Composer Samuel Jones joins 1st on Film to discuss his work scoring Meera Menon’s Didn’t Die, the black-and-white zombie comedy-drama that premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

The film follows Vinita, a podcaster celebrating her 100th episode when a zombie apocalypse throws her world into chaos. But beneath the genre elements, Didn’t Die is also a story about grief, family, connection and finding hope in the middle of an uncertain world.

In our conversation, Samuel discusses the unique musical challenges of balancing the film’s horror, comedy and emotional drama, and how he approached creating a score that could move between grounded human moments and the heightened world of the zombie apocalypse. He also shares insight into his collaboration with director Meera Menon, who has worked with Jones across multiple projects.

Samuel Jones is a Los Angeles-based composer, producer, recording engineer, mixer, guitarist and keyboardist whose work spans film, television, games and music production.

His scoring credits include Meera Menon’s Didn’t Die, Netflix’s animated feature Next Gen, The Unknown Country, Equity, Lila & Eve, We’ll Never Have Paris and Preservation. He also served as composer across six seasons of TNT’s acclaimed drama series Animal Kingdom. His film and television work ranges from electronic minimalism to lush orchestral arrangements, with credits spanning more than 15 feature films as well as documentaries, games, video installations and advertising.

On this episode of the 1st on Film Podcast, we sit down with Anna Lambe and Maika Harper, the stars of the hit Arctic comedy North of North, to talk all about the highly anticipated second season.

Anna Lambe returns as Siaja, the young Inuk mother determined to take charge of her life, while Maika Harper reprises her role as her mother, Neevee — a character whose complicated past and larger-than-life personality continue to shape Siaja’s journey.

We discuss what fans can expect from Season 2, how Siaja and Neevee have evolved since the first season, the unique mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the series, returning to the world of Ice Cove, filming in Iqaluit, and the balance of humour, heart and Inuit culture that makes North of North so special.

Anna Lambe is an Inuk actress, host and emerging filmmaker from Iqaluit, Nunavut. She first gained major recognition for her performance in the feature film The Grizzlies, earning a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She followed that with a role in the CBC series Trickster, earning another Canadian Screen Award nomination, and later appeared in HBO’s True Detective: Night Country

Maika Harper is an Indigenous Canadian actress known for her work in television and film, including Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent and Burden of Truth. She stars in North of North as Neevee, the fiercely independent and often chaotic mother of Siaja.

In this episode of the 1st on Film Podcast, we sit down with the creative team behind Dead Deer High — director Jo Rochelle, writer/producer Joshua Roark, and cinematographer Anup Kulkarni — to discuss their powerful new drama about grief, healing, poetry, and finding your voice after tragedy.

Dead Deer High follows a once-brilliant high school slam poetry team and their English teacher one year after a tragedy changes their school forever. As the students prepare for a national poetry competition, they must confront their individual and collective trauma while their teacher struggles to find the courage to return to the classroom.

Jo Rochelle is a Jamaican-American screenwriter and filmmaker based in California and originally from Minneapolis. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Rochelle began her career in education as a Teach for America teacher, teaching sixth-grade English and Social Studies in the Mississippi Delta. She later transitioned into film and television, writing on multiple seasons of the Freeform/Hulu series Good Trouble. Her feature directorial debut, Jasmine Is a Star, screened at festivals including Urbanworld and BlackStar and won the Audience Award for Best Film at Sidewalk Film Festival. Dead Deer High marks her second feature and had its world premiere at SXSW 2026.

Joshua Roark is a poet, screenwriter, producer, and educator whose work frequently explores teaching, young people, and the power of words. Roark earned an MFA in Poetry and has published poetry including Put One Hand Up, Lean Back, a collection inspired by his experiences teaching middle school as a Teach for America teacher. He originally conceived Dead Deer High as a play during the pandemic before adapting it into the feature screenplay. He subsequently produced the film alongside his wife and frequent creative collaborator, Jo Rochelle.

Anup Kulkarni is an Indian-born cinematographer and VFX supervisor working in the U.S. film industry. A graduate of the New York Film Academy’s cinematography program, Kulkarni has worked across feature films, television, commercials, documentaries, and visual effects, with credits including Life of Pi, Thor: The Dark World, Percy Jackson, and R.I.P.D. His cinematography has earned multiple awards, and his work has been showcased at festivals including Cannes and SXSW. For Dead Deer High, Kulkarni served as director of photography, developing a visual approach designed to keep audiences emotionally close to the characters without becoming intrusive.