The Wrong Alien / A Conversation on Belonging and filmmaking with Paige Billiot.

IF: What moment did you realize this story needed to become a film?

PB: I've spent most of my life feeling alienated from the world. Growing up with a facial port wine stain birthmark meant constantly being stared at, questioned, or defined before people got to know me.

After moving to Joshua Tree, I found myself drawn to the idea of an alien story. I loved the irony of a woman who's spent her life feeling like an outsider finally meeting someone from another world, only to discover the only person who never questioned her humanity wasn't human at all.

IF: What do you hope audiences feel when they experience it?

PB: I hope people laugh first.

Then, I hope they step into someone else's lived experience. If audiences leave questioning who they've judged too quickly or what it really means to belong, we've done our job.

More than anything, I hope people walk away believing our differences aren't barriers to connection. They're often what make connection possible.

IF: As you make the transition from advocate to writer-director, how are you approaching storytelling?

PB: I want to make representation that my younger self needed to see growing up. I want to make great entertainment that not only changes the conversation, but normalizes it.

Every story I tell will explore identity, belonging, or visible difference in some way, but the audience should fall in love with the characters first.

IF: Are there particular personal experiences shaping your creative voice?

PB: Definitely years of awkward conversations, invasive questions, and feeling like I had to explain myself have become an endless source of material. I want to transform those experiences into stories that feel whimsical, hopeful, and deeply human.

IF: Authentic representation is at the heart of this project. How are you thinking about casting and collaboration?

PB: I want to create opportunities for people with visible differences and disabilities both in front of and behind the camera.

Talent has never been the barrier. Opportunity has. My goal is to build a production where accessibility, inclusion, and authentic lived experience strengthen the creative process from every department.

IF: What impact would you love this film to have beyond the screen?

PB: I don't want the conversation to end when the credits roll. I'd love to partner with schools, nonprofits, hospitals, and organizations to create screenings, workshops, and discussions that help people see difference through a new lens and spark more authentic conversations about confidence, belonging, and representation.

I hope it helps move representation from being exceptional to being expected.

People with visible differences deserve to be seen as heroes, romantics, comedians, and fully realized characters, not just symbols of adversity.

This short is the beginning of a much larger slate of stories that normalize visible differences across genres. If it helps one person feel seen, inspires one filmmaker to cast differently, or changes the way someone views another human being, then it's already accomplished something meaningful.