Nino directed by Pauline Loquès
On a Friday morning, 28-year-old Nino learns that he has throat cancer. In the run-up to the start of his treatment, we follow the distraught Nino for a weekend. Through beautifully written dialogue, calm pacing, and refined direction, the viewer is gradually drawn into the life of this quiet twenty-something, who tries to connect with his friends and family in busy Paris.
The
Produced : One
of the first opening scenes of the film is Nino finding out his
diagnosis of throat cancer at the doctor’s. Yet, every subsequent
scene finds Nino in a space that relates to... birth. Like the
fertility centre, the friend expecting a kid, his birthday. What is
your intention behind this approach, to frame something that’s
reminiscent of the end as a beginning of something as renewing as
birth?
Pauline
Loquès: That’s an interesting question. During my preparation with
Théodore Pellerin, who plays Nino, he told me the script reads like
a movie about parenthood. At first, I didn’t see that: the movie
talks about cancer and depression. But after reading the script
again, I saw how all these existential questions about being alive
and being born all surface. For a character like Nino, when facing
cancer specifically at age 30, I imagine there must be constant
movement in one’s head.
TP
: What
do you think these questions are?
PL
: Why was I born? What am I doing here? Why me? And then, if I have
the chance to stay alive, what will I do with that life?
For
me, Nino
is
a film that explores the ideas of living and dying, and the purpose
we give to our existence. When illness enters the story, I was
interested in the ways Nino would answer these questions, given he
has three days to sit with his thoughts in such a liminal state of
mind before entering cancer treatment. How does one even start to
navigate them? What meaning does he give to his life?
There’s
a sense that these questions have been with him since birth and are
just now resurfacing. His mother even tells Nino, “You seemed to be
looking at everything, but not seeing anything.”
TP
: In
a past interview, you mentioned that while filming, you wanted to be
very close to Nino while simultaneously maintaining a distance at
certain points so that one knows he isn’t alone in Paris. How did
you navigate when to focus on him and when to step away and watch
Nino from an observational perspective?
PL
: Much of the process was instinctive with Théodore, who is such an
inspiring person to me. I found myself paying close attention to him
and his performance: sometimes I’d feel we needed to be close
because so much was happening in Théodore’s face. Other times,
even something as simple as him walking down the street carried such
weight and tenderness that I knew I had to capture it. It depended on
the moment and on the actor in front of me.
With
each actor, I’d approach it differently. For Théodore, I was
constantly asking myself: where
am I being moved, and how do I translate that into the shot?
That meant making deliberate choices about distance: when to hold
back and when to come in closer. Every day felt like a conversation
about how to shoot him in a way that was true to what he was giving
while still telling Nino’s story.
TP
: There’s
something about the way you portray Nino: you look at him with such
kind curiosity and care, almost as if you wanted to ask him endless
questions but instead choose to follow and simply observe. Was that
how you approached writing and filming him, as a way of trying to get
closer to his inner world?
PL
: During my writing process, I felt like I was simply following Nino
without really knowing who he was. But that felt true to the
character–he himself doesn’t know much about who he is and rarely
questions himself. Nino is a character who discovers things as the
story unfolds.
I
avoid overdefining my characters. If I write out every detail, I lose
the desire to make the film because I already “know” them
inside-out, and in every aspect. Instead, I wanted to discover Nino
as we went along, up until the editing process. For this character,
Nino felt like someone I just bumped into on the street, not a person
I created. I felt empathy and curiosity, and simply followed him.
Dane-ye Anjir-e Ma'abed (English title The Seed of the Sacred Fig) directed by Mohammad Rasoulof
Teenage daughters Rezvan and Sana are shocked by the uncertain fate of their friend Sadaf, who was injured and arrested during a street demonstration. Meanwhile, their father, Iman, is appointed as an investigating judge and pressured to hastily convict arrested protesters. The paranoid Iman turns increasingly against his wife and children, after his service weapon disappears.
Script
Mag :
The
four main characters (the parents and two daughters) are each
distinct and poignant. While one might not agree or sympathize with
some or even all of their actions, the film allows the viewers to put
themselves in the character’s shoes. Please talk about developing
these characters.
Mohammed
Rasoulof:
There are many experiences that people have in oppressive situations
in democratic situations they are not felt and not transferable. So,
this form of storytelling creates certain problems. For instance, if
I want to make the situation understandable for the non-Iranian
audience, the way of life in Iran becomes so dramatized for the
Iranian audience that they might find it meaningless or useless.
A
big part of my energy [making this film] was spent on forgetting what
has become normalized for me in these abnormal situations and putting
myself in a situation that is more in tune and in sync with everyday
life outside Iran.
There
was another problem with making the film in a clandestine way; you
have to make everything very quickly or you get exposed, so these
contradictions are always very tense for me and take a lot of my
energy to get to a level of thought that I want.
SM
:
Each of these characters hide the truth in some form. Whether it’s
the actual hiding of the gun or the daughter’s friend, there are
many layers of secrets, deceptions and lies. Please elaborate on
this.
MR
:
These oppressive situations are parallel to that in a family
structure in which the father rules to do something to the members of
it and it takes away the trust between the members. In this family,
parallel to the patriarchy, girls are not allowed to express
themselves the way they are. Not only they cannot express themselves
in the family setting to their family members, but they cannot
express themselves to members of the society in a social setting.
In
my film, for example, the sequence with the family at the restaurant,
the mother is telling them that they have to get used to having
multiple perspectives of their lives, showing themselves in multiple
ways, in their lives. The mother herself is somewhat rope walking
between the children and the father, sometimes she leans towards the
children, sometimes she leans towards the father, and she’s
constantly trying to find an image that brings the two together and
reflects on the other side.
The
father believes by hiding his job from his children he’s protecting
them. Therefore all the characters have reasons not to be themselves
and not experience trust together.
SM
:
The gun is the dramatic catalyst and symbolizes not only violence and
a false sense of safety but paranoia. How would you describe it?
MR:
The gun is a symbol of power and the father holds it as his way of
getting close to the power he wants to get to. When he holds the gun,
he’s one step closer to the position he wants to get. When he sees
the situation in danger and sees the path he has been walking is
under a threat, he becomes disheveled and worried inside. Gradually
he shows a side of himself that is fully prejudiced and biased and
we, as the audience, understand how the events unfold in the way that
they merge with one another.
In
the end, the younger daughter tries to bring her father back to
himself and remind him of who he once was to them by broadcasting and
playing sounds from the past. But it is now too late. We see how
prejudice can take away humanity from us and cause violence.
Anniversary directed by Jan Komasa
The
affluent Taylor family
gathers
for the 25th wedding anniversary of progressive/libertarian
university
professor
Ellen and restaurateur Paul,
attending
are their four children. Among
them son Josh, an unsuccessful novelist – and his poised fiancée
Liz Nettles. Liz is polite, but Ellen realizes she was a student who
left her university after Ellen challenged her totalitarian ideas in
a paper advocating a one-party state. Liz shocks Ellen by gifting her
new book, written with Josh's help, The
Change: The New Social Contract,
the cover showing an American flag with the stars placed at the
center, supposedly to represent Americans uniting in the political
center.
IndieWire:
The film is set in a version of America that, while fictitious, still
feels distinctly American.
Yet, the more you watch the film, the more it feels like it goes far
beyond just “an American story.” How did you see it?
Jan
Komasa: First
of all, I started with the structure. That was the first thing that
came to me, the structure of different anniversaries and nothing in
between. You just leap from one [year] to another and maybe you can
even fill the gaps yourself with your imagination.
My
father is an actor and I grew up watching him in theater, and it
always fascinated me that you have three acts or four acts, and you
go for a break, you come back, you see the same living room, same
people, and they’re different. It’s a year later and people are
OK with this. They don’t need context. In cinema, we tend to
over-explain things and in theater, you don’t do that too much.
People are smart enough if you treat them like they’re smart enough
to come up with their own story. That was my first initial desire
creatively.
The
second one, it came to me during the pandemic or even before, I was
swiping, seeing, watching different films and photos from our
anniversary as my family, which is quite big and everybody’s busy
and creative. My brother is an opera singer. My sister is a singer.
My other sister is a costume designer. And they all have friends and
we all come together. And then you watched 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014,
da-da-da, same day, like a leap from one year to another and suddenly
you see changes that…
IW
: In
the moment,
it’s hard to feel it.
JK
: It’s hard to. If you go one after another and you see someone
coming with their partner and then the next year the partner is gone,
for whatever reason, and then the next year somebody is gone because
they’re gone forever, it’s like there’s a horror structure to
it, something is happening to us and we can’t even stop it, which
is scary. But also, if I show it to you, you’ll be interested in
what happened before, between those anniversaries. So these two ideas
were the trigger to come up with “Anniversary.”And then
politically, also, the whole world is nuts today, right?
IW
: Yes.
[Laughs]
JK
: … As
it always was. But today the polarization is much more dynamic and it
can change from one day to another. We live in tectonic shifting
times, so this too makes those jumps, from one year to another to
another to another, much more dynamic. There’s more change between
today and six years ago than, let’s say, between 2002 and 2007.
IW
: Did
this have to be set in America?
JK
: I was thinking about Poland initially. It’s easier for me to
think about my whereabouts and surroundings and the context, but then
I feel it’s just exciting to take something that’s new and graft
it to a different culture and then see what happens with it. Usually,
nothing happens, because that’s the beauty of us everywhere,
there’s the same story, just the decorum changes and the dynamic
changes.
I
want to prove this time and time again, that we are very similar
everywhere. At the same time, differences are just exciting. I think
differences shouldn’t terrify us. Differences should excite us,
like in the old days when people were more interested in differences
than just coalescing everything or unifying everything into one thing
because they’re too afraid of the other, right?
IW
:
The
conflicts here are within the entire country and this family, but the
central and inciting conflict is between two women. It’s not
romantic or about jealousy, it’s ideological,
and that’s not something we see a lot. Was it always going to be
two women at the heart of this story?
JK
: That’s
very exciting and very fertile ground to explore. I watched “All
About Eve,” and the dynamic between the idol and the fan and the
fan being so in love with the idol [was so interesting]. And then,
she takes her place and that’s like a virus. From the creative
side, I would say the virus falls in love with the cell, the virus
attaches itself to the cell, tries to get into the cell, and when the
virus is in the cell, the virus takes over the cell and its DNA and
replicates it and makes the cell its own. That’s the structure of
“Anniversary,” too.
We
were thinking about the viral infection, so the attachment and then
replication and the whole phases of the virus. We were working on
“Anniversary” during the pandemic, so that’s why we came up
with five anniversaries, because there are five phases of viral
infection too. I think it’s both scary and exciting, because you
never know if the virus wanted to destroy the family or wanted to
destroy Diane Lane’s world or maybe wanted to become Diane Lane,
because her former student loves her, really deep down, she’s
craving to be like her, to be close to her. And Diane’s character
Ellen is like, “No, no, just go away. I don’t want you,” and
the virus feels rejected and maybe that’s where the aggression
comes from.
IndieWire, October 30, 2025
More information IMDB
Akiplesa (English title Toxic) directed by Saule Bliuvaite
Thirteen-year-old Marija is temporarily living with her grandmother in a dreary Lithuanian hamlet. She limps and finds it difficult to connect with her fellow villagers. But then she meets the headstrong Kristina and joins a dubious modeling school, just like the rest of the girls in the village. The desire to escape their current lives and the promise of a glamorous life in Tokyo or Paris drives the teenagers to seek increasingly extreme methods of weight loss.
International
Cinephile Society :
The film’s visual elements play a significant role in conveying the
emotional landscape of the characters. What was your vision behind
the cinematography and the choice of color palette to reflect their
inner struggles?
Saulė
Bliuvaitė
:
I didn’t want to follow the standard cinematography typically used
in teenage films, where the camera constantly zooms in on the
characters’ faces. I believe that the atmosphere and environment
are just as important as the characters themselves, and I wanted to
showcase the characters within the context of their bleak industrial
surroundings.
My
goal was to create a contrast between their youth and their
aspirations for friendship, love, and other vibrant, lively
experiences, juxtaposed against an environment that feels stuck in
the past, where nothing exciting seems to happen. I aimed to portray
these characters in relation to their environment to capture the
sense of struggle they face in wanting to escape the place where they
find themselves.
ICS
:
Can you discuss the political background in Lithuania that influenced
your movie? The film is set against a bleak industrial backdrop with
a lot of Soviet architecture. The characters, especially the boys and
girls in the film, are not involved with phones and social media;
instead, the boys are into drugs, and the girls are concerned about
their looks. It seems you’ve specifically set the story in
post-Soviet Lithuania, where the economy underwent a significant
shift from industrial to service. Can you explain?
SB:
I wouldn’t say there is a strong political background to this film.
Instead, it relates more to my own experiences as a teenager. I grew
up in an industrial area in Lithuania that was occupied by the Soviet
Union from the 1940s until 1990. I was born and raised there, and by
the time the Soviet Union collapsed it left behind places filled with
Soviet architecture – remnants of that empire.
In
the ’90s people were trying to reorient themselves toward a
capitalist Western world, but when I returned to that same area
twenty years later the Soviet-era architecture was still very much
present. The buildings constructed during the Soviet occupation are
still standing, and I often wonder if they will endure for another
hundred years. The collapse of the Soviet Union happened decades ago,
yet people in Lithuania often say they no longer speak about it, as
if it were a distant memory. They might feel like they are in a
different landscape now, but visually that landscape remains
unchanged.
In
my hometown there are some areas that were built while Lithuania was
independent, during a brief period before the two world wars. Those
structures are stunning compared to the vast, industrial buildings
that dominate the area. My hometown is filled with beautiful
architecture, a stark contrast to the industrial zones. Sadly, these
remnants of the Soviet era will likely stand for a long time, as no
one is planning to demolish entire areas of those buildings.
ICS
:
In what ways do you believe the decline of industrialization impacted
the characters’ aspirations and choices? How does this transition
affect their perception of identity?
SB:
The decline of industrialization creates pressure for individuals to
turn themselves into commodities. There’s this expectation for them
to capitalize on their own identities, which I believe is a
significant contemporary problem. Everyone feels the need to find
ways to monetize themselves, which is a theme I wanted to explore in
this film.
For
the girls in the modeling school the pressure is to commodify and
monetize their bodies. It’s as if everything about being human has
to have a price tag. There is a pervasive belief that everything must
be monetized, and nothing can be considered free anymore. People even
joke about monetizing the air we breathe because, in today’s world,
it seems like everything is for sale – natural resources included.
ICS
:
You highlight the irony of consumerism in the context of the film.
How do you think societal beauty standards impact young women today?
SB
:
While
making this film I came across an article in The
New Yorker
titled “The Age of the Instagram Face.” It discusses how many of
the faces we see on social media are not real. Women increasingly
visit plastic surgeons to alter their appearances, striving to look
like the images they see on Instagram, which often feature various
cosmetic procedures and injections that Hollywood stars undergo.
This
creates an unattainable standard for people living regular lives who
cannot afford these beauty procedures. As a result, we find ourselves
in a world that has become detached from reality, where the natural
appearance of a human being is increasingly obscured. This disconnect
causes more and more stress, especially for younger generations who,
at an age as young as 13, begin to immerse themselves in social
media. They are exposed to these unrealistic beauty standards and
often suffer as they compare themselves to faces that are not
genuinely representative of real people.
More Information IMDB
Ljósbrot (English title When The Light Breaks) directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson
Just when Diddi, an Icelandic art student, leaves town to break up with his girlfriend Klara because he has feelings for fellow art student Una, he dies in an explosion in a car tunnel. So Klara never finds out that Diddi had someone else. And Una has to watch helplessly as Diddi's group of friends mainly comfort Klara.
Variety
: As
proven by “Sparrows,” you are not afraid to tells stories with
younger protagonists. Is it easy for you to go back to that mindset?
Rúnar
Rúnarsson : Everything I write is based on my first- or second-hand
experiences, which I then mix with fiction. I also had an amazing
cast, which is probably one of the first things you have to have.
There is a lot of talent in Iceland, but we wanted the crème de la
crème. It was crucial to find the right people to portray these
characters and turn them into human beings.
It’s
different when you work with young adults, but we tried to make this
story believable and timeless. There are still things that unite us,
even though there was a middle-aged man behind the camera, which they
realized only halfway through the shoot [laughs].
V
: Why
did you want to talk about grief, and over the course of just one
day? Specifically, you mention two names at the end.
RR
: Usually, I prefer not to reveal my sources, but these were my
friends. They both passed away. I wanted to dedicate this film to
them.
I
thought it was interesting to keep it within such a short time frame
— we go from sunset to sunset — and focus on these first moments.
If you experience something life-changing, regardless of your age,
you feel … everything at once. It’s a rollercoaster ride. The
same things that make you cry, make you laugh. At the same time, or
five seconds later.
For
me, that’s life. We don’t laugh all the time, even on the
happiest day, and we don’t cry all the time either. There is beauty
in the mundane and there is humor in grief.
V
: Could
you tell me more about this strange, unnerving melody heard
throughout the film?
RR
: It was composed by Jóhann Jóhannsson [Oscar-nominated for
“Sicario” and “The Theory of Everything.”] He died in 2018. I
think it’s my favorite thing he did and it has never been used in
any film.
It’s
one of his first works and it’s so human, even though it’s “sung”
by a computer. It combines the beauty of classical music with
something completely different. I decided not to subtitle the lyrics,
but it’s in Latin and it says: “I love, I hate, I don’t know
why. I don’t want this, but it’s happening again. I can feel it
and it tears me apart.”
I think you can still feel it, even
though you can’t understand the words, because that’s how we are,
as human beings: we have all these mixed emotions.
V
: As you mentioned, you waited a long time to tell
this story. How does it feel right now?
RR
: It’s a relief. I just had to get it out of my system, one way or
another. But when something, like a box, has been standing on a shelf
for a long time and then you move it, it leaves an empty space. I
managed to get rid of the box and I am glad it’s gone, but nothing
else will be able to replace it.
Variety, May 14, 2024
More information IMDB
Seses (English title Drowning Dry) directed by Laurynas Bareisa
Ernesta
and her sister Justė (the sisters mentioned in the original title) gather at a lakeside cabin for a weekend
getaway with their husbands (Lukas and Tomas, respectively) and
children. The vacation takes a dark turn when Justė's daughter falls
into the lake, unable to swim to safety. Details about the accident
and its aftermath are revealed in a series of flashbacks as the
family tries to move on from the tragedy.
Hammer
to Nail:
This film is so complex: confusing, satisfying, and tragic all at the
same time. Could you talk a bit about how the idea for this film came
about?
Laurynas
Bareisa: This film is very much connected to my previous film,
Pilgrims,
because just before going to its premiere, I had a kind of similar,
almost tragic experience with my kid. At the time, I didn’t think
it was meaningful, but it kept coming back to me and I kept thinking
about it. It was very puzzling for me to deal with because it wasn’t
tragic, but it could have been. I kept thinking about it, and it kind
of connected to what was happening with the film [Pilgrims],
so I just started writing this film, not even knowing if it was going
to be a film, but just a story.
HTN
: How did you go about writing this script? The film flips back and
forth between a number of different timelines, revealing hints of
information about the past and future. Did you start writing this
linearly then split it up or was it always nonlinear?
L.B.:
In the beginning, it was very much a straight narrative storyline
about this family and how they all deal with this event that happens.
So I started writing this linear narrative and then it kind of
transformed into this nonlinear narrative because I was interested in
how memory works – for this event, but also how it works in general
over time; how it differs, how it changes. I was very much interested
in how we remember these kinds of traumatic events and the nuances of
life that happen around it – the prosaic moments that become
important, the ordinary things that you keep remembering over and
over.
The
most difficult part for me was finding the moment of that first jump
in the narrative. I decided that it was going to be in the moment
where this trauma happens. For me, time splits in two different ways.
It splits structurally as you have different timelines of a memory,
but it also splits emotionally as you have a factual reality of what
actually happened and an emotional reality of what was felt. So this
was something I wanted to get through to the viewer, that there are
different timelines and realities.
HTN:
I, too, am extremely interested in the characteristics of memory –
how it can essentially be manufactured, how it’s like a puzzle that
takes shape over time, but can also be confused with the expanse of
time. Clearly the nonlinear timeline mimics this fragmented nature,
but what other filmmaking elements did you employ to imbue the
sensation of memory and recollection?
LB
: For me, it was important to consider the perspective we approach
each scene with and from where we see what is happening. In this
film, I wanted the frame to translate to the viewer that you are not
exactly in the moment. I wanted the film, visually, to have some kind
of an uncanny element. The camera is not in the position where a
person would ordinarily be – it’s a bit behind their backs, or
further away. Like it’s something that’s already remembered.
This
feeling was important to me, but was something that was hard to
describe and put into words, especially on set. So I decided to shoot
the film myself, to the DP and camera operator. I could work more
intuitively.
HTN
: In addition to this uncanniness, there’s also a voyeuristic
quality to the film, specifically in the long, static, medium shots
so frequently used throughout the film. When filming, how did you
decide how much time was enough to linger on a scene?
L.B.:
I tried to plan some of the shots, considering the length compared to
the impact of the shot, and the position of the scene in the story;
the length and the emotional impact should correlate. I started doing
this in my first film and, for that, I actually even had a stopwatch
on set. But then for this film, I wanted to make some of these
decisions more instinctively, so I decided to just feel it on the
spot. If I feel in the moment it starts to drag, I change it. So we
just kind of tried to find the rhythm on the spot and feel how it
worked. But because this was so subjective, I wanted to have someone,
an editor, to check it afterwards, to make sure I wasn’t going off
the rails.
Hammer To Nail, July 31, 2025.
More information IMDB
Affeksjonsverdi (English title Sentimental Value) directed by Joachim Trier
After the once celebrated Norwegian director Gustav Borg disappeared from the lives of his now adult daughters Nora and Agnes years ago, he suddenly reappears after their mother's death. His plan: to make an autobiographical film starring Nora, set in the house he was born in. But Nora, a famous theater actress, refuses, because she wants nothing more to do with her father. Gustav then chooses American Hollywood star Rachel Kemp.
Roger
Ebert : I’ve always felt that you identify so
strongly with your characters—that the empathy of your filmmaking
flows from your impulse to understand and connect with them. You come
from a film family, and I’m curious about drawing on that personal
experience in shaping the characters of Gustav Borg, his daughters,
and Rachel Kemp.
Joachim
Trier : It’s true. I think the idea of identification comes first
from a writer’s point of view, then from a director’s, and
finally from a collaboration with the actors. I need to understand
them and identify their yearnings and their struggles. But that’s
not the same as saying that the characters are biographically like
me, or that you don’t need to vary up the characters. Still, this
is a polyphonic kind of story, and so it’s nice to have that
identification.
For
example, Gustav is a film director. As you say, absolutely correctly,
I come from a film family background. Without him being anyone I
know, I understand the struggles and the joys, the passion for making
films, so I identify with that—and also the anxiety, perhaps, that
it will come to an end, that “one day they won’t let me,” which
is what he’s going through. But this film was also about having
characters like the younger sister, played by Inga Ibsdotter
Lilleaas, who was in Gustav’s film as a child and certainly didn’t
want to be in front of the camera again—something completely
different.
With
her, for example, I found this identifiable point: she wants everyone
to connect and feel good. I have that in me. I always want people to
get along. You do find something with all of them, after a while,
when working on them. But the last thing I’ll say is that I don’t
want to hinder the possibility of the actors coming in and taking
charge of the characters. It’s good to leave an open space for them
to fill in, as well.
RE
: The
term you use, “polyphonic,” refers specifically to sound. I’m
curious about your creative relationship to music, score, and
especially sound design, as this was your father’s craft. Your film
opens and closes with two wonderful tracks, Terry Callier’s
“Dancing Girl” and Labi Siffre’s “Cannock Chase,” but how
do you think about the role of sound design in your filmmaking?
JT
: Thank you very much for asking that. I really care about it. When I
talk to friends about using music in film, I also tell them that one
of the joys of life is the system of loudspeakers and the richness of
frequency you get in a good cinema. It’s the best sound you’ll
hear anywhere in the world. It’s a super hi-fi, complex,
surround-sound experience. I feel that sometimes filmmakers forget
how subtle you can be while still including a lot of sound and using
the full range of frequencies. Hammering, loud sound doesn’t
necessarily use the possibilities of a theater.
That’s
something I think I’ve learned from my father: that you can create
what feels like silence but is actually a full sound design of
atmospheric subtlety. I love loud pieces of music; I love noise, but
I also love the dynamics of daring to be quiet and gentle with sound.
It’s almost like you draw the audience into the image by being very
cautious about sound in certain areas.
For
example, towards the end, there’s an almost climactic scene between
the two sisters, full of emotion and action. And there’s no music.
I tried to really build towards that feeling of presence: being
there, hearing the breathing, all the movements of clothes. That can
ultimately be so strong. Sometimes, when it comes to people talking
about sound, they always talk about the loud films—And I think that
the opposite could be equally complex and interesting.
RE
: Everyone
has a childhood home, a place where they grew up; this film explores
the poetics of such a location. You’ve referred to the house as a
“witness of the unspoken.” But there’s an emotional residue in
the house’s atmosphere; it reflects all this lived experience. What
can you say about first conceiving of the house and its presence, and
of mapping your story onto this setting once you had a physical
location?
JT
: First of all, our spatial treatment of the narrative—to refine it
so that it fit the space—was an exciting, visual task. When we
write, Eskil Vogt and I write for the image in a way, and for the
actors, but I think the sound aspect is really interesting as well.
Hania
Rani was our wonderful composer; this was the first collaboration
I’ve had with her. She wanted to go to the house and record its
reverb and other sonic qualities, which, to me, was fascinating. I’ve
never had anyone think like that, but she said it inspired and
affected her approach to reverbs for certain pieces of music as well.
The idea of sound always being present is very interesting to me.
Roger Ebert, November 14, 2025
More information IMDB
Maria directed by Pablo Larrain
Biopic about perhaps the greatest, but certainly the most famous opera singer of all time, Maria Callas. Pablo Larraín zooms in on the last week of Callas' life, when La divina (‘the divine one’) lives in seclusion with her butler, housekeeper, and two poodles in a luxurious Paris apartment.
Awards
Watch :
You’ve mentioned watching operas with your mother when you were
young. What was the initial draw of them to you and was it a thread
that you kept with you as you grew up?
Pablo
Larraín : No, it was very simple. My parents would get the
“l’abbonamento ascoli,” the subscription to the theater, so you
get a ticket for all shows, ballet, concerts, and opera. So my mom,
we are six siblings, and my mom would just say, “Who wants to
come?” And I often was the one to raise my hand, and I just went,
because my father was too busy, so there was one ticket available and
I came with my mom to numerous operas and ballets and concerts. So
that was my gate to this incredible form of art. And then I tried to
become a musician because of it, and I just failed trying to play
guitar, and the piano was terrible. But then I found a camera, an old
camera that wasn’t really actually working well. The light meter
didn’t work. So that’s how I started, and then I’m here.
But
opera, Erik, it’s not just a beautiful art form. It’s not just
something that should be more popular in my opinion. Opera was for
me, the gate to the performing arts. And I realized that there was
something in my sensibility that was very, very moved when I saw one
production after the other over the years. Whether the production was
better or worse, high quality, mid-quality, whatever the result of
that, I fell in love with opera because it was just so moving and I
understood that my emotions were affected, very, very affected by
what was going on onstage. And I started wondering if I was able to
affect others with my own idea. So that was something, is the origin
story of my own approach to the form of art. And then I discovered
cinema that, believe me, I directed one opera once, and it’s a very
similar work. It’s incredible.
AW:
I love that. In thinking about Maria Callas, I think of how Jackie
Kennedy and Princess Diana had such collective visibility worldwide,
just being photographed so much and their speaking voices being so
recognizable. But there’s almost a mystery about Maria Callas in
the United States despite her worldwide success. Did that help give
you more ways to interpret her life?
PL:
Can I ask you something, Erik?
AW
:
Yes.
PL:
I know you’re here to do the questions, but tell me, honestly, do
you think you know a lot about Angelina Jolie?
AW:
No, I definitely don’t. That’s something I can’t wait to talk
to you about because I feel like, obviously we know as regular
people, we know bits and pieces of what we’re told by [points to
self] journalists, by media, by anything. So, we don’t really ever
know anyone.
PL:
That’s the same with Maria Callas, and I’ll tell you about
Jackie, and Diana is very similar. But going back to Callas, I’ll
tell you, I read nine biographies, read so many documentaries, read
every single interview, made a movie, and I don’t really know who
she was. And I think Angelina, whether you know more or less about
her throughout her work, throughout what media says, even when she
says things about herself, in reality, I don’t think you really
know much about her. And that is where both Maria and Angelina come
together and can do a movie that is not Angelina. It’s not Maria
necessarily, it’s our Maria. And that is made through a very
mysterious character and a very mysterious actress that created a
very enigmatic and mysterious main character. And I am fascinated by
that.
I
think that I’m a filmmaker that really, really, really cares about
the audience. I respect the intelligence and the sensibility of the
audience, and I want them to complete what we’re not showing in the
film. And that is a lot, and that’s how cinema works. It should be
like you’re active, you’re trying to read, you are trying to
complete things that are not given, and that is my job and I really
love it.
AW:
I was thinking of the very same thing and how it can be, whether it’s
with Angelina, Kristen Stewart, the way that you play with public
persona a little bit, so that as a viewer you are filling in those
little bits of blanks and you are allowing you to color outside the
lines a little bit to give us something different.
PL:
Also, Angie is very conscious of when she wants to let you in and
when she doesn’t want to let you in. So I’m filming, I’m
operating the camera, because I operate the camera. I’m close to
her, and then she goes and does a take where she’s visibly more
accessible, and then she does another one where there’s no way you
could actually enter. And that is the game, the mechanics of what it
becomes. Then when you put the movie together, that is the same
thing. There are moments where you can enter a moment where you
cannot. So what she’s telling about herself, that the movie is telling about
herself is incomplete and undefined, and that is what we have to work
out and complete as an audience.
AwardsWatch, November 25, 2024
More information IMDB
A House Of Dynamite directed by Kathryn Bigelow
When
a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race ( 18 minutes before the missile reaches Chicago) begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
Cinema
Daily : What
surprised you most once you got into the development and research
process of the movie?
Kathryn
Bigelow: One of the great surprises was being able to work with Noah
Oppenheim. His acumen on the subject is like none other. The most
surprising thing was how the president has so much authority on
something so potentially catastrophic. It’s just this one man who,
within a matter of minutes, has to decide about the utilization of
these weapons. What I don’t understand is that a defensive measure
could be global annihilation. What are you defending? There’s
nothing left. It’s an interesting paradox.
CD
: Was the decision to tell the story through different successive
perspectives already made in the script? Or was it a decision made
later during the editing process?
KB
: It was early on. We decided to break it into three chapters in
order to stay in real time, because an 18-minute journey would have
been too brief for a feature. We broke it into three phases in order
to do a deep dive in each one of the halls of power.
Noah
Oppenheim: The reason we constructed it that way, as Kathryn said,
was so the audience could feel what that pressure of 18 minutes would
be like. And experience the disorientation that the decision-makers
would feel when something like this would first happen. You would
hardly be able to make sense of it in those 18 minutes. In the first
viewing, the audience is absorbing it in that way. Then we pause, and
they have an opportunity to re-experience it with new context.
Unfortunately, in real life, the folks who have to make these
decisions don’t get the luxury of a second or third run-through.
CD :
You’ve directed large casts many times before, but House of
Dynamite is your largest in terms of ensemble focus. How did you work
out balancing the stories?
KB
: I was incredibly lucky to have an extraordinary cast. With the
editor Kirk Baxter’s help we were able to balance it. He
executed in such a surgical precision and kept everybody extremely
forefront in the story. The performances necessitated that.
CD
: Did you have the cast go through any type of training or
coaching to become as authentic as possible in grasping the specific
military and government jargon in their day-to-day duties?
NO
: I have the privilege to be sitting next to one of the greatest
filmmakers who has ever lived. One of the things that makes her so
great is her commitment to authenticity and realism, her sense of
responsibility in depicting these worlds. If you’re gonna take an
audience behind closed doors, if you’re gonna take them to the
Situation Room, you want to accurately portray what goes on there.
From the very beginning when we started working together, Kathryn
Bigelow made it clear to me: If you’re gonna write dialogue in the
mouths of these people, it better ring true. Every line, she
interrogated: Is this how it would really happen? Is this how they
would really say it? We did a lot of work in advance talking to
people who held these jobs, who had been in these rooms before, so
that we could try to accurately reflect how it would unfold. Then
these extraordinary performers absorbed that sense of responsibility
from Kathryn and we all relied on those Technical Advisors.
KB
: : The Technical Advisors were so extraordinary on this, invaluable.
They would be with me on the set, we didn’t shoot anything that
they didn’t say that is relatively accurate. The authenticity is
paramount in something like this. If you’re inviting an audience
into space that’s not readily available, especially a story like
this, you need it to be as authentic as possible.
CD
: How
did you work with Barry Ackroyd to create the atmosphere of the film?
KB
: I worked with Barry first on Hurt Locker, we developed a visual
language. But it was really him teaching me this incredible latitude
that he provides. He basically lights an entire environment. In the
case of Hurt Locker, we were outdoors for most of it. Then he covers
it with cameras, and there’s no marks. Basically, the actors are
left alone to do their job. He captures it. It’s the most
extraordinary way. It’s very much like a documentary but applied to
fictional narrative. It gives, like Rebecca was saying, a tremendous
amount of freedom. And that was imperative for The Hurt Locker,
imperative for something like this. They need to feel like they own
the space.
CD
: Was there a piece of advice from op military and intelligence
officials that made you rethink a major scene?
NO
: I don’t know about rethink. There was one conversation that we
had at the beginning of our process that stuck with both of us,
rattled us and informed a lot of the rest of the film.We were talking
to a gentleman who had served in senior roles at the Pentagon and the
CIA. The movie is predicated on this notion that the President of the
United States has the sole authority to decide whether to use nuclear
weapons. It’s only up to him in our system. So we asked this former
official: “How much does the president practice? How much does he
read on the subject? How much does he prepare for that moment?” And
the person’s response was: “Not at all.” Basically when the
president takes office – any president, it’s not specific to any
individual – they’re given a very short briefing on the briefcase
that gets carried around, less than an hour sometimes. And that’s
it. They don’t think about it ever again. The fact that the folks
at the top of the decision-making ladder might be the least prepared
for the moment was stunning to both of us when he shared that.
KB
: It’s just shocking. We were completely surprised by that. He
said, “No, there’s so much else that they’re doing.” At
StratComm, when we visited, there was this admiral that we met: she
said they practice the protocol for nuclear weapons 400 times a year.
They’re very practiced. On the other hand, the president is not.
Which is another paradox.
CD:
How did you approach building a sense of unbearable tension around
time? And how does leaving the origin of the missile undefined
amplify the audience’s anxiety throughout the film?
KB
: How does it amplify that? I’m not sure. It was important that
within the incredibly finite timeframe, this case being 18 minutes,
you have limited information to make a decision. There’s so many
elements you don’t know. You’re left flying blind. That made
everything far more complicated.
Cinema Daily US, October 26, 2025
More information IMDB
The
End directed by Joshua Oppenheimer
Years after fires have completely destroyed the earth, a former energy billionaire lives with his wife and young adult son still safe and sound in their shelter hidden deep in a salt mine. Surrounded by their Monets and Renoirs, and equipped with their own butler, doctor, and maid. But then, out of nowhere, a young woman comes to seek refuge with them, completely destroying their carefully constructed existence built on lies. This post-apocalyptic musical is the idiosyncratic feature film debut of documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer.
Moveable
Fest : This idea of a lavish underground bunker was something you
actually learned of in meeting with an oligarch who let you see
theirs, but when this setting can become a reflection of the value
that the family has and the world that once existed, what was it like
figuring out what it’d look like?
Joshua
Oppenheimer : The set grew from the questions that I had when I
visited that bunker. The bunker was a cave and at that point, they
hadn’t finished it yet. It was a former Soviet command bunker built
in a mountain, so I could really project whatever image I could dream
up of the finished bunker onto these rock walls because there was
nothing there yet. They were planning many of the same features you
have in “The End,” the art vault, the pool and so on, but I found
where really the vision of the house came from were these questions
that haunted me as we walked around the bunker, which was how would
you cope with your guilt for the catastrophe from which you’re
fleeing? How would you cope with your remorse for leaving your loved
ones behind? How would you raise a new generation as a blank canvas
onto which you could paint your own version of your lives? And what
happened to the world as a means of reassuring yourself, as a means
of easing your regrets, as a means of justifying your actions?
Essentially,
I understood that whatever would come out of this — which initially
I thought might be a documentary — would be a film about denial and
delusion. And as we started turning that into songs, we realized the
principle that gets them singing in this film is self-deception. It’s
crises of doubt. Crises as the stories they’re telling themselves
that get them out of bed in the morning and allow them to cope with
the situation start to fray and unravel. They desperately would reach
for new melodies and new bits of music to cobble together a kind of
life raft of luminously beautiful melodic lies so that they don’t
drown in the abyss of their own making. That realization meant that
as they sing them, the songs would follow them. The songs would be
journeys of self-deception for the characters. So we realized that if
we could be introduced to the melodies through carefully
thought-through reprise structures so that when they start singing,
we’re humming along with them, we should be able to be able to
identify with them by just singing along with them as they convince
themselves that they’re living the best possible life they could
live. As they use the songs to forget that they’re in a bunker, we
too should forget that we’re in a bunker.
That
led to some insights about the sets and the home, namely that even
though there would be no windows, it should not feel claustrophobic
because otherwise you’d be constantly aware that you’re penned
in. That led us to have these light wells inspired by skylights in
Versailles and in the White House where you’d have simulated
daylight streaming in and diffused among the rooms. That led us to
the idea that there should be exteriors, so we came to this ant
colony model of the bunker where we would fashion some caverns into
these classically appointed manor house-style rooms that would just
open up into the emptiness, the rawness of the salt mine. Also, we
would use the mother’s art collection as windows, so you would be
looking through these romantic landscape paintings to a lost nature
that never existed because what we’re seeing on the walls are the
stories they’re telling themselves about the past, like the
narratives they’re spinning in song.
MF
:
In
“The Act of Killing,” music allowed the subconscious to emerge
from the perpetrators you interviewed and of course, they were
ultimately pulling from a memory of what they had done. Was it
different working with actors when the music might serve the same
purpose for the characters, but obviously they’re just playing a
part?
JO
: Because these characters are haunted by their pasts and it’s a
non-familiar world in which they live together, rehearsal was
crucial, so we had a month where the [actors] could understand after
a conflict, how would they find harmony again? Because they would
need harmony to live for 25 years in such a place together. [We’d
talk about] what are the secrets that they’re all keeping from the
son? Because apart from the son, all of the older characters have a
pact of silence and they all know each other’s secrets that they
all keep hidden from the son and each of them use in different ways
as a kind of canvas onto which they can paint their idealized version
of themselves.
So
rehearsal was crucial, but then when I make a documentary, I’m
always looking for authenticity, which sounds like a cliche, but what
I mean by that is I’m looking for moments that I instantly
recognize as true because they’re not what I expected. In a certain
sense, I quickly realized that with actors who would have to bring
characters to life whom I had richly envisioned as I wrote them, they
would have to make these characters true to them and emerge
organically in the moment from their inner lives. That meant that
rather than hoping for them to flesh out something I’d already
imagined, I could lean back on my skills as a documentarian and
create a space in these long takes through which we shot the film for
them to surprise me and bring me those moments of authenticity.
MF
:
In
a way, that’s how I ended up taking away hope from the film when
it’s about delusion, but at the same time a group of people are
coming together to recognize that and pierce the bubble. In these
times, what was that experience actually like for you?
JO
: I wrote at least the first draft of the film and the first draft of
the songs under the first Trump administration, so the film is right
at home in this dangerous moment we’re living in. And it feels all
the more urgent because I think we as a culture and a society, at
least a large minority of us at the very least — and maybe many
people who didn’t vote — are realizing that our expectation that
somehow things will work out for the best, no matter what we do, was
a delusion. I still believe that this is a cautionary tale about the
wolf of despair masquerading in the sheep’s clothing of hope and
the importance of embracing in contrast to that false hope, the
genuine hope of saying, “Look, we have to acknowledge right away
the urgency of our problems and marshal all our creativity and come
together as a human family to solve those problems.” I still
believe that there’s time for that.
And
this is still offered by me and the cast and the crew and the
producers and the hundreds of people who made this happen as a
gesture of genuine hope. I even believe that the humanity we will
discover by coming together collectively to solve these problems, the
activism we will now need to be ready to embrace up to and including
nonviolent civil disobedience, will remind us of our full human
potential. I say “remind” because I think we as human beings have
done this before. We did it in the civil rights movement. We did it
in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. We’ve done it
many times before. But it will remind us and we will rediscover our
deepest humanity which lies in the broadest human family and in this
dark moment, that is more than a silver lining.
More Information IMDB
Best
Dutch films:
Drie
Dagen Vis, directed by Peter Hoogendoorn ; The North, directed by
Bart Schrijver ; Voor de meisjes, directed by Mike van Diem ; De Propagandist, directed by Luuk Bouwman
IFFR 2025 :
The Shrouds, directed by David Conenberg; Morlaix, directed by Jaime Rosales ; Il tempo che ci vuole, directed by Francesca Comencini ; Czlowiek Do Wszystkiego (english title The Assistant), directed by Anna and Wilhelm Sasnal; Orenda, directed by Pirjo Honkasalo
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