Eve and the Firehorse, directed by Julia Kwan, is a charming tale about life, death, and religious tolerance, as seen through the eyes of nine-year old Eve (Phoebe Kut), whose sister Karena (Hollie Lo) converts to Catholicism in the wake of their grandmother's death. Eve creates her own unique religion blending elements of the Buddhist traditions of her family and the Catholicism she is exposed to when she begins attending Catholic Sunday School with Karena. Eve and the Firehorse was one of the best films at the Sundance Film Festival, and very deservedly won the World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Dramatic Film. Download our interview with the film's director, Julia Kwan, and engaging young star, Phoebe Kut, right here, or from the Cinematical Podcast Feed at the iTunes Music Store.

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I caught up with Eve and the Firehorse director Julia Kwan just after the show and before the official Q&A, to let her know I enjoyed her film. "It's amazing how many people come up to me and tell me they relate to the film - not just Asians but Italians, everyone," Kwan said. We chatted briefly about the film and her experience with being told her Grandmother was going to hell because she was a Buddhist. "Having someone tell you your parents and grandparents - your safety net - are going to hell is a devastating thing for a child," she noted. We also talked about her young actresses, Phoebe Kut and Hollie Lo, who play the Eng sisters, Eve and Karena. "The girls were wonderful to work with. They'd never acted before, so there were no bad habits to untrain like you see sometimes with kids who do commercials. The girls were so natural."

During the Q&A, Kwan answered questions from an appreciative and enthusiastic audience. She was asked how closely the film parallels her own life. "It's part truth and part imagination, " she said. "I grew up in a very superstitious household - superstition mixed with Buddhism. We called it Black Magic Buddhism. I was recruited to Sunday School when I was eight years old. They actually used to have people recruit kids for Sunday school."  Kwan said her mother was very pragmatic about her attending Sunday School. "She said, you're in Canada, it's a Western religion, and you should assimilate - two Gods are better than one."

Another audience member asked about the part of the film where the girls at Sunday School ganged up on Eve, and whether she intended to convey Sunday School girls as  "mean". "I think there are mean girls," she replied. "It wasn't about them being Sunday School girls, specifically, but about the way girls can gang up and just be mean." Kwan also addressed the film's message about the racism the Eng sisters endured. "With the Sikh boy, he was being picked on because of racism, then he picked on Karena. I guess I was trying to say that hatred breeds hatred. Maybe I was too subtle," she laughs.

The film's costume designer,Sandy Buck, took the stage to talk about the wonderful period clothes she dug up in consignment stores to give the film an authenic 1970s feel, and about two scenes where Kut and Lo had to wear harnesses. "They had to be in those harnesses for a very long time, and they never once complained. They never forgot their lines. Everyone else would be like, okay, where are we? And they always knew exactly where we were."

Asked if she's working on anything else, Kwan says, "Right now we're so grateful to be touring this film to festivals, and that's all we're focused on. I'm not in a rush to make another project. But if there are any agents out there..." she laughs.  She does admit, however, to having three other projects she's working on. "I have a lot more stories inside me I want to tell," she says.

Eve and the Fire Horse, the feature film debut of Sundance short films vet Julia Kwan, is a magical, elegiac view of life, death and religion as seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old Chinese girl living in Canada in the 1970s. Eve Eng (newcomer Phoebe Kut, in a remarkably nuanced and natural performance) was born in 1966, the Year of the Fire Horse, considered an unlucky year for a child to be born. Fire Horse children are said to be strong-willed, Eve tells us in voiceover, and therefore undesirable, and were often drowned in the river as soon as they were born. The river, says Eve, is full of the spirits of the drowned Fire Horses.

In Eve's household, her grandmother upholds the traditions of Buddhism, filling the water offering bowls daily and performing rituals. As the film opens, Eve's mother, May Lin (Vivian Wu) chops down the apple tree in the family's backyard; it is considered bad luck to chop down an apple tree, like severing a cord, and so when a few months later May Lin miscarries a son, she is convinced it was because she cut down the tree, and retreats to her room in a deep depression.

When Eve's grandmother dies, she is convinced it is her fault, because her grandmother watered the garden for her that day. She sees her grandmother's ghost downstairs seven days later and runs to her mother's room, tearfully asking if her grandmother hates her. Eve's father tells her and her older sister, Karena (Hollie Lo, another newcomer turning in a marvelous performance) that their grandmother will be reincarnated as a goldfish, an image that comforts Eve, who then asks for a goldfish of her own. When Karena is given a religious book about dying and heaven by a pair of door-to-door evangelists, she becomes drawn to Christianity and salvation. After their father departs for China to bury his mother, Karena and Eva start going to Catholic Sunday School and form a club, "The Girls of Perpetual Sorrow" - of which they are the only members. Their mother, deciding that "two Gods are better than one" and that having both religions will be safer for the girls (she especially likes the commandment about obeying your father and mother), begins weaving images of Christianity into their Buddhist household. Still mourning the loss of her son, she also begins meditating daily, in the desperate hope of finding the faith her daughters latch onto so easily.

Others on Eve and the Fire Horse: Ken Eisner of Variety was impressed, calling the film "an exceptional feature debut for young helmer-scripter Julia Kwan."