Moving to America, Working with Priyanka Chopra, Becoming a Filmmaker

Moving to America, Working with Priyanka Chopra, Becoming a Filmmaker with Sophia Banks

Sophia Banks is on the show this week! Here’s something you need to know before you listened or even browsed through the show notes below. If there is one person you want to look at, who is so focused and goal-driven, it’s Sophia. She wanted to pursue filmmaking, but he couldn’t because she was told that women “can’t lift heavy camera equipment”. So she decided to not just do it, but do it BIG. What did she do?

She moved from Australia to America (in a rather adventurous way!), works in fashion (for a specific reason), works with big brands and celebrities like Priyanka Chopra, Bradly Cooper, etc., and then decides to jump off the cliff into filmmaking. Today, she is crushing it!

becoming a filmmaker sophia banks

Who is Sophia Banks?

As a director, the core of Sophia’s work is in exposing the dark undercurrents of the rules, norms and technologies governing society. She focuses on topics such as the psychological price of social media and the impact of sexism in the workplace are treated with irony and the subtle humor inherent in the most effective satire.

Breaking rules is what Sophia does best, whether it be writing in the voice of a dispossessed character or favoring long, static shots over the fast jump cuts that have become the norm in Hollywood. The idea is to encourage her viewers to break out of the preordained boxes they have allowed themselves to occupy.

As a strong-willed female director, Sophia Banks brings a unique perspective that is both tender and unabashedly bold. Her voice is strong, edgy bold and unabashed.

Her palette is at times lush and beautiful; and at others stark and fraught. Sophia focuses on forms in the frame that others overlook, and she knows how to arrange a shot to highlight subtext and innuendo. Like many of the directors she admires most, including Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese, she relies on the power of imagery to tell my stories.

In an era dominated by instant gratification, when less is considered more—even though it is usually lacking in depth and texture—Sophia offers a holistic approach to film and television, one that asks the question: “Where do we go from here?” And answers it with a full emotional, spiritual and physical journey.

'The moment you are prejudiced against one person, be it their religion, be it the color of their skin, anything about it, that moment we have all lost our freedom.' - @sophiabanksc quoting her grandmother from Poland who survived the… Click To Tweet

Why Should You Listen to Sophia Banks?

There are plenty of reasons why you should listen to Sophia Banks. Let me give the top 3:

  1. How Sophia has constantly done things that are not ‘easy’ – moving to America, becoming a celebrity designer, quitting an industry when she’s enjoying all the comforts, rising up in the second industry?
  2. Why she thinks that as a filmmaker it’s important for her to be conscious of the stories and ideas she puts out to the real world?
  3. She explains her value systems and how she makes decisions, that had made her successful.

Purpose is where something you are doing, you can get paid for. - @sophiabanksc #filmmaking #business #fashion #women Click To Tweet

What You’ll Learn from this Interview?

Sophia talks about a lot of things in this interview. Here are specific things you’ll learn:

  1. How Sophia looks at the future, and why it is important for you and me?
  2. Sophia’s new movie’s plot and how that relates to a future we all will live in?
  3. How and why Sophia moved from fashion to films?
  4. What excites Sophia as a mother, filmmaker and an entrepreneur?
  5. The hardest part Sophia faced in rebuilding her career from scratch.
  6. What Sophia thinks about making films that sort of give ideas to people with the wrong intentions?
  7. How Sophia deals with success?
  8. How Sophia picks and chooses projects and what it has to do with value systems?
  9. Why and who she thinks are her Godfathers (and Godmothers)?

and so much more!

How Can You Listen?

Sophia Banks’ interview is available in audio.

Direct Link to Audio

How to Get In Touch with Sophia Banks?

LinkedIn: @bankssophia

Twitter: @sophiabanksc

Instagram: @sophiabanksc

Facebook: @sophiabanksc


View Sophia’s new movie trailer.

Support for This Show

Think about this. Back in the early 2000s, a lot of creative business owners started using Myspace to showcase their work and also grow their businesses. Jim, was one of them.

But in just a few years, Facebook arrived and a lot of these businesses, including Jim, found themselves in a deserted place, and had to literally start from scratch. Jim lost all his leads, customer contacts and everything else he had going on, inside Myspace. This is bound to happen when you rent a place…like a social media platform, to grow your business and brand.

Here’s something I want you to consider. Take full control of your business and your brand. Bring your customers and leads to your own website. And you can do it all by yourself, without having to spend thousands of dollars on a web agency.

Thrive Membership by Thrive Themes can help you do just that. You can have your website, completely from scratch in just a few hours. Thrive Membership comes with a ton of readymade design templates, lets you collect email addresses, and 11 powerful tools to build your business presence online. And for all of this you pay just $19/month. Not a penny more. To learn more about Thrive Membership, go to

I use this personally, and if you have any questions, do drop an email to hello AT with ’Thrive’ in the subject line, and me or my team will be happy to help you get unstuck. Again, the link is

Thanks for Listening!

Please do share your thoughts:

To help out the show:

  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one of them.
  • Subscribe on iTunes.

Special thanks to Sophia Banks for taking time to join me this week!