Actress Nadia Litz, seen here in the movie You Are Here, has also directed a film that's screening at this year's TIFF. (TIFF)

By Christine Estima, citizen contributor

You know Nadia Litz, the actress. She made her debut in Jeremy Podeswa's The Five Senses, co-starred with Don McKellar in Monkey Warfare (which earned her a Gemini nod), CTV's After The Harvest, and can be seen in Daniel Beckerman's You Are Here, which is screening at this year's TIFF. But do you know Nadia Litz, the director?

How to Rid Your Lover of a Negative Emotion Caused by You, a dark comedic short, marks Litz's directorial debut. Centring around Sadie and Dennis, a couple inching toward the perfect relationship -- as long as no one bleeds to death in the process -- How to Rid blends a considerable amount of squirm with a high dose of cunning guffaws. And as luck would have it, How to Rid is also screening right now at TIFF. In between doing the festival circuit for You Are Here, Litz took time out to chat with me about Akiro Kurosawa, about filming blood and gore, and the actress-turned-director experience.

Christine Estima: What attracted you to the script?

Nadia Litz: The script was written by someone at the Canadian Film Centre, Ryan Cavan. Him and I went to school there last year. I had wanted all year to make a film with him. We have very similar proclivities and tastes and styles in film but we never got matched together. So when it came time to do the Dramatic Film program in the second half where we make the films, we wanted to collaborate. I had a couple of ideas for a short but I didn't have an idea for characters. What I put forth to him was, "I want to have a two-hander, I want to have it in one location, and I want the female protagonist to be a bit of a mystery." And that's what he came up with. He made the outline and that went forward to the CFC panel of judges, and they went forward with that, and then we spent a month and a half collaborating on it together. It was very much about the story. Never once did I say, "I want there to be a lot of blood, I want to see a lot of gore!" In fact I think I was very worried about that.

CE: It's interesting that you say that, because watching the film, it is indeed very gory and grotesque in some sections. You really went there. What was the impetus behind that?

NL: I think in the script it was even more gory! And I am not a huge fan of that as an audience, nor as a film lover. I wanted to add elegance to that kind of gore. And I'm a really big fan of Japanese director Akiro Kurosawa, who films the most violent images I've ever seen, but for some reason it's okay because it's handled with a bit of a grace. I attempted to do that, and I don't know if I succeeded, because it's definitely squirm. I think that what the film is trying to say, what Ryan and I always wanted an audience to walk away with, was that you do have to embrace the ugly part of each other in a relationship. You have to go there, you have to literally at the end eat those things about the other person that cause you anxiety, or make you annoyed, or cause you to not communicate. It was important to us for it to be as visceral as it is. I hope that it's not too unsettling and that I've cut it with a bit of humour.

CE: Tell me a bit about the switch from actress to director.

NL: It's been a long time coming. I think what I'd love to focus on is directing more than acting. I want to communicate. I don't always know how to articulate what I'm feeling or what I'm thinking so I use art as a way to communicate. Some people can do it naturally without that mediator in the middle, but I can't. I'm not one of those people. So acting for me was always my way of communicating. But it limited what I wanted to do because when you're film-acting, which was what I was doing, you're limited to what your face looks like. You're limited to how people cast you. With directing, you just have this limitless amount of tools at your disposal, and if you can communicate to people what's going on in your imagination, then it's limitless what you can say. So that has appealed to me for a really long time. I've been nervous to tackle it, but now that I have, I'm not daunted by the constant struggle, because I've done it, and I know what it takes, and I actually think I'm quite suited for it.

CE: You've acted in films before that have screened at TIFF, but now you're here as a director. Is the TIFF experience different as a director rather than an actress?

NL: It's entirely different. I feel a sense of community around me like I never have before. It's like being welcomed into this secret club. I'm not even kidding.  It's a lot of men! Some women, but a lot of men -- filmmakers, programmers, distribution people, funding people -- and me, being this five-foot-two, whatever-actress-girl who's trying to be taken seriously as a director, and this is what I've been wanting to do for a decade now. I feel so welcome. I feel so supported, and embraced, and people cheering me on. I don't think I ever felt that as an actress. It's extraordinarily gratifying. It's humbling. I'm so grateful. I just want to make people proud and to be able to continue.

CE: So what comes next for Nadia Litz?

NL: I'm writing my feature, which I've been writing since my time at the CFC, so when all this festival-hijinks is over, I go back to my studio and write that feature. Obviously there are some projects now that are starting to appear because of this film, so we'll see what happens. But my main goal is to make a feature of out what I'm writing.

You can follow Christine Estima throughout #TIFF10 on Twitter at @ChristineEstima