Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly first became known to Maine filmgoers as the creators of “The Way We Get By,” the acclaimed 2009 documentary about a group of senior citizens who were on call to greet U.S. troops at Bangor International Airport, the first stop home for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The couple, former TV reporters and producers, earned a visit to the White House to screen that film. Then, they settled in Bar Harbor and began work on a new movie.

It became “Beneath the Harvest Sky.”

Set in Van Buren and shot for 35 days around northern Maine and bits of New Brunswick, the movie is the first narrative film by the couple. Two young actors lead a cast that includes Aiden Gillen, known as “Littlefinger” in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” David Denman from “Parenthood” and Josh Mostel.

Though it was made for less than $1 million, their movie premiered in September at the Toronto Film Festival — where “Argo,” last year’s Oscar winner for best picture, debuted — and has earned the couple broader public interest. Since then, Pullapilly, from South Bend, Ind., and Gaudet, from Old Town, have signed with Hollywood’s big-time United Talent Agency, appeared Dec. 2 on Variety’s annual list of “10 Directors to Watch” and sold their movie.

Tribeca Film has purchased the U.S. rights to distribute “Beneath the Harvest Sky.”

The Sun Journal wanted to know more about the couple and their Maine-made movie.

Name: Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly

Age: 39 and 36

Hometown: Bar Harbor

Children? No, but are proud owners of a dog and two cats.

How did you decide to shoot in Maine?

Aron: For us, it was sort of reverse engineered. We went to northern Maine. We discovered Van Buren and kind of fell in love with that area and the potato farming and everything that was happening there. And we built our script around the location. The story really grew from spending time there and actually seeing what it was like to live there and talking to teens and teachers and law enforcement and farmers.

Gita: Because we have so much community support in Maine, we said, if we’re going to jump into a narrative film, we need to go to a place where we feel we will be protected and safe. If things happen on the production that we don’t know how to handle, we’ll know that people in Maine will be there to help us.

Can a movie be made entirely in Maine?

Gita: We really wanted to answer, ‘Can we do it all in Maine?” Outside of the final color and sound mix and stuff, Aron edited right there. We wrote the script there. We had the production there. With a national release now, hopefully people can see that amazing films can be made and created in Maine.

How did you marshal a production of this size with familiar actors?

Gita: For us, we felt if we’re going to make a narrative film, we want to make sure we have the best tools and resources to be able make that happen, even if we don’t have a crazy amount of budget for it. We still need to make the best film we can possibly make and push the boundaries of what we can do as filmmakers. By amazing fortune we discovered a fantastic casting director (Allison Jones), who is actually quite huge in Hollywood, who just so happened to have Maine ties.

Aron: With her, we were able to get the script to amazing actors, and she was critical in connecting us to the cast we were able to pull together. It is a very small film, but we have a huge cast of recognizable actors.

How do you describe the story to folks?

Aron: It definitely is a drama. It really becomes the story of two best friends, these two 17-year-old kids in northern Maine. One has this plan for working the potato harvest and finding a way to leave for sort of bigger dreams. The other one starts heading down the wrong path, getting involved in prescription drugs coming across the border. They’re kind of pulling each other in different directions.

Gita: For us, the inspiration came from ’80s films we loved and admired like “The Outsiders” and “At Close Range.”

How big was getting your film into the Toronto Film Festival?

Gita: Toronto is one of the four A-list festivals in the world, with Berlin, Sundance and Cannes. To be able to sell your film, you really have to get into one of the top festivals. When you spend years trying to figure out something in your head, get it on paper, get it into production and then make a film, you hope people respond to it in a specific way.

Aron: We had three amazing screenings up there and the reaction from people was more than we could hope for.

How careful were you to acclimate the actors to the area? Did you do things to Maine-ify them?

Aron: We brought up the four young leads for a couple of weeks before we started filming, and they just spent time in Van Buren. The ones that worked the potato harvest in the film had a potato harvest boot camp where they really did harvest potatoes. And people like Emory, his character doesn’t do the potato harvest, he just hung out with kids in Van Buren for two weeks. Everybody was living up there the whole time. You do just soak in the environment. (Actors) got a sense of what people were like and it showed in their performances.

Many movies and TV shows set in Maine have questionable accents. How did you deal with that?

Aron: I grew up in Maine. I spent my childhood going to see whatever new Stephen King movie would come out. Sometimes they were shot in Maine and would have these actors putting on these terrible Downeast accents that would drive me crazy and take me out of the movie. That was something for us from the start. When we were researching the movie we would record audio of the interviews. We would send those recordings to the different actors and say, ‘Listen to this farmer and how he talks.’  We would also say, if the actor can’t have an authentic accent, then he won’t have an accent. I’m from Maine and I don’t have a heavy accent.

What happens to the movie now that it’s been purchased by Tribeca Film?

Aron: Their motto is to make it as widely available as possible, not only theatrically, but through cable, DVD on all the digital platforms like iTunes and Amazon Instant and Vudo. Anybody in Maine who wants to see the movie will be able to see the movie.

Gita: That was really important to us as we were talking with distributors — finding someone who could champion the film and also make sure that people in these rural communities where we filmed had access to the film

Aron: It also will be playing theatrically in Maine as well.

Will you make any more movies in Maine?

Aron: Absolutely. There’s definitely a lot of stories we’d love to tell in Maine.

What’s next?

Gita: We have a couple of projects we’re working on. We feel like now we’re coming into the industry in a really strong way and we feel like we have a lot of good champions in Hollywood that are rooting for us now. Together, we hope that we can make a next, bigger-budget film that can meet all of our creative goals.