India Donaldson was done with acting when she was about 7 years old. In fact, it’s one of her earliest memories. Her father, the veteran Hollywood director Roger Donaldson, asked her to be an extra in a diner scene for his 1994 film “The Getaway,” co-starring the freshly married Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
Other kids might have been thrilled. She was mortified. “My older brother had a line, and in my memory he was really thriving in this context, but I was kind of embarrassed,” India Donaldson says over Zoom from Los Angeles, laughing at her younger self.
“I had a bowl of Cheerios and was eating the Cheerios, and I remember my dad coming over and whispering to me, ‘You don’t actually have to eat the Cheerios.’” She shakes her head. “I never acted in a movie ever again.
” Even if performing wasn’t in her future, Donaldson, 39, has emerged as a formidable filmmaker, following in her father’s footsteps by releasing a debut feature, “Good One.” Acclaimed at Sundance and invited to screen at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes , the intimate drama consolidates the strengths of several previous shorts, demonstrating her ability to create delicate worlds in which soulful, everyday people operate, albeit not always comfortably. It’s the story of a daughter and father , teenage Sam (Lily Collias) and divorced-and-remarried Chris (James Le Gros), on a weekend Catskills camping trip with Chris’ old friend Matt (Danny McCarthy).
Sam and Chris love t.