CHATSWORTH, Calif.—When Misha Cross was on her way to the U.S. in January 2015 to attend the AVN Awards as a nominee for Best New Starlet—a rarity for a foreign performer—something calamitous happened: She got detained by immigration officials when she stepped off the plane in Houston, where she was supposed to make a connection to L.A., and held under interrogation for 48 hours before being escorted onto a return flight back to her home country of Poland.
She has not been able to reenter the U.S. since.
Cross has now used the heartbreak of that experience as fuel and inspiration for her directorial debut, the Evil Angel Films star showcase Misha in Exile, which becomes fully available Wednesday across all platforms.
"The idea for the movie was born when I came to the conclusion I'm pretty much fed up with the situation I've been put into," Cross told AVN from Europe. "I have been away from the U.S. porn industry for almost five years, I always knew I wanted to direct and create high-end content, so in November 2017 I felt the moment was right to actually start doing something and create a groundbreaking movie filled with beautiful visuals. And I knew that a showcase would definitely mean a great comeback to the U.S. market for me after the uncalled-for hiatus I've experienced. Even though I've been still very successful and busy in Europe, it made a hole in my soul I couldn't fill with anything, so just one day I decided to change how I feel."
Looking back on that fateful day in 2015, the since two times over AVN Female Foreign Performer of the Year reflected, "That issue was probably something I could have avoided, but it happened and I was helpless, so for the past four years I was just angry, so angry and frustrated, but one day I decided not to be angry anymore and use this anger to move me in a creative way."
And so, last November, she began shooting Misha in Exile.
"I had this idea in my head that I wanted to shoot an intro to the movie in the sea, when I submerge myself in the water, and I wanted it to be dramatic so we had to wait for slightly better weather conditions to shoot it," Cross disclosed. "This intro was one of the most extreme non-explicit things I've shot in my life, 'cause the water was freezing and we filmed on a windy day, which caused bigger waves. It was a bit challenging."
She describes the resulting imagery as "very symbolic, because I'm wearing my AVN dress I wanted to wear for the award show in 2015. The aim of the intro was to represent a new life chapter."
Over the next six months, she shot the rest of the movie in various locations across Spain. The finished product, as she conveys it, "consist of four typical for Evil Angel, beautifully filmed gonzo anal sex scenes that are preceded by three-to-four-minute tease sequences leading to sex. Mainstream music and photography inspire me in what I do, so I wanted to incorporate a music video look to each one of them."
As part of her recipe for achieving that goal, Cross recruited good friend and performer-cum-musician Samantha Bentley—who was with her when she got detained in Houston, but was eventually let go—to compose original music for each tease segment (in addition to sharing the screen with her in the movie's closing g/g scene).
"Samantha is an amazing musician," Cross professed. "We pretty much listen to the same genres on a daily basis, so all I needed to say to her was that I need something dark or something slow and disturbing with voice in the background, and she was immediately on it. Then she was sending me samples and I decided which one I wanted and which one would match the tease sequence. Since we edit all teases to the music just like a music video, music is one of the most important things and it needs to be tailor made."
Cross says that to her mind, directing "all comes down to finding the right people with a similar vision as yours to be on board with you. Honestly, ever since I started in 2013 I knew I wanted to direct. I knew I needed to meet people first and prove myself to at all try to be a director myself."
Asked what the most challenging aspect of it was now that she's actually done it, she said, "It was all very challenging, just because it was a completely new situation for me. Having to direct each scene and perform in them is very stressful and exhausting. Especially when you also have to make sure it looks the way you want it to look. So I think multitasking was the most challenging of it all. And I'm proud of myself and everybody involved in making this movie for what we have created."
So now that the next chapter of her life has officially commenced—she revealed that her sophomore directing effort is slated to begin production early next month—is there an actual end in sight to Cross' Exile from America?
"By law I can't return until the end of next year," she imparted. "The worst is behind me, and all I need to do now is to wait a tiny bit longer and focus on my goals."
The first three scenes of Misha in Exile are available now on EvilAngel.com, and the fourth will debut tomorrow in concurrence with the release of the DVD nationwide. View the trailer here.
