The beauty of Star Wars: Visions is that the series gives artists from around the world the chance to bring to life their own Star Wars story. And for Nadia Darries, she was excited to bring together her love of music into a story of a young Force sensitive girl who could use the Force through her song to help bring about Kyber Crystals. And as someone who loves the lore surrounding lightsabers, I was obsessed with it.
Titled “Aau’s Song,” Darries co-wrote and co-directed the short with Daniel Clarke. And the two brought the voice talent of Cynthia Erivo to the role of Kratu, a Jedi who comes to visit the planet. Aau is told to protect herself and not sing but she’s drawn to the crystals and thus begins her journey to finding her own balance within the Force. In speaking with Darries about the short, it’s clear that she loved mixing her love of music with the world of Star Wars.
“Well, so first of all, we knew we wanted to tell a story primarily about a character, a little girl who connects to the Force through voice,” Darries said. “And because it’s a theme that’s real for us. It’s real for me, you know, as a singer, musician and stuff, with the kyber crystal. So South Africa has got a history, we’ve got a lot of minerals and Johannesburg’s called the City of Gold and I love crystals and we collect crystals. So, I think running with the kyber being such a big part of the story, like this community of kyber crystals that she connects with totally relates to sort of how we connect with the land ourselves.”
Darries went on to talk about how her own experience living in South Africa and her own connection with the land that is explored through Aau’s connection to the Force and the kyber crystals. “The land feels, I mean, it sounds a bit esoteric, it might sound a bit crazy, but, you know, when we sing together, if you have a group of people that are chanting together, you feel connected to the land and kyber crystals, they’re sort of…they have a semi sentient nature, right? And we really wanted to tap into that. There’s something special about it that isn’t so, it’s just more special than anything else that we could play with in terms of like, the land and what grows from the land.”
Creating a story for the world of Star Wars
What’s fascinating about the artists who are bringing together stories in Visions to life is that for many of them, this is their own take on the franchise. But it might not be specific to their love of Star Wars. So I asked Darries whether or not she created this story to be told specifically in the Star Wars universe or how they worked those elements in to the film. “I think we only wrote this story because we were inside the Star Wars universe, you know?” She said. “If we went inside the Star Wars universe, we would’ve written something else. I think how the main character, she and her father and that planet, you know, it’s like that exists in the Star Wars universe. It doesn’t exist anywhere else. I mean obviously what happens there is totally inspired by our personal experiences, you know, and in a way, for me personally, it’s like the outcome that Aau had with her father is the outcome I didn’t have with my father, you know? But so I get to experience it by watching Aau experience that, him sort of understanding that she wants to take on this responsibility and she wants to explore herself and she wants to see what she can do out there.”
She went on to talk about how that helped them craft Aau’s story. “I think that’s what Star Wars provided. I think that’s the inspiration that I get from Star Wars watching it, the films,” she said. “It inspires me to embrace the sort of desire that I feel inside, the scoring that I feel inside. I take it seriously and I believe it, believe that it could take me somewhere and that it’s beyond me. If there’s something that I feel I need to create, maybe it’s not just about me, but maybe there are people out there that it could help or could serve in some way, in a way that’s definitely a value that I appreciate with Star Wars.”
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Star Wars: Visions is on Disney+ now!
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Rachel Leishman
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