Director Pavan Moondi Discusses The Return to Warmth and Romance in His New Film Middle Life
Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis in Middle Life.
Watching Middle Life feels like being surrounded by a warm blanket. Full of heartwarming moments, perfect chemistry between its two leads (Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay Goldstein of July Talk), and a nice balance of sidesplitting humour, poignant reflections on life, and quirky charm, Middle Life is one of the best romantic comedies of 2025. Directed, written, and edited by Pavan Moondi, the film follows Andie (played by Goldstein), a wedding planner and new mother, who tries to perfectly plan every aspect of her life. Feeling trapped in her marriage with her husband, Chris (played by Luke Lalonde of Born Ruffians) and unhappy with her life, she craves a change. One night, she saves a plumber named Ryan (played by Dreimanis) from a car accident and over the next year, their paths intertwine again, and again, sparking an unlikely friendship that profoundly changes both of their lives.
Leah Fay Goldstein, Pavan Moondi and Peter Dreimanis. Photo credit: Shannon Johnston for the Calgary International Film Festival.
After the film’s world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival this September, REVERIE chatted with director, writer, and editor Moondi about his film.
Moondi had the initial idea for Middle Life in his mind for a while. The seeds of the idea grew into something bigger last year when he came back to Canada for Jared Raab’s wedding. Raab, a close friend of Moondi’s, handled the cinematography and served as one of the producers for Middle Life. At the wedding, Moondi also reunited with close friends Dreimanis and Goldstein. “I had been really wanting to make a smaller independent film again, because I started out doing that and fell into the TV world,” said Moondi. “Peter had just shot Sinners, but it hadn’t come out yet, and he’d been talking about doing more acting… and I know Leah wanted to act again. At the wedding, I just pitched them this one-line idea: ‘What if this character was in a car accident, and someone pulls them out of the car, and it’s about how their life is upended by this mysterious figure.’”
The pitch excited Dreimanis and Goldstein, and they expressed interest in doing the film. They told Moondi to flesh out the story and send them something. “I went back home after the wedding, and I wrote the first draft of the film in about three weeks or so and sent it to them,” recalls Moondi. “It was still pretty rough. They had a lot of feedback on it, and we had a bunch of Zoom calls just collaborating and honing in on what we wanted it to be. The thing that unlocked it was taking that one-sentence idea and combining it with a desire I had to create a romantic comedy that felt like a throwback, like a movie from the ’80s or ’90s, submerging those two together is what really gave us something like a north star to be chasing.”
Drawing inspiration from films like An Unmarried Woman, Crossing Delancey, Hannah And Her Sisters, Stepmom, and When Harry Met Sally..., Moondi wanted Middle Life to evoke the same warmth and have the same rewatch value as those films. “That feeling of warmth was something we could point to if we were having doubts about really going for it, because obviously, having a big warm ending, you don’t see that as much lately in independent films,” he comments. “It’s usually more real, like they're gonna go their separate ways and they're better for it, but they’re glad for what they had.” Instead of going in that more ‘real’ direction, Moondi wanted the film to incite joy. "It was remembering the movies that we love, and are referring to, and keep going back to, and rewatching 30 years after they are made, they’re not the movies that leave you cold, they’re the movies that make you feel warm, so we need to lean into doing that.”
Although Moondi was adamant about giving Middle Life that warm, cozy feeling, he also made sure it had depth and nuance. “In some way or another, all [of my films] have been about a different phase in your life,” he explains. As the title suggests, Middle Life features characters exploring their midlife and the new experiences that come with it, including the brevity of life, which Moondi was thinking a little bit about when writing the character of Ryan. “Five years ago, I probably didn’t know anyone who had died or had no connection to anyone who died aside from maybe a grandparent, and as you start getting into your late 30s and early 40s, people start dropping like flies, and it’s jarring… Like if someone in their early 40s just goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up, it’s not a medical mystery. It’s just like ‘Oh yeah, he had a heart attack.’ It’s totally feasible. I hope [the film] captures some element of the idea that life is short, but I didn’t want that to be overrepresented in the movie and make it depressing. But I hope it's present in the subtext.”
Middle Life Q&A. Photo courtesy of the Calgary International Film Festival.
Early in the film, there are numerous short scenes and montages, allowing the viewer to get to know Andie and Ryan quickly within a short amount of time. By instantly transporting the viewer directly into both of their lives, the viewer can feel for the characters very early on. “It’s something I was really deliberately trying to do, but I think if the whole movie was like that, it would probably make people feel cold because it would seem like you’re watching a TikTok because you’d be seeing such short segments,” reflects Moondi. “It was pretty important to use those short scenes early to get people into our world and understand who the characters are, but then have some scenes that are a little more lived-in and longer… Those longer scenes are pretty critical to get people invested. That was key: having a mix of short scenes and longer scenes that really give you a sense of what it would be like to sit down with them as a person and get to know that person.”
Initially, Andie was the main focal point of the movie. However, Moondi, Dreimanis, and Goldstein realized that making Ryan a more well-rounded character was important to the film. “As we were working on it, writing, shooting, and adding little scenes here and there, I think we realized it’s just easier to get the audience more invested if we bring them in and let them know about Ryan’s relationship with his Dad, and what’s going on with this car accident, and don’t just leave it as a mystery to the viewer,” comments Moondi.
Like his previous two films, Diamond Tongues and Sundowners, Moondi directed, edited, and wrote Middle Life. “When I’m directing it, and I know that I’m editing it, I can direct it in a certain way where I’m editing it in my head as we’re shooting it, and it just makes it more efficient to shoot it that way,” says Moondi. Sometimes, though, being an editor while also being a writer and director can make it challenging to decide which parts should be cut. “You can definitely lose perspective because when you’re making a film and editing it, because at that point it’s probably been almost a year where your head has been in the movie, and you know the ins and outs of the movie. You know it better than anyone. It’s really hard to put yourself in the shoes of the audience because you’re the farthest person away from that. I think in the previous films, there were definitely moments where I felt that or experienced that. I look back at those films now, and there are things I would do differently in hindsight.”
Moondi’s editing process for Middle Life was quite different from his previous films. “In the past, I have been showing people cuts, and the movie has been too long, and everyone is like it’s too long, you have to cut this down, and I’m like ‘But it’s so good we have to keep this,’” he states. “This time, it was the opposite. I was ruthlessly cutting things left and right, really trying to lean into having the movie be paced well, moving fast, and having scenes that were short, really trying not to give people an opportunity to get bored. I did that and sent it to a lot of filmmaker friends I have and trust, and sure enough, there were still scenes where they were like ‘You could take a little off the beginning and a little off the end here’ and this time, I didn’t push back.”
Peter Dreimanis and Leah Fay Goldstein in Middle Life.
Middle Life was filmed between Toronto and L.A., where Moondi has been living for the past eight years (they actually shot some scenes in his house). Due to their tight budget, the small selection of shooting locations helped elevate the film. “A way we could really expand the scope of this movie is by having this relatively surprising turn in a movie that feels really small is all of a sudden shooting in L.A.,” says Moondi. “Also, from a production point of view, I still have tons of friends in Toronto, and Pete and Leah are based in Toronto… We put all our resources together to make the biggest film that we can make with the budget we have.”
Middle Life made its world premiere on September 20th at the Calgary International Film Festival. “The festival and Brenda Lieberman were so great in helping get so much of our cast and crew out for the screening; it definitely exceeded my expectations,” he says. “We hadn’t seen it with an audience, so that was amazing, having a couple of hundred people there, hearing what was resonating with the audience, and hearing which parts got laughs.”
In the future, Moondi hopes Middle Life could become a new holiday movie classic, as it features a handful of Christmas songs and scenes. “I hope its enough of a Christmas movie that people will be motivated to watch it every December, but I would call it an early Christmas movie, one you would watch on December 1st, not something you would watch on December 23rd when your in full Christmas spirit, because its not really about Christmas, but I feel like it can definitely get you in the mood,” smiles Moondi.