To say that Miranda Bailey (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, God’s Country) likes to play it safe would just be insane.
Through her production firm Cold Iron Pictures, the producer-actress-writer-director has backed the likes of Swiss Army Man, the Daniels’ surreal comedy about a stranded man, played by Paul Dano, on the verge of suicide who befriends a flatulent corpse, portrayed by Daniel Radcliffe. And at Sundance 2025, the company premiered Amanda Kramer’s By Design, starring Melanie Griffith as narrator and Juliette Lewis as a woman who swaps bodies with a chair.
Bailey is currently in the British capital for SXSW London, where she is a producer on another genre-bending film, along with Ioanna Bolomyti, Elizabeth Woodward, Lauren Mann, Yannis Economides, Vladimir Anastasov, Angela Nestorovska, Zvonimir Munivrana, Maja Popovic Milojevic and Irina Malcea-Candea.
The movie is The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes, the feature film debut of Greek writer-director Thanasis Neofotistos, which world premiered as part of the Screen Festival of SXSW London 2026 on Thursday evening. The cinematic allegory for exclusion and the desire for love and freedom, which can also be viewed as a queer coming-of-age story, stars Giorgos Karydis as Petros, a boy forced by his strict grandmother, and the village mayor, to hide behind a mask because he has blue eyes. Why? Well, that eye color is a source of fear and superstition for the locals of the remote mountain village where they live.
Neofotistos co-wrote the film with his husband Grigoris Skarakis, with cinematography by Djordje Arambasic and editing by Panagiotis Angelopoulos. Gersh is handling U.S. sales.
How did Bailey end up joining the team behind a Greek indie film, her first international fiction feature as a producer, you ask? “I was a judge of the Aspen Film Festival shorts, and Thanasis had this short film there that was my favorite of the festival,” she tells THR. “This was years ago, but I remember really fighting for a special mention for this short film by this Greek guy, because I loved it. And he did get the special mention.”
Then her producer friend Mann, who produced Swiss Army Man with Bailey, mentioned she was on board for “this Greek film.” It was The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes, and Bailey immediately recognized the creator’s name. “Lauren knows that I like really weird stuff, and I said, ‘Oh my god, I love this director,’” she recalls. “I hadn’t even read the script but I knew it would be great.”
During the weeks of shooting, the two American producers split up their time on set in Greece. “It was all Greek to me,” literally, quips Bailey. “Noone spoke English beyond Thanasis and the young star of the movie, Grigoris.”
But it was all worth it given the clear and authentic storytelling voice she spotted in Neofotistos. “It’s about a uniqueness and a point of view,” the producer tells THR. “I like to produce with creatives who have a very specific voice and point of view. You know what a Noah Baumbach film is or can tell, ‘Oh, that’s a James Gunn film,’ that’s a Daniels film.”
Bailey does not have a big masterplan for her future in international production work or a possible second film with Neofotistos. “I am one of those producers who do not latch on to the directors,” she says. “I like when things happen organically. But obviously, if Thanasis came to me and wanted me to be a part of his next movie, I would love to.”
Bailey will keep an eye on the international, with Amanda Kramer’s By Design, starring Juliette Lewis as a woman who swaps bodies with a chair and Melanie Griffith as narrator, having just sold to Bulldog Film Distribution for the U.K. and Ireland where it will launch later in the year. The film premiered at Sundance 2025,
