“Netflix’s newest movie, Irreplaceable You, won’t just pull at your heartstrings because of the plot. You’ll also probably love it considering that it’s a film with a behind-the-scenes crew made up of almost all women — and the director’s reasoning is both simple and majorly important.

Along with director Stephanie Laing, there’s plenty of other women behind the camera: cinematographer Magdalena Górka, composer Lesley Barber, costume designer Whitney Anne Adams, production designer Dara Wishingrad, screenwriter Bess Wohl, art designer Patrice Andrew Davidson, and a number of others.

Stephanie felt that to be able to tell the protagonist’s story authentically, the film had to be produced by those who could truly empathize and relate. “I think there are certain stories that need to be told by women, as there are certain stories that need to be told by men,” she told Bustle. “I think if you’re a filmmaker and a storyteller, if you dive into the material you can tell it authentically, but I do find that for this time right now, in my life I prefer working with women.””

“How was the experience of shooting in New York and showing another side of the city that audiences might not be as familiar with?

LAING: I’m so glad you asked that question because that is exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to showcase that part of New York that’s not the tourist part and that people don’t know. We wanted to show Sam and Abbie’s New York. We filmed mostly in Bushwick and we shot over 19 days, which is insane. It was also really important to me that New York made up the color pallette. New York in the winter is beautiful, so we just went with those colors. That’s why Abbie is wearing that blue coat. There’s Abbie Blue in every frame of the movie, so much so that the props people were like, “How about this in Abbie Blue?” New York definitely created a color pallette for us.”