Film Threat founder Chris Gore and editor-in-chief Alan Ng sit down with Wisconsin-born filmmaker Nathan Deming to discuss his emotionally fearless independent drama Winter Hymns, currently expanding from a sold-out run at the Wisconsin Film Festival to theaters across the Midwest — and soon, Los Angeles. The film follows a palliative care doctor over the course of a single day as she meets with dying patients and their families, all in a single hospital room. It’s a meditation on mortality that keeps audiences in the lobby for 20 minutes after the credits roll. In the interview, Deming talks about casting a dairy farmer who’d never been on camera, why he’s holding the film back from streaming, and what drove him to make a movie about the one subject most of us would rather avoid.
A Movie Set in One Room — and All About What Happens In It
Deming’s concept for Winter Hymns is deceptively simple: one room, one doctor, one day. Dr. Vogernik, a palliative care physician, moves through a series of patient consultations — each a portrait of grief, family tension, and the quiet bureaucracy of dying in America. The film runs over two hours, but nearly everyone who’s seen it reports it doesn’t feel that way.
“Limiting it to one room meant it was all about the characters that went through, which meant it was all about the performances,” Deming says. That constraint became the engine of the film. With nowhere else for the camera to go, every scene lives or dies on the actors’ authenticity — and that authenticity makes the film feel less like fiction and more like a documentary.
Non-Actors, Theater Veterans, and a Four-Minute Monologue
Deming’s casting is one of the interview’s most compelling threads. He drew from Wisconsin’s theater community — including the Tony Award-winning American Players Theater, whose Colleen Madden plays Dr. Vogernik — but was equally drawn to non-actors. Thaddeus Sikora, a dairy farmer who had never acted before, plays a young man with stomach cancer. He arrived on set after milking cows at 3:30 in the morning and delivered a four-minute monologue in a single take. “I didn’t even have to direct him,” Deming says. “He just did that, and I was like, ‘This is incredible.'” A 92-year-old woman also makes her acting debut in the film.
Deming cites British filmmaker Mike Leigh as a key influence, developing scenes collaboratively with each actor before production. “I’m so allergic to irony or false things,” he explains. “I really like feeling like you’re just plopped down in this room with these people, watching things unfold.”
The Film Audiences Can’t Stop Talking About
Winter Hymns premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in April. Deming braced for polite indifference — a long film about death, playing to a festival crowd. Instead, it sold out. Local theaters extended their runs for weeks. It has since expanded to Iowa, Indiana, and beyond.
Deming attributes the response to something the film does quietly: it validates an experience most people carry privately. “There’s a deep reservoir of pain,” he says, noting that even his actors would set aside their scene notes to share personal stories about loved ones in hospice. “It reminds you that you’re not alone.” Chris Gore reflects this directly — the recent loss of his mother, a Film Threat colleague who passed away, the mental list of friends he’s watched go. The film also runs a quiet indictment of the American healthcare system alongside its human drama: the absurdity of filling out insurance forms in the middle of the most devastating moments of your life.
Wisconsin, Winter, and Why the Title Has to Be Earned
Deming grew up in Wisconsin and has spent twelve years in LA. Winter Hymns is partly an act of advocacy for his home state — nearly the entire cast is local, tied to Wisconsin’s newly introduced film and TV incentives. He’s passionate about pushing back on coastal shorthand for the Midwest: the Fargo accents, the vague geography, the cheese jokes. “I just think we’re going through a very interesting change right now in culture in general, and authenticity’s very interesting,” he says.
The title, he says, you have to earn by watching the film. What he will say: “There’s just something so unique about winter and the silence of snow that really gets to you deep in your bones. I thought that was a good setting to put a meditation on mortality in.”
Winter Hymns is on tour. Showtimes and screening requests at winterhymnsfilm.com.
