Two women stand against a white wall, their tongues intertwined but their bodies stiff as they stand as far apart from each other as possible. It’s perhaps one of the least erotic kisses seen on screen. Twenty-three-year-old Marina (Arian Labed) has never kissed a man before; she lives in a modernist, failed workers’ utopia that still houses a factory but few inhabitants. Living alone with her father, a disillusioned architect who is terminally ill, she sees life through the prism of Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries, the human species as animal; her relationship with her only friend, the much more experienced Bella, is primitive, physical.

Athina Rachel Tsangari’s film is a beautifully observed, often playful, study of one woman’s alienation; Marina, awkward, naïve, contemptuous, slowly learns that she needs more than just her father and Bella. It’s a refreshing and unsentimental film about sex, relationships and death. Aesthetically, the film mixes elements of the nouvelle vague with touches of performance art, plus a terrific soundtrack (Suicide is Marina’s favourite band); there’s also a brilliant scene sung to Françoise Hardy’s ‘Tous les garçons et les filles’. There’s real beauty in the shots of the empty town and factory, and the clean, crisp modernist spaces inhabited by the actors.

Tsangari also produced last year’s Dogtooth (director Yorgos Lanthimos appears in Attenberg as The Engineer) and while Attenberg is a very different work, it’s exciting to see such original filmmaking emerge from their collaborations.

Sarah Cronin met the Austin-based director at the 2010 London Film Festival, where they discussed intimacy, making films in Greece, and science fiction.

SC: What was the inspiration for Marina’s character?

ART: That is always the most difficult question. What did you think?

It seemed very personal to me.

Did you identify with her at all?

I did, quite a lot. I think it was that feeling that you don’t necessarily belong anywhere.

Yes, that’s it. It’s the first movie that I’ve made in Greece. It took me years to figure out if I could make a movie in my own language and if I did, what it would be. It’s very difficult to see myself as a filmmaker in Greece because I was in America for so long, and it’s difficult to write in Greek. So it was about a girl who does not belong in her environment or in society. It’s something that came very naturally to me. And also, the relationship between father and daughter is primordial, especially in Third-World countries – or Second-World, somewhere between First and Third.

I was quite surprised by the discussion of cremation in the film. Is it true that it’s banned in Greece?

It’s not allowed yet because of the Church. I think they are passing a law to allow cremation, but that’s partly because of the lack of real estate. For someone like the father, who held ideals that were examined and failed, his last act of resistance is to be buried the way he wants to be. The film is structured as a series of negotiations between people, and I felt that it was a fair negotiation, the father asking Marina to help him die in a respectable way – and to ask her to become a bit more human, for her to belong in society.

I thought the love scenes with the engineer were incredibly well handled. They really captured all the fear and nervousness, and Marina’s own insecurities. The scenes didn’t seem gratuitous, but integral to her development.

I liked the idea that Marina would just keep talking while exploring this foreign thing. It was quite nice because there was so much camaraderie between us, we are all friends, and it wasn’t just a matter of directing actors. I think that intimacy shone through. We didn’t really rehearse those scenes very much because it would have been too awkward. It also astonishes me – I’ve been teaching for a while – that girls from the generation after me are so into sexuality and have no fear about their bodies – they’re not quite exhibitionists, but almost. Intimacy is something that’s lost on Facebook.

One of the aspects I liked was this great chemistry between Marina and Spiro and the rapid-fire way in which they speak. Was that all scripted?

In terms of the dialogue, very little was not in the script. It was strictly rehearsed in terms of the lines and also their body language. I have an obsession with screwball comedy, Howard Hawks and films like His Girl Friday. I really don’t like sentimentalism, or naturalist melodrama. In this plan that I had, that everyone had to negotiate something with someone, you also need a third person to work as a catalyst. That was very important to me. I’m slowly trying to develop my own language, this relationship between emotion and distance, and how you can negotiate the two without being far out or artistic and detached, and without being all like… chick film. I don’t like it when people say a movie is a great women’s film. Especially in Greece, it’s amazing: if you’re a woman, you don’t make cinema, you make women’s films. There is this idea that women largely make sentimental movies. It’s not that I totally resist that – I like films across the spectrum that are about women, even Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Do you think people will be shocked by the opening scene, as well as Marina’s relationship with her friend Bella? Did you want people to be disturbed by it?

No, I don’t – it’s just a kiss. I think mostly men are shocked by the opening scene. I think it’s even more controversial because it’s not a lesbian scene – it’s not about two women being together, loving each other, or discovering that they’re gay. It’s about one girl teaching another how to do something fundamental. It’s like the relationship between the father and daughter, who are trying to be on the same page and be kind of equal, which is very rare in Greece. She has a very close relationship with her dad, but a very antagonistic relationship with Bella.

You’ve started your own production company in Greece and were involved with producing Dogtooth. Are you trying to inject some life into the Greek film scene?

This is already happening. I’m a part of something that’s been going on for a couple of years. The first film that I produced in Greece was Yorgos’s first feature Kinetta. I love to produce my own stuff because it gives me a sense of freedom and independence, and I also take some kind of perverse pleasure in organising and making budgets. I love collaborating, and we do kind of have a collective. Greek cinema is working out right now, it’s very exciting. Some people say that Dogtooth and Attenberg have some things in common, although I don’t really think so, but there is a kinship between Yorgos and I, we’ve been discussing and working together for a long time.

Both Dogtooth and Attenberg have a very modernist feel to them, with the locations in particular.

I went back to the town where I grew up to shoot. It was a company town, built in the 60s. Lots of young engineers moved there in the 70s and moved their families into this kind of modernist utopia, which was half-French, half-Greek, because the company belonged to a huge French conglomerate. We left, and my sister and I kept going back in the summer, so we had an image of it as this place where sexual awakenings happened, like Marina’s – you know, boy-crazy summers at the disco.

I thought the town was very beautiful in a way. There’s the scene with her father when she says that she finds uniformity very soothing.

It is very beautiful, and I definitely find uniformity soothing. I remember the town as very vibrant, and very happy, full of sport and art. It was such a cultural environment. Going back there with the crew in the winter, it felt like a bit of a ghost town, which suited me very well. It fitted with Spiros’s acknowledgement of the failures of the 20th century. But for all of us it was very strange as a crew, shooting in this very empty, uniform town, with all these white blocks – it was like the lunar, extra-terrestrial version of the town, which I liked. It was devoid of anything traditional, of expected beauty.

There’s a very animalistic quality to Marina and Bella, and the scenes of them performing like animals are interwoven throughout the film. Was that an initial element of the film?

We watched lots of Attenborough clips because it was important to me to develop the characters like animals. Each of my actors had a favourite clip and a favourite animal. It was a memory that they had while they were acting. I’m an avid, passionate admirer of all things Attenborough, I’ve been watching him since I was a little girl. He’s near and detached at the same time, like melodrama, as I call it. It really suits me as an aesthetic. He’s so gracious and has so much tenderness towards nature and his subjects. It’s a big example to me, in how to approach characters in cinema.

Do you think you’ll make a film in Austin?

I would like to. My writing partner, Matt Johnson, who is also my editor, and I have just finished writing two science fiction scripts. It’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

What attracts you to science fiction?

I really like J.G. Ballard. I like stuff that’s like a projected present, or the future of the past, and it has elements of Western, like going to this frontier and discovering yourself. I also really want to make a science fiction movie in Europe. I was recently in Reykjavik – it felt like a combination of a Greek island, Iceland and the Isle of Man. There were all these colours, all this grass, and then this rocky landscape. I loved Duncan Jones’s Moon. I don’t know why it’s so difficult to make genre movies in Europe – it’s like it has to be either art-house or social realism.

Interview by Sarah Cronin

Having started making short films with the collective Kourtrajmé when he was only a teenager, French director Romain Gavras is best known for his controversial videos for electro band Justice and M.I.A.’s ‘Born Free’. The latter describes a society that violently hounds red heads, and Gavras’s first feature film revolves around a similar idea, focusing on two men with red hair who feel persecuted: one, Rémy, a mixed up teenager, the other, Patrick, a depressed and mischievous psychiatrist played by Vincent Cassel.

Romain Gavras talked to Virginie Sélavy at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June 2011 about being seen as a provocateur, finding round cars depressing and the freedom of road movies.

VS: Why did you return to the idea of the ‘Born Free’ video for your first feature film?

I actually shot the M.I.A. video after making the film, although the video was released first. The idea was that the video was set 30 years after the film, as if they’d succeeded in creating an army of red heads. And I was frustrated that I couldn’t have lots of red heads in my film, so I put tons in the video!

The video was very controversial. Were you surprised?

Yes and no. I was surprised it was that controversial. M.I.A. is a big artist in the United States and ‘Born Free’ was her comeback title. She said, ‘go ahead, ruin my career’. She was the one who wanted something strong.

Why red heads?

When we started writing the script they were not red heads. My co-writer [Karim Boukercha] and I started thinking we could maybe make them albinos to make them more striking, but that was too complicated. I liked the idea of red heads because they’re a visible minority, but there is no religious or cultural community. Later we decided that they wouldn’t really be red heads to avoid it being too farcical. I liked the fact that they think they belong to a community that doesn’t exist, that it’s really something that is in their minds.

The film alludes to divisions between various social and ethnic groups, when Patrick insults Jews, Arabs and peasants, in particular. It seems to echo what is happening in France. Is that fair to say?

Yes, because when I was growing up everyone mixed together, but now there is a sort of withdrawal into communities, and when you withdraw into your community you are in a de facto situation of confrontation with other communities. And that can lead to something completely absurd and dangerous. That said, the film is not a statement, just elements that we evoke and touch on. It’s also about the confusion of the characters. Their way of thinking is confused, their fight is confused, and that’s because we live in a period of confusion.

There are some explicit commentaries on France, for instance when Vincent Cassel describes a French car: ‘It’s just like the country, round, banal, boring.’

It’s the character speaking, I don’t control my characters. They say what they want!

You don’t agree?

Yes, I agree with the line on cars. I hate round cars, they’re rubbish, ugly – they’re just like Geox shoes, comfort over style. I can’t stand it. I don’t even drive, so in fact I don’t really care, but visually, when I set my camera down and there’s a Twingo in the field, it just depresses me.

The film centres on the relationship between Patrick and Rémy, but there is something absurd in the fact that they get together because they have red hair and feel that the rest of the world is against them.

Yes, the idea was to have a story that was a bit silly but treated very seriously, like a Greek drama. It’s about two blokes who are completely lost and who go on this impossible quest. It’s a relationship that goes nowhere, a quest that goes nowhere, a film that goes nowhere.

How important is the sexual element in their relationship?

It’s an identity quest, especially for Rémy. He wonders who he is, whether he’s a victim or an aggressor, and it’s also about sexuality. And as the character of Vincent Cassel can see that Rémy is confused, he teases and pushes him to annoy him, and to make him doubt himself until the moment when Rémy confronts what he is.

Do you see Patrick as a bit of an agent provocateur?

Yes, but it’s not always his fault. He’s not a Machiavelli; he provokes situations because he’s bored and disgusted with everything, and in the end he’s disgusted with himself after he goes too far in the Jacuzzi scene. He manipulates people, but not for a specific purpose – more to make things happen and to feel alive.

They are rebels against a society that they perceive as repressive, but there is also a pathetic side to them. Would you agree?

Yes, absolutely. Rémy is a rebel in the way many young people are, i.e. he has all the reasons in the world to rebel, but he doesn’t know what to direct his violence against.

The scene in which he shaves his hair off is very powerful. What was the idea behind it?

It’s a sort of visual suicide, a bit like when Britney Spears shaved her head. And he does it for real.

Was it inspired by Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver?

Not specifically, but of course I am influenced by a lot of films, Buñuel, Blier, Pialat.

The film starts with a fairly realistic depiction of a northern town, and then surreal and absurd elements are introduced into the story. Was the mixing of these different styles important to you?

Yes. As they’re on an impossible quest, the idea was to start almost like a Bruno Dumont film in the north and have something really anchored in realism, and little by little we enter their minds and their delusions, we plunge into their madness with them. That’s why everything around them becomes a little strange.

The desolate, post-industrial landscapes of the north of France fit the story perfectly. Is that why you chose to set the film there?

I’d shot in Lens and I have friends in Lille, so I know the north quite well. I really like this region because you could be in England, or Belgium, or Germany. The area has a universal aspect. And there are amazing landscapes that reflect the state of mind of the two characters, two blokes who get worked up in a completely empty place, a quasi-post-apocalyptic décor.

The film becomes a sort of road movie in the second part. Is that a genre you’re interested in?

Yes, I’m interested in the freedom it gives you. I didn’t want to make a first film with a tight plot where you discover the identity of the killer at the end, with guns and money in suitcases. I wanted to have something completely free, where things can happen that you don’t need to set up and with the freedom of tone and movement that road movies allow.

Many reviews of Our Day Will Come have insisted on the provocative aspect of the film and seem to take what Patrick says as your own words. Were you trying to provoke with your film?

No. My videos are a lot more provocative because that’s their aim. But the film is different, much gentler. There is a character who is a provocateur in the film, but that doesn’t make me one. It’s really in France that the debate has been about whether the film is gratuitous provocation. I think it’s because of the videos I made, so people have associated me with the character of Patrick. OK, I don’t like round cars, but I don’t agree with everything he says! I see the film as quite gentle and funny. It’s been presented as a drama but it’s more of a black comedy.

Everything you do seems to attract a degree of controversy. That was also the case with A Cross the Universe, the film you made about Justice’s American tour. How do you feel about that?

Controversy is a question of point of view. That was entertainment, there’s nothing controversial about it. I find things shocking that don’t shock people. Rob Marshall’s films, such as Nine, for instance, make me want to puke, they make me mad. Bad taste shocks me. To take 8 ½ and turn it into a big vulgar turd, that shocks and revolts me.

Vincent Cassel produced Our Day Will Come, as well as acting in it. How did he get involved?

I’ve known him for a long time. He helped us when we started, and played in our short films.

In Kourtrajmé ?

Yes. We created Kourtrajmé with Kim [Chapiron], and Vincent was a bit like a godfather to us. He said that if I wanted to make a feature film, he’d produce it. He said, ‘if you want to make the film that you want, there won’t be much money. If you’re happy to compromise, there’ll be more’. We chose the former and I made the film I wanted to make.

Interview by Virginie Sélavy

Gregg Araki made his name in the early 90s with confrontational, riotous films obsessed with teenage sex, drugs, dysfunction and violence. Since then, his work has taken different directions and he has explored various genres and moods, most recently following his acclaimed Mysterious Skin (2004), a sensitive, poetic account of sexual abuse, with the stoner comedy Smiley Face (2007). His latest, Kaboom, brings together the many strands of his work, working them into an outlandish bundle of fun.

Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a young gay college student about to turn 19, who fantasises about his idiotic but handsome surfer roommate Thor (Chris Zylka) and has bizarre dreams that involve men in animal masks chasing and killing a red-haired girl. His best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) is a lesbian who falls in love with a girl who turns out to be a witch. Although Smith and Stella have many sexual encounters with gorgeous-looking young people, the world around them becomes weirder and weirder as Stella’s ex-girlfriend copes supernaturally badly with rejection and Smith’s place in the dark conspiracy of a secret society is gradually revealed.

Virginie Sélavy talks to Gregg Araki about teenage apocalypse, American attitudes to sexuality and David Lynch’s influence.

Virginie Sélavy: Do you see Kaboom as a return to the ‘irresponsibility’ of your early films, in particular The Living End?

Gregg Araki: I don’t know if it’s really the ‘irresponsibility’ of The Living End. I really wanted to make a film that was completely outside of the box and came from a very creatively free space of not being worried about things like, is this too weird or is this too sexy, or mixing too many genres? It was just about letting my imagination run wild and not being constrained by genres, or people’s expectations, or what’s popular in the market place right now. It was really about making an old-fashioned film that could be free of all that.

But it doesn’t seem like you’ve ever tried to make a film to please a certain audience, or according to the market rules.

That is true, I’ve never made an overly commercial movie. I’m very proud of all my movies but some of my movies have been more genre-based, more within a definable box. Kaboom is a mash-up of so many different genres, so many different tones, it has a character with supernatural powers. There’s a sort of joie de vivre in this movie and creative freedom, which for me was very liberating and exciting.

The film feels like a celebration of unbridled youthful sexuality unencumbered by any kind of taboo or prejudice. Was that a conscious thing?

Partly. It is part of my sensibility to view sex and sexuality as a positive aspect of the human experience and all the adventures and sexual escapades that the characters in Kaboom have are an important part of their growing up and it’s really important that they not be judged for them. This sort of freedom in your sexuality, that it’s not bogged down by guilt, judgement, punishment, that there is no negative baggage attached to it, is very unique, certainly in American cinema. American cinema tends to be so puritanical and hypocritical while at the same time being kind of titillating… I feel that this attitude about sexuality is not really represented in American films.

Kaboom has some elements from your early films, the teenage apocalypse and the sexuality for instance, but it revisits them from a comic, fun angle. Why the change of tone?

I’m a different person, I’m older and hopefully a bit wiser. The tone of Kaboom, this sort of joyfulness and playfulness, is much closer to Smiley Face, my last film, because my head is much closer to Smiley Face than it is to The Doom Generation. Kaboom shares with The Doom Generation this wild sexuality and gorgeous 18-year-olds but the sensibility is very different. It’s really a reflection of my own evolution. At a certain age I felt that I’d found my place in the world. When I made my first films I was much more angst-ridden and unmoored, I was more like those characters, insecure in my place in the world, and as I’ve got older there’s been a certain level of figuring out who you are, and this is reflected in my films.

Do you feel it also has something to do with changes in social attitudes to sexuality and to AIDS?

I think that’s had an influence on me and on my films, particularly if you watch one of my early films, The Living End, which is so much about that specific time, late 1980s and early 90s, the AIDS epidemic and the crisis of that time, and things have changed since then.

In a previous interview you’ve said that you saw Mysterious Skin and Smiley Face as fitting together as ‘yin and yang’, one being your first straight, serious drama, the other your first comedy. How does Kaboom fit in relation to that?

I couldn’t have made Kaboom without making those two films. When we were in Deauville, Thomas [Dekker] pointed out to me, ‘in a way Kaboom is almost like your greatest hits, like the best bits of all your movies put together’. And I didn’t realise at the time but it really made sense to me when he said that because there’s a lot of Smiley Face in Kaboom and a lot of Mysterious Skin too. Kaboom is definitely part of the continuum of all my movies.

And like in Mysterious Skin you also have that supernatural and conspiratorial aspect to the plot, which is connected to sexual identity, although of course in Mysterious Skin it was used to explore much more serious subject matter.

I’ve always been interested in cults and conspiracies. For Kaboom I was fascinated by Scientology and modern cults, that sort of mentality and how that works. It was a lot of fun to explore the idea of Smith living in this world of paranoid conspiracies because frequently when you’re a young person you do feel that the whole world is out to get you. It was cool with this movie to make that feeling, and the apocalyptic feelings of doom that you have when you’re younger, real and literal, take that metaphor, expand it and play with it.

I thought there was a Lynchian element to the weird dream and fantasy sequences. Was he an influence on the film?

David Lynch has always been a huge influence on my movies from the very start, and this movie in particular is my most overtly influenced by David Lynch. I’ve always wanted to make a Twin Peaks-y mystery and I’ve always thought of the red-haired girl in Kaboom as the Laura Palmer of the story, the central person in that other characters wonder what’s going on with her.

The music is very important, as in all your films. How did you choose the tracks?

Kaboom has one of the most incredible soundtracks I’ve ever been lucky enough to assemble for a movie. It has bigger bands like Interpol, Placebo and the XX, all these incredible alternative bands, and a score by Ulrich Schnauss and Robin Guthrie from Cocteau Twins. The movie is like Mysterious Skin in the sense that when you listen to the score of Mysterious Skin, you see the whole movie. So much of the spirit, the mood and the tone of the movie is contained in the music. And it’s the same with Kaboom, you can listen to that music and the whole world of the movie is conjured up.

The final moments of the film are very provocative. Why did you decide to end in this way?

I love the ending of the movie. It’s really one of my favourite endings of all movies. When we had the world premiere at Cannes and the movie ended, the whole audience started to cheer. To me it’s the only ending possible for a movie like Kaboom. It has that energy and it takes place in that stylised universe. It’s the ultimate ending to the ultimate movie.

Interview by Virginie Sélavy

With Duncan Jones’s new film Source Code firmly ensconced in UK cinemas, Alex Fitch caught up with the director to talk about some of the film’s themes and its links with computer games and modernist sculpture.

Alex Fitch: There are a lot of parallels between Moon and Source Code – the lead character who’s in a situation not of his making, which is connected with technology and so on. Do you think that’s why the writer and producers approached you? And did you take on the project because they are themes that interest you?

Duncan Jones: The first part is absolutely right, it was actually Jake [Gyllenhaal] who approached me; I was in Los Angeles doing international press for Moon at the time and was trying to meet up with people I wanted to work with. Jake had seen Moon and very much enjoyed it, so we met up to try and find something to work on together, and he suggested I read the script for Source Code, which he had been sent. I got very excited about it, not because of any similarities – I didn’t even notice the similarities – but because of what I thought were the differences and how it was an opportunity to do things I hadn’t done in Moon. But I think Jake gave it to me because he saw similarities between Moon and this project and thought there were certain things I’d done in Moon that would transfer well to Source Code.

[SPOILER]

The narrators of both films have been constructed in a way by technology – they’re not quite human – and I wonder to what extent we should treat Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Colter, as an unreliable narrator. We can take a lot of the film at face value, as much as he’s experiencing it, but there’s this one scene where he’s talking to someone and suddenly they get pixellated, so you’re unsure whether it really is a simulation or a kind of time travel. How much did it interest you to play with those ideas? You could almost take the ending of the film as the fantasy of a dying man that perhaps doesn’t actually happen…

A la Brazil or something? Well, I believe there is a logic to the way I told the story, which can be interpreted in one specific way, which would all be coherent. I wasn’t going to throw stuff in there just to put you off the scent! It all does work towards a particular goal; I can tell you what parts of it are: the pixellation in particular, you’re right, is a key moment. How does the pixellation work with parallel realities? The idea is: in all other versions of the source code, when he gets sucked back into the original reality – which means there is still some kind of link with this mysterious source code at that point – and he hears about the news of his own death, it basically short-circuits him so much, that tenuous link yanks him back to the original reality. In the very last version of the source code where he’s sent off to what is supposed to be a heroic death, that tenuous link is severed and he actually exists in that parallel reality. That’s my explanation…

I’m surprised that you’re happy to give a definitive version as other directors would say, ‘well, I don’t want to explain it to you’!

That’s because they don’t know what the answer is! Also, obviously in that final passage, that final source code where Colter has gone off to that parallel reality and has stopped the train from going off, we now exist in a new reality where because the train was never blown up, he was never sent on the mission in the first place, so he must still exist in the facility where [his military handler] Goodwin is. That is the same Goodwin in this parallel reality who receives the email he sends from the train. I love the paradox of that ending, which was why I was so keen that was part of the film.

[END OF SPOILER]

I suppose – and I’m not suggesting you want to do ‘Source Code 2’ – you could end up with a scenario where several versions of Colter from different parallels end up in the same place, because he’s succeeded on various missions!

Absolutely!

Obviously if terrorists were looking for a target to blow up, they would choose a city to cause maximum damage, but I’m interested in the idea of the film’s theme of a character processing information around him, and since he’s going from a less complex system – the suburbs – to a more complex system – the city – I was wondering if those were themes you’d considered, that he was disrupting increasingly complex environments…

That’s interesting, I can’t say I have. You see, I’m admitting I didn’t have a pre-existing plan there! No, that’s very interesting, that’s a fascinating interpretation. It’s something that was there in the script to begin with and structurally I thought the script was very sound, so it made sense to run with it.

That’s another parallel with Moon, that both characters go from a place that’s quite sparsely populated and very much contained to a very open environment where their presence may become an increasingly disruptive presence, because they’re more than human.

That’s true, there are a number of parallels regarding identity and the nature of a working person trying to impose some kind of rights for themselves against a malicious authority and through the use of technology. It does make you realise just how blinkered you can be at times: when I was reading the script I wasn’t seeing those parallels! I got very enthusiastic about certain aspects of it and they must have been coming through on a subconscious level.

[SPOILER]

Colter is obviously a very likeable and engaging character, we’re with him on his journey and we’re happy that he succeeded, but at the same time I feel the film doesn’t spare a thought for the poor guy whose body he’s stolen. It’s all very well that he was going to die in every other reality, but when Jake survives it’s because he’s stolen someone else’s life.

It’s true and it’s part of the less-than-rosy happy ending people talk about, which the film doesn’t actually have, but at the same time there was really no way of getting around Sean Fentress dying; he was either going to die when the train blew up or everyone else was going to be saved and he was going to die because Colter was going to have to use his body. So it was the one sacrifice that was going to be unavoidable…

[END OF SPOILER]

Was the sculpture that the two leads confront at the end in the script? Is it set in Chicago or was that a visual element you brought to it?

The script was originally set in New York, but because of sensitivities to the terrorism angle, they felt it was important to move it away from there. We discussed a number of cities but for a list of reasons, we decided that Chicago was a great city to do it in – it’s a big multi-cultural city in the Midwest, something that both the East and the West can relate to. Visually, it’s a very beautiful city as well. We knew we were going to be shooting in Montreal so we needed to find a place we could match. Montreal can be matched with a lot of places, but Chicago is particularly easy and I was really pushing for this because I wanted to use this Anish Kapoor sculpture. I knew it could be a really useful visual metaphor, a useful tool in the flashbacks he’s having, and make a good payoff at the end of the film as well. It looks alien, it doesn’t even look real! I love that aspect of it…

And obviously, aesthetically, it echoes some of the themes of the movie.

Absolutely, it’s about reflections.

And narrowing your vision down to one specific point…

…and distort it. Distorted reflections, at that.

The film is an Anglo/French/Canadian/American co-production. It’s all very well considering the success of The King’s Speech, but post-Film Council, a lot of people are probably wondering, ‘what is the future of the British film industry?’ Based on your experience, I imagine it’ll be a lot of co-productions?

I think so. Before Source Code happened, we were talking about looking into Anglo-German co-productions. There’s a lot of opportunity there: the Germans have got a lot of money they’re investing in co-productions, and Canada was another good one. I think and hope The King’s Speech is a bit of a game changer. But the Film Council didn’t invest any money in Moon, so I have no idea how they work!

Another influence on the film, whether directly or indirectly, seems to be computer games. You have this idea of a character trying to complete a level; they learn the rules as they go along and as they persevere, they master it. Was it in the script, or are you actually a gamer?

I’m a massive gamer! I have been all my life. I started off on the Atari, got a Commodore 64 and the first floppy drives, then it was the Amiga 500s. I’m a hardcore gamer and always have been, and not just a hardcore gamer, a PC gamer – I’m not one of these console lightweights! (laughs)

So like Colter, you’ve also had to suffer the frustration of levels not quite loading properly.

Oh absolutely! I remember the old days of having to type in: ‘CONFIG.SYS’ and ‘AUTOEXEC.BAT’ to get things to run on a 486! That was a bit geeky, wasn’t it? Sorry about that!

Interview by Alex Fitch

After a 17-year break from filmmaking, the legendary Czech director Jerzy Skolimowski returned in 2008 with the intimate psychological thriller Four Nights with Anna. He has followed this up with Essential Killing, which opened the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival on March 24 and impressed audiences at the London Film Festival in October 2010. Starring Vincent Gallo as an unnamed Arabic-looking fighter, Essential Killing is an epic survival story set against a politically charged context.

Virginie Sélavy talked to Jerzy Skolimowski during last year’s London Film Festival and asked him about working with Vincent Gallo, making political films and his interest in outsiders.

VS: Essential Killing is more ambitious than Four Nights with Anna. What made you want to make such a film after Anna?

JS: The shortest answer is that it’s because I’m lazy, which is only half a joke. I managed to make Four Nights with Anna all around my house. I live in a part of Poland called Masuria, which is a district of lakes and forest. It was very convenient and a great comfort to sleep in my bed, and to not be driven for hours to the locations and stay in terrible hotels. I was looking for the possibility of repeating the same formula. I was aware that in my neighbourhood, about 15 miles from my forest, was the secret military airport called Szymany, where the rumour (which is by now nearly 100% confirmed) said that they let the CIA planes land, bringing Middle Eastern prisoners, who were then taken to secret sites and most likely tortured. But I wasn’t paying any attention to that because it’s a highly political subject and I stay away from politics. I burned my fingers with Hands Up, this anti-Stalinist film I made many years ago [in 1967], which practically ruined my life. I was expelled from Poland, but anyway, it’s a long story!

One winter night, I was driving my car – it’s a very good car, a four-wheel drive – I swerved off the road and I stopped at the last moment before rolling over down the slope, which would have had tragic consequences. At that moment, I realised that I was just next to the airport. On that very road, at that very same place, those military convoys must have been passing, so I thought that if it could happen to me it could happen to them. At that moment I imagined a military van going down the slope, a prisoner is thrown out and escapes, and I saw the image of the man barefoot with shackles on his feet and hands in the light of the road, in -30&#176C, running away in the forest. And I thought, yes, this is my film. Forget the politics, I can squeeze it into the introduction in the most enigmatic way possible, and then I have my film of the man who is running away and turning into a wild animal, who has to kill in order to survive. And I thought, this is a film I can shoot from my house. But the project got bigger and bigger, and we had to get a Norwegian partner to have guaranteed snow. Winter in Poland is not always snowy.

So the snow scenes were all shot in Norway?

No, it was a snowy winter in Poland after all, so a good part of it was shot there, a good part was shot in Norway, and the Middle East scenes were shot in Israel.

There are no indications as to where exactly the story is set. Why did you leave the locations undefined?

Because in my opinion it’s a very universal story, and it doesn’t matter where it takes place. What matters are the circumstances in which this man is running away. And because he doesn’t know where he is, I don’t think the audience should know. Let them feel what he feels – where the hell is this, where am I? You barely hear the language that people speak. It is Polish, but for the international audience it could sound Russian, or Ukrainian, or Lithuanian.

Do you feel it’s a political film?

Of course, to a certain extent it is. But we don’t even know where we are at the beginning either – it could be Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, next to the border. We only see that there is the American army on one side and some guy in a turban, who does not even look Arabic. So we don’t know if he’s Taliban, al-Qaeda, if he’s just an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time, and all this doesn’t matter. This is not a documentary. I’m not saying, look at how Americans treat people. No, it’s a fiction, it’s a contemporary macabre tale of our world.

The film seems to be about what it’s like to be a human being in extreme conditions, and of course, it’s interesting that you chose someone who looks like an ‘enemy’ of the West.

What is more interesting is that we don’t know if the character played by Vincent Gallo is even an Arab. He could be an American or a European who has converted to Islam, went to an Arab country 10 or 20 years ago, started working there, got a Muslim wife and a child. But he doesn’t need to be involved in politics at all. We know he’s involved in religion from the bits and pieces that go through his mind. But they were precisely chosen so they don’t indicate anything. I put a lot of effort into making them as wide and ambiguous as possible.

Does the title refer to Gallo’s character’s necessary killing in order to survive or could it mean ‘the essence of killing’?

It works both ways, and actually ‘The Essence of Killing’ was the alternative title, and at the last moment I chose Essential Killing.

How did Vincent Gallo get involved in the film?

That was a nice coincidence. Last year, I arrived in Cannes for the beginning of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, which opened with Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro. Before I went to see the film I met my friend Jeremy Thomas, with whom I made The Shout years ago [1978]. I’d sent him the script for Essential Killing just four days before for advice. Jeremy said, ‘Listen, it’s a wonderful script and if you cast it right, if you get so-called names, you will have a great chance to get out of the art-house ghetto’. Those were the words he said. So I went to see Tetro in the evening, I liked the film, I liked Gallo’s performance in it, and when the film ended I saw Gallo coming towards me. We’ve known each other socially for years, we even acted together in a movie, LA without Map, by Mika Kaurismä;ki. As he was approaching I noticed a certain animalistic quality in how he was walking, and I was thinking that quality would be good for the character in my film. So I stopped him and I said, ‘Vincent, I have a script that I’d like you to read’. Two hours later, he called me. He said, ‘This is a phenomenal script, I must do it. I love to run barefoot in the snow, I’m from Buffalo, it’s always so cold’. So I thought, right, maybe he’s exaggerating a little bit, but I said, ‘It’s May now, we’ll start shooting in the winter. If you’re serious, then start growing a beard’. And he did. And six months later we did it, and he had long hair and a long beard.

He gives a fantastic performance in the film.

Phenomenal. I cannot imagine anybody else being better in that role. It’s really an ‘Academy Award’ performance.

What struck me also about the film are the landscapes, first the deserts, then the snow. There’s a real interest in nature. Is that a new thing for you?

Well, all my life I’ve lived in the forest. It’s a really wild forest. Almost every day I see wild animals, deer or boars. I enjoy that. All my life, except maybe the 25 years I spent in California, I’ve spent in the open space. I like living in a wild forest. I withdraw from civilisation and very much into nature.

What interested you in the scenery?

The relationship between man and the landscape. And the story calls for it. It’s very natural, he runs, and runs, and he passes picturesque locations. And the process of him turning into an animal and being connected to the animals at the same time. That was really fascinating.

There’s very little dialogue, and the film seems concerned with non-verbal communication, which culminates in the scene with Emmanuelle Seigner’s mute character towards the end.

That was one of the most important themes in the film. If there is communication it’s not through language, it’s something else, the spirit of mercy or whatever you want to call it.

Another thing that struck me about the film was its intense physicality, and it’s something that recurs in your films. Is that a conscious thing?

It is conscious. It’s also connected with the fact that I avoid dialogue. There is too much talking in films. Cinema is moving pictures, it has to have movement, actual physical activity. Even if a film has good dialogue, I think, all right, it’s well written, nicely acted, but yadda yadda yadda… So I try and do something different.

Your first film, Identifications Marks: None, focused on a deserter, who in the end joins the army. Do you have a particular interest in soldiers and deserters? Do you feel there is a connection between that film and Essential Killing?

Obviously I’m interested in outsiders, and practically all the characters in my films are outsiders, which is a little bit of a self-portrait. I stay away from people, I don’t go to film openings, parties, etc., it’s a little bit like torture for me. Of course when it comes to my own films I do it for promotion because it’s part of the job, but I stay away from it as much as possible. And Vincent Gallo is an outsider too, an extreme one.

What has been the response to the film? Has anyone commented on the fact that we’re led to identify with someone who may be a Taliban or al-Qaeda fighter?

Some critics cleverly got the message that it doesn’t matter. Those who didn’t thought that maybe the film should point out more where we are and what it’s all about. They don’t get the universal meaning of the story, they want the facts, which I purposefully avoided.

In a previous interview with Electric Sheep you explained that in painting you felt you didn’t have to make any compromises and that you were making pure creative art. Did you feel you had total creative control on Essential Killing?

Oh yes. Same as with Four Nights with Anna. With those two films I was also my own producer, so it was much easier to control everything. I took a 17-year break from filmmaking because I was very unhappy with a couple of films that I’d made before and I promised to myself that if I returned to filmmaking I would never, ever make another average film. It had to be something special and unique, and I think I’ve kept my promise!

Interview by Virginie Sélavy