When Bianca Mitchell-Avila was 16 years old, she first had the idea for the documentary that became “Madwomen’s Game.” The premise was simple: it would highlight and empower the real-life women conquering the male-dominated world of chess, following Mitchell-Avila’s journey across America as she prepared for an epic final battle of the game against a star people look up to. Immediately, Keanu Reeves came to mind as the ideal opponent.
“I was like, ‘You know what would be crazy? If I had an epic battle with John Wick,’” reflects a now 21-year-old Mitchell-Avila, who guessed at Reeves’ then-manager Meredith Wechter’s email and fired off a thoughtful note explaining the project and her proposition. “I know that he is very busy and may not have time to participate in something so small, but I really wanted to take a chance,” she wrote in the message, sent in 2021. The next morning, to her surprise, she saw a response from Reeves sitting in her inbox.
“I was struck by the tone, by the ambition, by the vision of it [in] early days,” Reeves tells Variety about the young filmmaker’s note. “And then Bianca and I Zoomed, and what came across from the digital page was definitely the person that I met.” “I just remember screaming and being like, ‘This is crazy. This is a glitch in the matrix,’” laughs Mitchell-Avila. (Fittingly, “The Matrix” was the very first movie the cinephile ever saw.)
Reeves doesn’t appear in the documentary (the final battle got nixed over the nearly six years it took to get the film developed). “There could probably be another documentary about the making of the documentary,” he jokes, but he did sign on as an executive producer, mainly acting as a champion of Mitchell-Avila’s creative vision. “In this case, my description of [being an] executive producer was being attached to the project, and whatever value other people thought that that could bring to the project and get it made,” says Reeves.
And it did bring the value. After a years-long development process, “Madwoman’s Game” is set to premiere at the Miami Film Festival on April 16. The documentary was directed by Zach Zamboni, whom Mitchell-Avila calls “the heart of this project,” and also executive produced by her “film industry mom” Carla Berkowitz, UltraBoom Media and Sugar23, in addition to Reeves.
Originally, the documentary began as a student project the New Mexico-based teen hoped to enter in a local film festival. Following two years as a production assistant on the locally-shot TV show “The Graceful Path” and an internship with the Ice Wolves hockey team, Mitchell-Avila was ready to create something of her own, inspired by her own experience growing up as a competitive chess player.
The project quickly grew bigger than that once Reeves came onboard.
“Chess has been my life, but I liked the idea of telling a different story of chess,” says Mitchell-Avila. “We see a lot of academic chess in the world, but we don’t see the world of chess a lot.’”
“It brings people together. There’s a community around it. There’s a feeling around chess that if you play it, or if you’re part of it, you can all share the chess feeling,” adds Reeves, who played the game for one year in 11th grade. (“I wasn’t very good,” he says. “I was always just playing amateur chess.”)
Over the course of the film’s production, Reeves also served as a reassuring figure and mentor to Mitchell-Avila, offering advice on getting a film made from his many years in Hollywood. From their first call, she notes how engaged Reeves was: “You’re in meetings sometimes, and you can tell some people just aren’t listening to you,” she explains. “With him, it was the complete opposite. I knew the things that I was saying, he was hearing, and he actually cared about what I was talking about. It wasn’t just like, ‘Okay, let me hear you out.’ It was like, ‘What is it that I can help you with?’”
That continued long after their initial conversation. Even though Reeves was filming in Europe when the two first connected, he made time to meet with Mitchell-Avila; when the “Madwoman’s Game” team pitched the project to Apple, although he was on set, he took a break from working and sat on a curb outside the studio to join. “He was just supportive,” says Mitchell-Avila. “He was just always there.”
What’s next for Mitchell-Avila and Reeves? Probably seeing that epic chess battle through.
“I don’t want to play digital,” the actor says. “Yeah, no,” Mitchell-Avila agrees. “I like in-person chess way better.”
English (US) ·