Directors Notes

Returning to the narrative roots of her well received debut feature Thirst, Svetla Tsotsorkova’s Sister (Sestra) is a self proclaimed “confession of love to those who live a seemingly unnoticeable life”. The story of compulsive tall tale teller Rayna, Sister follows the defiant teen as one of her fanciful stories threatens to tear her family apart. In our interview, Tsotsorkova reveals how her time at film school built the foundations of her filmic voice and the power of lies on and off the screen.

A small town in present-day Bulgaria. A mother and her two daughters are struggling to survive. The dreamy and distracted younger daughter often invents stories in order to make life more interesting. Unwittingly, she eventually gets caught in the trap of her own lies and destroys her older sister’s well-ordered materialistic world. While struggling to get to the truth, the two sisters find out the truth about their mother.

Because of those two teachers I am what I am and who I am. They formed my personal taste in art in general.

A film which left this year’s Tribeca on a wave of plaudits – not least because this debut feature made history when 19 year old filmmaker Phillip Youmans became the youngest and first African-American director to be awarded Best Narrative Feature at the festival – Burning Cane tells the story of an ageing mother struggling between her religious convictions and the love of her alcoholic son. Arriving on Netflix today, we spoke to Youmans about the necessary ‘mind-split’ when taking on multiple production roles on an independent feature and why his natural affinity for handheld camera work was a welcome boon for the time and resource strapped production.

Burning Cane tells the story of a deeply religious woman’s struggle to reconcile her convictions of faith with the love she has for her alcoholic son and a troubled preacher. Set in rural Louisiana, the film explores the relationships within a southern black protestant community, examining the roots of toxic masculinity, how manhood is defined and the dichotomous role of religion within the African-American community.

It can be difficult when you’re focussing on the intention of a shot but also the technical aspects of the shot and being mindful of performance.

You can catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

We kick off our 2019 season of podcasts with an interview recorded at the London Film Festival with Director Hari Sama, who talks to us about heading back to a Mexico City of 1986 and the character defining post-punk days of sexual liberty, outsider art and drugs which helped shape him, in his vibrant semi-autobiographical feature This Is Not Berlin (Esto no es Berlín).

1986. Mexico City. Seventeen-year-old Carlos doesn’t fit in anywhere: not in his family nor with the friends he has chosen in school. But everything changes when he is invited to a mythical nightclub where he discovers the underground nightlife scene: post-punk, sexual liberty, and drugs that challenges the relationship with his best friend Gera and lets him find his passion for art.

Vulnerability really can be an empowering thing if you use it right and that’s what the film’s about.

You can follow Hari Sama’s work on his website, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can also catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

An assured debut feature which despite its frank depiction of sexual violence never slips into the male gaze and in fact, purposely turns the tables on the long problematic trope of the femme fatale, Holiday from Swedish Writer/Director Isabella Eklöf, uses the life of glitzy excesses experienced on the Turkish Rivera by a newly minted gangster girlfriend as an indictment of ultra-liberal capitalism – where beneath the veneer of wealth and beauty lies the dark reality of a world in which violence rules and money talks. DN spoke to Isabella at the London Film Festival about our problematic attraction to power, the importance of trust when staging a rape scene and why she took the long way round to feature directing.

Young and beautiful Sascha discovers her dream life of luxury, recklessness and fun comes at a price when she is welcomed into the “family” of her drug lord boyfriend at his holiday villa in the port city of Bodrum on the Turkish Riveria. Physical and psychological violence are a way of life for this gangster family, but when the velvet veneer is stripped raw to the bone, Sascha’s eye drifts towards the “normal” life she is leaving behind – is it possible she could still be accepted by polite society?

I suffered from being a woman and also difficult, I feel like you can choose one or the other.

Subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast to hear our LFF filmmaker interviews. You can also catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

Our penultimate interview from this year’s London Film Festival, DN speaks to veteran French Director Philippe Faucon about his story of economic separation and loneliness, Amin. Shot in Senegal and France, and featuring a predominately non-professional cast, Philippe discusses why working with non-actors is an integral part of his process and the power of cinema to enable audiences to connect with lives outside of their day to day experiences.

Amin came from Senegal nine years ago to work in France, leaving behind his wife Aïsha and their three children. His work is his life, his friends the men who live with him in the social home. Aïsha sees her husband only once or twice a year, for a week or two, sometimes a month. She accepts this situation as a necessity: the money that Amin sends to Senegal provides for several people. One day, Amin meets Gabrielle and a relationship starts between them. At first, Amin is reserved. There is the language barrier, his modesty. So far, separated from his wife, he has led a life devoted to duty and knew he had to remain vigilant.

Cinema can express things in a way no other art form can.

Subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast to hear our LFF filmmaker interviews. You can also catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

During our time at the London Film Festival DN took the opportunity to speak to Director Sara Colangelo about her adaptation of Nadav Lapid’s critically acclaimed 2014 feature The Kindergarten Teacher, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal in what has been heralded by many as a career-best performance. In the following interview, Sara discusses the advantages of a Netflix release, how she deployed thriller stylistic traits to convey the inner psychology of her troubled lead and why directing is less being an onset dictator and more about facilitating conditions which enable cast and crew to perform at their peak.

When a Staten Island kindergarten teacher discovers what may be a gifted five-year-old student in her class, she becomes fascinated with the child – spiralling downward on a dangerous and desperate path in order to nurture his talent.

I don’t think I would have taken on an adaptation had I felt that I couldn’t give something unique to it.

Subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast to hear our LFF filmmaker interviews. You can catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

DN heads back to the London Film Festival for an interview we recorded with Director Christina Choe whose feature debut, the psychodrama Nancy, picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance earlier this year. In our interview we speak to Christina about the difficulties of securing financing for films led by complex female protagonists, gathering a more than enviable cast of well respected actors her first time out and how her documentary films inform her fiction work.

Nancy is a provocative psychological thriller about love, intimacy, and trust – and what happens when lies become truth. Craving connection with others, Nancy creates elaborate identities and hoaxes under pseudonyms on the internet. When she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, fact and fiction begin to blur in Nancy’s mind, and she becomes increasingly convinced these strangers are her real parents. As their bond deepens, reasonable doubts give way to willful belief – and the power of emotion threatens to overcome all rationality.

Nancy is available on DVD & digital download now.

The character was messy and morally ambiguous and challenging.

Subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast to hear our LFF filmmaker interviews. You can also catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

A rightfully grueling and all-encompassing viewing experience, Erik Poppe’s Utøya: July 22 depicts in real time the violent tragedy of the 2011 Utøya summer camp massacre in Norway, which saw a heavily armed right-wing extremist take the lives of 69 youths over the course of a relentless 72 minutes. We spoke to Erik at the London Film Festival about why it was important to tell this story from the perspective of the victims and survivors, and how his desire to represent the weight of time for those trapped on the island as a tangible element of the film led him to capture the events of that day in a single unbroken take.

A teenage girl struggles to survive and to find her younger sister during the July 2011 terrorist mass murder at a political summer camp on the Norwegian island of Utøya.

I wanted it to be as truthful as possible.

Subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast to hear our LFF filmmaker interviews. You can also catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

Today on the podcast we bring you audio from the London Film Festival’s Female Filmmaker Panel chaired by The Pool founder Sam Baker and comprising filmmakers Arantxa Echevarria (Carmen and Lola), Sara Blecher (Mayfair), Dyana Winkler (United Skates), Soudade Kadaan (The Day I Lost My Shadow) and Jessica Hynes (The Fight). This inspiring panel spoke candidly about their experiences as women filmmakers from both narrative and documentary disciplines. As well as discussing the various impediments they’ve had to surmount due to their gender to get their films made, the panel also identifies strategies which everyone in the film industry can employ to help level the playing field for all.

Men get production grants but women get post-production grants because they’ll only give you the money once they see you are capable of doing it!

Thanks to the London Film Festival for granting us permission to share this audio.

Subscribe to the Directors Notes podcast to hear our LFF filmmaker interviews. You can also catch up on all our coverage from the London Film Festival here.

10 years in the making and spanning three decades in the life and career of underground DJ, music producer and record label owner James Lavelle, feature documentary The Man from Mo’Wax provides a compelling look at the foundation and implosion of one of the 90s most influential record labels and the driven man behind it who made careers, hits and a fair amount of enemies along the way. I sat down with first time feature director Matthew Jones to discuss the many hurdles he surmounted to bring James Lavelle’s warts and all story to screen.

The Man from Mo’Wax is the story of one teenager’s ambition to passionately pursue creating quality music at any cost and the friendships, fall outs, successes and failures that come with it. Spanning three decades with exclusive access to personal home footage, we get the rare opportunity to watch a boy become a man in the world of music. Witnessing him experience a whirlwind journey of personal and professional highs and lows. From the rapid rise of his record label Mo’Wax, to becoming a millionaire by the age of 21 and forming the super band UNKLE, with DJ Shadow. This is a profile of one man’s constant battle between art and commerce and how to survive as he continually strives for more.

How do you follow that level of success? How do you top that notoriety when you’ve had probably the biggest thing that could happen to anyone at such a young age?

The Man from Mo’Wax hits UK cinemas tomorrow and you can pre-order the film and soundtrack here.