, as they’re known to friends, are both getting ready for law school in the fall, most likely at the University of Michigan, and they both speak passable Greek.
But what they really want to do is make movies. The sons of Houston-based trial lawyer John Zavitsanos, the twins have already produced their first feature film, the scrappy and inventive independent crime thriller Sew Torn. Directed by 24-year-old wunderkind Freddy Macdonald, the youngest directing fellow ever accepted to the American Film Institute Conservatory, Sew Torn tells the story of Barbara (Eve Connolly), a seamstress who puts her wicked thread skills to work in the wake of a drug deal gone awry. The film was released theatrically in May and is now available for purchase on Apple TV+.
Although Sew Torn had many producers, Macdonald, who wrote the film with his father, Fred Macdonald, credits the Zavitsanos brothers for both their fundraising and creative input. “I owe everything to the twins,” he said in a phone interview. “They were truly the reason the film got made. Their excitement is the reason people put money in. They’re just so good at pitching.”
The twins and Macdonald had what qualifies as a filmmaking meet cute back in 2017 at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis. The twins were there with the documentary short they directed, Two of Five Million, about two cousins fleeing ISIS in Syria. Macdonald was there with his short Gifted: Thanksgiving Post Mortem. They all attended the festival’s awards ceremony, but there was a hitch. The ceremony was held at a bar, and none of the three teenage filmmakers were of drinking age.
“So what they did is they stuck all the teenagers into this back storage room, and we just had to kind of all connect with one another,” Diamantis recalled over coffee in Houston, his brother at his side. “And it was there that we formed a great bond with Freddy. We just maintained that friendship over the years.”
They would swap ideas and send each other work. They gave each other inspiration. When Macdonald applied to AFI, he was required to submit a short about someone who experiences a change of heart. Inspired largely by the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, “the Freds,” as the twins call Macdonald and his father, came up with their quick-thinking seamstress, and Freddy shot the short in Switzerland, where he went to high school (his mother is half Swiss, half Brazilian). The short didn’t just get Freddy into AFI; it generated a buzz and eventually found its way to producer Peter Spears and then Joel Coen, who asked the Freds to lunch and encouraged them to expand the film into a feature. He also suggested they make it a family-and-friends affair, raising money from outside the film industry and maintaining creative control.
“Joel was the one who inspired the whole thing, and he’s my biggest hero,” Macdonald said. “When we met with him, he said we have to keep working together as family. And what better person from a family filmmaking team to say that than him?” In addition to No Country for Old Men, the other pertinent Coen brothers film here is Blood Simple, the 1984 thriller Joel and Ethan Cohn made on a shoestring budget with a tight-knit group of collaborators.
The Zavitsanos brothers have been key members of that Macdonald team ever since they bonded in that bar storage room at the Heartland Film Festival. They’ve stayed in constant contact, swapping dreams and ideas. Meanwhile, Socs and DZ both studied filmmaking at Boston University for two years, before transferring to the University of Texas, where they studied philosophy. The choice stemmed largely from observing their father at work.
“I was always kind of inspired watching his cases, and so I was always excited about the prospect of law school,” Diamantis said. “And I saw philosophy as a nice precursor to the kind of logical reasoning skills that you would need in law school.” And yes, Socratis heard plenty about his first name in his philosophy classes. “I said my name in my first philosophy class, and I was immediately given the Harry Potter treatment, as if I knew everything,” he said. “My TA said, ‘If you ever want to study ancient Greek philosophy, please come to my office hours.’ I told him I’m not an expert.” (In fact, he was named after his grandfather.)
The twins foresee a future in which they can produce, write and direct, as well as practice law, perhaps in the entertainment field. For now, they’ve helped make one of the most imaginative independent films of the year so far.
The premise is promising enough: Barbara, a “mobile seamstress” driving a 1969 turquoise Fiat with a giant spool ornament on the back, comes across two gun-wielding toughs laid out after a motorcycle accident on a Swiss mountain road. There’s also a briefcase full of money. What to do? We see three possible choices unspool, so to speak, all of them involving intricately executed use of needle and thread.
“There’s this unique juxtaposition of this classic setup — a drug deal gone bad — with something completely quirky and obscure, like a seamstress who can wield thread like a superpower,” Diamantis said. “That was something that was so gripping and unlike anything that we had come across before. We just naturally felt drawn to it. The whole time we read it we were thinking, wow, what is going to happen?”
The twins are currently writing a romantic sci-fi thriller, and they’re planning on shooting a short in Houston over the summer. The Freds are writing a dark comedy/thriller set in Brazil, and the twins are providing feedback on each draft. “They’re fantastic producers because they’re also directors and writers, and they know when to provide script feedback versus when to let the creative team do their thing,” Macdonald said. “That’s what makes them really great producers. They have that awareness.”
One thing seems pretty certain: Regardless of what the twins do next, they’ll do it together.