Filmmaker Lucca Vieira is quickly emerging as one of independent cinema’s most exciting young voices. In this interview, he opens up about creating emotionally authentic characters, navigating the film industry as an autistic director, and the personal experiences that shaped his debut feature, The Midway Point.
Lucca Vieira, a 23-year-old Brazilian-American filmmaker who has been crafting stories since age eight, has released his debut feature film, The Midway Point, across the USA and Canada.
Written when he was 17 and directed at 20, the coming-of-age drama marks the arrival of a bold new voice in independent cinema – one that bridges the gap between raw personal experience and Hollywood-calibre production.
Lucca Vieira on being an autistic director
Lucca’s ascent has been rapid but methodical. His work is characterised by its focus on isolated characters and psychological depth, drawing inspiration from masters like Stanley Kubrick and David Cronenberg. As he transitions from a self-taught teen creator to a professional force, Lucca’s unique perspective on truth and neurodiversity continues to set him apart in a crowded contemporary landscape.
Lucca began by sharing what first drew him to become a filmmaker:
“Filmmaking has always been an interest of mine. I used to just play around with little pocket cameras and everything when I was a kid. But I really became interested in filmmaking when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was about nine or 10. I just instantly knew right then and there that I wanted to be a filmmaker. I had never really seen films as true pieces of art before then, and that just really blew my mind to the possibilities of what I can do within the medium. I’ve been kind of trying to recapture that feeling ever since then with my films.”
Lucca opened up about the barriers he has faced as a young autistic director:
“One of the difficulties I had when I was making The Midway Point was not just people not trusting me because of my age, but also dealing with people who were a little sceptical of an 18 or 19-year-old kid on the spectrum making a feature film.
“People kind of patted me on the back, saying ‘good job’ or ‘nice work, kid, and didn’t expect that much from me. My job as writer and director involved proving to people I could do it and make a good film.”
At 16, Lucca’s documentary Parkland: Stories from the Survivors garnered national festival attention, followed by his horror short Silhouette, which screened at over eight festivals across North America.
Reacting to his early success as a teenager, Lucca said:
“It helped reaffirm my belief that filmmaking is what I was meant to do. I look back on those today, and obviously, as the director of those, I feel like ‘I could have done this, I could have done that’, but at the end of the day, it’s what made me fall in love, and it was really like a film school for me, in a way.”
Read: Autistic Filmmakers Changing Perceptions Of Casting Neurodivergent People In Hollywood
Lucca Vieira on his debut feature film The Midway Point
The Midway Point follows a young neurodivergent teenager navigating a troubled romance with a like-minded classmate. The narrative is deeply personal for Lucca, who drew from his own experiences on the autistic spectrum to create a psychologically complex portrait of alienation and the quest for connection.
Lucca shared a brief description of the process of getting this film commissioned:
“I spent a year and a half trying to pitch it to anyone I could, to anyone who believed in me and had any connection to the film industry. After a year and a half, I randomly came across a friend of a friend who was a producer, and that led me to another producer, and it basically snowballed from there.”
Discussing more about the storyline, he added:
“People ask me a lot if The Midway Point is autobiographical. It isn’t. A lot of the stuff in the movie didn’t really happen to me, but the emotion and what I was feeling at the time. Those are experiences that I had, and that I saw certainly other people having around me, even those that weren’t necessarily on the spectrum. They might have been neurodivergent or just felt alienated from the world around them.
“I wanted to translate that vision on screen, and make a film that wasn’t necessarily about autism, but featured a story about people that was, at the end of the day, a human story about people wanting to connect in a very, very alienated world.”
Lucca secured an elite cast for the project. The film stars Sean Ryan Fox (The Righteous Gemstones) as Jack and Catharine Daddario (IF) as Alice. The remaining cast includes Golden Globe nominee Thora Birch (American Beauty), Julie Benz (Dexter), and Academy Award Winner Wes Studi (The Last of the Mohicans).
Lucca praised the cast for bringing emotional depth and authenticity to the film, particularly lead actor Sean Ryan Fox, whom he said “really just knocked it out of the park” by perfectly capturing Jake’s tone and mood. He explained that he intentionally avoided framing the story around autism, saying, “I wanted to make a film about a person who struggles… and who just so happens to be on the autistic spectrum.” Lucca also commended Catherine Daddario for deeply connecting with her character and embracing the emotional complexity beneath Alice’s outward persona.
Lucca Vieira on his future production and advice to other neurodiverse filmmakers
Beyond the launch of The Midway Point, Lucca is currently developing his second feature project, the body horror Shift. Described as a potential “new cult classic” and “completely different from The Midway Point in tone and style”, the proof-of-concept short for Shift recently completed a successful festival run, including screenings at the Beverly Hills Film Festival and Dallas International Film Festival in April 2026.
Explaining more about his next production, Lucca said: “It’s about this insecure teenage model who buys this off-brand cosmetic drug off the internet, which she injects into her body. She’s able to mould her body to her own liking, sort of like modelling clay, and the more she uses it, she starts developing these scars and abnormal tissues, and it all basically goes downhill from there.”
Reacting to the fact that Lucca is already being hailed as a director to watch for Generation Z, he replied:
“I honestly don’t feel like a director to watch, but it does feel really rewarding, and it feels at least good to have people talking about me and the project. At the end of the day, I want to make films that resonate with people, and that tell very complex stories.”
Lastly, Lucca encouraged neurodivergent aspiring filmmakers to “keep trying and persevere,” despite the film industry often feeling “overwhelming.” Acknowledging the uncertainty facing the industry, he said he still sees “a bright light at the end of the tunnel.” He also stressed the importance of building supportive friendships and “a big, happy family” while creating films.
The Midway Point is available for streaming on Apple TV and Fandando in the US and Canada. Distribution in the UK is still in the works, but will stream soon.
For more information, follow Lucca Vieira on Instagram.