‘The Eternal Daughter’ by Joanna Hogg and Starring Tilda Swinton Plays Venice, Toronto and New York Film Festival 2022*

How did this emotional sketch become a movie? Tilda Swinton and Joanna Hogg, born on March 20, 1960 in London, England, UK and known for writing and directing The Souvenir (2019), The Souvenir: Part II (2021) and Unrelated (2007), all produced by Emma Norton of JWH Films, are favored by the charmed circle of rich white seemingly heterosexual men like Martin Scorsese (Sikelia Productions), David Fenkel and Daniel Katz (A24), and British vet producer Ed Guiney (Element Pictures). This is all conjuncture on my part, as it was when I wrote about the deal behind Triangle of Sadness, but the sketchiness of this and the formulaic quality of Triangle, coupled with the stellar names of those involved in the production lead me to believe there was more to the making of the movie deal than there is to the movie itself. In The Eternal Daughter, these men have chosen to celebrate womanhood as expressed by a particular female filmmaker as she attempts to create a story about herself and her mother plus one kindly black bereaved man played by Joseph Mydell (there is a hint of something about slavery here) and a cold modern young woman played by Carly-Sophia Davies whose heart also melts at the pathos of the celebate and lonely filmmaker, who actually is not pathetic but apparently just creatively alive. Watch the trailer here and then watch the movie and judge for yourself: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13874422/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Together these men must have brought the film to Kristin Irving of the BBC where it got made, somewhat along the same lines as highly touted The Souvenir which landed BBC Films with funds from BFI Film Fund and was also produced by JWH Films, again in association with Scorsese’s incubator Sikelia. This time Protagonist Pictures was the international sales agent and A24 only distributed in North America. Its sequel, The Souvenir Part II stars real-life mother and daughter Tilda Swinton and Honor Swinton Byrne, a conceit which perhaps gave life to the idea of another mother-and-daughter movie in which both roles are played by Tilda Swinton and which was made by the same team plus Ed Guiney of Element Pictures. A24 has now taken on both international sales and US rights. All of these films must have made 2 cents at the box office. What’s up? What is Tilda Swinton herself up to these days? Her previous film Three Thousand Years of Yearning by stalwart filmmaker George Miler sold to more interternational distributors in 2021 and 2022 than the JWH films did, but it still must not have fared much better at the box office. (Read my blon on that here.) The short by Almodovar, The Human Voice, was a little gem, showing off Swinton’s accomplished acting skills as she enacted the remake of Cocteau’s The Human Voice under strict COVID protocols. But none of these reaches the new heights always expected of her…We’ll see what her next four films The End (pre-production) by Joshua Oppenheimer, Asteroid City (post-production) by Wes Anderson, The Killer (post-production) by David Fincher, and an Untitled Julio Torres Project (post-production) bring to the audiences who eagerly await whatever she does (count me among them). The Eternal Daughter has been described as a mystery drama and as a ghost story about “a middle-aged daughter and her elderly mother who confront long-buried secrets when they return to their former family home, a once-grand manor that has become a nearly vacant hotel brimming with mystery.” But there are no ghosts nor is there much of a mystery beyond why a mother and daughter have an eternal and universal tension between them, as most mothers and daughters do. Nor is the nearly vacant hotel ever revealed to be the ancestral home, nor is there much of a mystery about a banging shutter which keeps Tilda the daughter up at night. And whence cometh the acclaim of Joanna Hogg? Perhaps it was COVID. Dare I argue with the top film festivals and critics whom Rotten Tomatoes scored at 95%? Who are these critics? How many males among them? All Swinton has to do is attach her name to a project and it will be made — with male money. The film does truly touch emotions felt by every daughter trying to hard to please a mother who cannot express her own desires or her own heartfelt love for her daughter. But this situation makes the daughter seem pathetic except in her own creative mind as she grapples with the dilemna of The Eternal Duaghter. But what is the story here? That a writer’s imagination trumps reality? Are we so starved for emotional experiences that such a sketch brings us to tears? Am I horribly out of touch with the universe? Another film which touches this same raw nerve is Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. Where have I gone wrong? Compare this to Eo, a film with no ersatz emotion and created to produce an emotion the director Jerzy Skolomowski had not felt since he saw Au Hasard Balthazar in 1966. Read my blog and his quotations. I am longing for the days of Angelopoulos, of Terence Davies or even Peter Greenaway. Give me hard art, not oblique emotional sketches, playing like the little musical phrase that Proust’s Swann held so dear as a reminder of his lost love. Postscript: An interesting article by Carlos Aguilar appeared in the LA Times shortly after I published this. It explains the long friendship between Tilda Swinton and Joanna Hogg. At first I thought it negated my negative take on the deal, but on second reading, I decided that it only added another tier to the dealmaking process which is that Tilda swings her own weight and can bring in her friend to the circle of dealmaking whereas before, Hogg remained in the background of the art film world.

 

Belgium’s Oscar© 2023 Submission for Best International Feature: ‘Close’ by Lukas Dhont

Tipped for a top spot on the Oscar Nominated Best International Feature, ‘Close’, the second feature directed by the young Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont brings the innocence of youth into a confrontation with uneasy societal agreements about what is and what is not acceptable. Young boys are especially sensitive to their peers’ opinions and these two boys, friends forever, are suddenly put into a situation demanding a sense of oneself that they are still too young to have developed fully. When it premiered in Competition at Cannes, it received a 12-minute standing ovation, and shared the festival’s Grand Prix with Claire Denis’ ‘Stars At Noon’.

The intense friendship between two thirteen-year old boys suddenly gets disrupted. Close stars Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele as two thirteen year old boys, Léo and Rémi, whose tender friendship is tragically broken. Struggling to understand what has happened, Léo approaches Sophie, Rémi’s mother. The delicacy with which the two young actors are handled speaks highly of the director Lucas Dhont.

The fragile bud of sexual awakening is a suject explored as well in his previous film, his 2018 debut, about a young transgender dancer. Girl was also handled with such gentle honesty that the subject to reveals itself to our eyes without destroying its integrity. Girl went on to win the Cannes Camera d’Or in Un Certain Regard in 2018. It also won Cannes’ Fipresci Prize and Un Certain Regard’s Best Actor award for Victor Polster as well as the Queer Palm.

Dhont is quoted as saying, “There are definitely echoes of Girl in Close, recurring themes, especially the violence involved in conforming to a certain norm, not being able to be oneself, being subjected to a certain vision of masculinity, and not being able to assert our fragility…I also wanted to talk about brutality. How it can wipe out such fragile, tender things, both in the world but also inside of us; how we cut flowers, how colours disappear, inside of us.” (Cineuropa.org)

Tangential to this blog, but relevent to the 2023 Oscar contenders, this dancer, in Girl, a female, could easily have been the male ballet dancer we meet in the Norwegian Oscar contender War Sailor. I will write more about that other tipped for the top film, but here I want to point out that both ballet dancers are confronted with the ignorance of others and are handled by their respective directors in a fashion that gives us a feeling of completion and satisfaction.

The screenplays for both were cowritten with Angelo Tijssens. “The film says a lot, but in few words; it’s more about gestures, looks and silences.
I find it’s a really complicated thing, writing dialogue! We try just as hard to convey what the character wants to say as what the viewer needs to understand. As a teen, I was pretty good at mime! I copied others’ movements and behaviours. I get a lot of inspiration from dance and the work of choreographers and dancers, who manage to express their emotions through their bodies and their movements. I decided very quickly that this was the language I wanted to use to launch myself into film: body language. Before wanting to become a director, I wanted to be a dancer. I feel like I’m trying to make some of this dancing dream come true through my cinematic language. Expressing what I want to express, without words.” (Cineuropa.org)

The Match Factory previously handled Girl as well as the film Close. During Cannes this year of Close, The Match Factory sold over 100 territories to Close, including North America to A24; Australia/ NZ to Madman; Baltics-A-One; Benelux-Lumiere; Czech Republic and Slovakia-Artcam; Ex-Yugo-MCF; France-Diaphana, Germany and Austria-Pandora; Greece-Ama; Israel-Lev; Italy-Lucky Red and BIM; Netherlands-Cassestte for theatrical, Vedette for TV; Poland-New Horizons; Romania-Bad Unicorn; Scandinavia-Future; So. Korea-Challan; Spain-Vertigo; Switzerland-Filmcoopi; Taiwan-Filmware; Thailand-Sahamangkolfilm; Turkey, UK, Ireland, Latam, Turkey, India-MUBI.

Producers are Michiel Dhont and Dirk Impens for Menuet and co-producers are France’s Diaphana who is also the French distributor, the Netherlands’ Topkapi Films and Belgium’s Versus Productions.

 

Armenia’s ’s Oscar© 2023 Entry for Best International Feature: ‘Aurora’s Sunrise’ directed by Inna Sahakyan

Based on the true story of Aurora Mardiganian

‘Aurora’s Sunrise’ is a surprising film on many levels. It is an historical artifact on its own. A story within a story, both of which are highly relevent today, the film ought to make it to the Oscar shortlist if not all the way to the nomination, where competition is very strong this year.

Most remarkable are the closing words of the protagonist, Aurora Mardiganian who was in her 90s when the interview with her was recorded. She was 14 at the time of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Aurora passed away in 1994. The Genocide seems so long ago and yet is vividly alive as a festering wound today.

Aurora Mardiganian states with utter conviction that if the world had stood up to the Turks and acted to condemn and end the Armenian Genocide, then Hitler (who himself said, « who will ever remember the Armenians ? » would not have been so bold as to perpetuate the genocide against the Jews. Some might say, as they do about stories of the Holocaust, « enough already » but as we see the same story repeated around the world today, in Russian aggression against Ukraine, Chinese against Uighers, Hindus of India against Muslims, Israel against Palestine, Darfur : there cannot be enough reminding the world of atrocities which need to be addressed and taken responsibility for if anyone truly wants to redeem humankind’s humanity. Without admitting and facing the past misdeeds, we cannot progress and are doomed to repetition until we bring on our own end.

Aurora Mardiganian and the original poster

If we do not say no to Russia or to China or ; if we do not acknowledge our own nation’s indigenous genocide and massive kidnapping of Africans, we are endangering our own selves to future genocides and we will never get out of the mess we are finding ourselves in today which includes mass shootings and fentanyl poisoning which is killing our young adult population.

In 1915, as WWI raged, the Ottoman Empire singled out its entire Armenian population for extermination. Only 14 years old at the time, Aurora lost everything during the horror and was forced onto a death march towards the Syrian desert. She lost her entire family before being sold into sexual slavery, from which she escaped. Two years later, through luck and extraordinary courage, she reached New York, where her story became a media sensation.

View the trailer HERE

With little regard for the toll it would take on the traumatized teenager, one of the founding fathers of Hollywood, producer William Selig convinced Aurora that by bringing her story to the silver screen she would be able to help other survivors of the genocide.

And so Aurora relived the unbearable, and became the most improbable starlet of the silent era in Auction of Souls, a runaway success, breaking box office and fundraising campaign records. After the film’s release, one out of every three American families reportedly contributed to the campaign to help the victims of the genocide. With the help of the film, a campaign by the aid group Near East Relief raised $116 million and saved the lives of over 132,000 orphaned survivors. The number of their descendants are in the millions.

During his time as Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau witnessed first-hand the atrocities committed against Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians at the hands of the Ottoman government. However, expanding Turkish lobbying in Congress thwarted President Wilson’s aim to aid Armenia. Congress’s action caused any mention of the Genocide to cease. All copies of Auction of Souls throughout the world were believed to be lost. The diappearance of all the prints may be in part because they were fragile, made of nitrate, but there is also conjecture that their disappearnce could be due to a concerted effort initiated by the Turkish government to destroy them. However, in 1994, several months after Aurora’s death, 18 minutes, fragments of Auction of Souls were rediscovered.

The story of this feature film compelled me to interview the film’s director Inna Sahakyan.

Director Inna Sahakyan

To begin, I am curious to know if you are living in Armenia today ?

Currently, for the Award campaign, I am deviding my time between Armenia and Los Angeles.

Was this filmed here or there?

It was filmed in Armenia. I am part of a small production company and we create the material we work on. We internationally co-produced several award winning feature documentaries in the past, and when I found the idea for this film while researching the Genocide, it became a much larger story.

The Armenian genocide is the enduring pain of my nation. It is my family’s pain, and it is my own pain. Though I always wanted to, I was wary of making a film about it. I was afraid to be overly sentimental, overly emotional. I was afraid of telling stories that only confirmed Armenians as a nation of victims with no historical agency and nothing but tragedy running through our veins.

That is, until I stumbled upon an interview with Aurora Mardiganian while going through archival interviews with Armenian Genocide survivors at the Zoryan Institute. I was mesmerized the first time I watched it. While painful to hear, the elderly woman appeared to grow more and more youthful as she spoke. Through her words and expressions, an incredible but ordinary heroism shone: this woman survived a genocide but refused to be a victim. She refused to be reduced to an object of history. This is the character I wanted to build in Aurora’s Sunrise, resilient, powerful and heartwarming all at once.

The archival video interviews with Aurora, filmed by the Zoryan Institute with two additional interviews from the Armenian Film Foundation, comprise a major medium of Aurora’s Sunrise. The majority of the film’s narration was built from the stories she told in these interviews.

My mission was to create a film taking audiences beyond the cold facts of the genocide, so I decided on a dynamic combination of mediums: animation, archival interviews with Aurora Mardiganian, and digitally-restored footage from Aurora’s 1919 film Auction of Souls.

What have you done before this ?

I have directed and produced feature-length documentaries, documentary series, and shorts, for over fifteen years. Following my feature-length debut co-directing the award-winning Armenia’s Last Tightrope Dancer in 2010, I directed Mel and Aurora’s Sunrise, and completed both international co-productions in 2022.

For this larger film I have to credit the great team I worked with the editor and live action scenes director Ruben Ghazaryan, art director Tigran Arakelyan among others.

Aurora’s Sunrise is the first-ever animated feature created by Bars Media, and the first-ever animated documentary film made in Armenia — and making the film was no simple task.

I had never worked with a fiction script or animation so there was a lot new for me.

On the writing too I needed help because I did not want it to be overly emotional or overly subjective. I needed a critical eye and for that I am so grarteful to my cowriter Kerstin Meyer-Beetz who is part of the German team who coproduced it, the Beetz Brothers, and to the cowriter Peter Liakhov.

How did it develop into an Armenian-German-Lithuanian coproduction ?

It is very difficult for Armenia, a very small country with a very small national support system, to raise money for production. But it was very important that we have the support of National Cinema Center of Armenia to legitimize our efforts to raise co-production funds. Each country brings its own money and funds and its own artistic structure. Gebruder Beetz in Germany had not worked with us previously, but we are from the same documentary « tribe », and the film’s producer knew them from Documentary Campus Masterschool so they decided to work together. ZDF came on board. I mentioned the imporance of cowriting with Kerstin Meyer-Beetz.

The music component with original music by the celebrated Christine Aufderhaar (also from Germany) with additional Armenian music from Andranik Berberyan and Garegin Arakelyan, was the sinew that connected the film into a moving and elegant whole.

Lithuania came in later with producers Justė Michailinaitė and Kestutis Drazdauskas and animation producer Meinardas Valkevicius, the key animator Sarunas Vystartas, Gediminas Skyrius the lead illustrator and storyboard designer, Rimas Valeikis the lead character designer and we had great team of Lithuanian illustrators working with them. The international partnership with Lithuania was crucial. With the Armenian team taking a lead in art direction, cooperation with the Lithuanian team helped create something both new but also deeply Armenian.The artistic style of animation came out of the Lithuanian and Armenian artists working together on linear solutions, color, etc trying to find a unique art style which eveolved.

Eurimages came in as well and it was the first time that Armenia was the majority producer with this pan-European funding body. And important to note that this was by a unanimous support of all its voting members.

Every character had documentary material behnd them. The archival research came from fundraising and small grants, awards and lots of ptiching workhshops. Each producing country has its own distribution there set up, Gegruder Beetz will distribute in Germany. International sales are by Cat and Docs. In Armenia, it was first released in the Golden Apricot Film Festival, the baiggest festival in the area where it won the Silver apricot, the second prize in the Internatioal Compeititon and it was released in cinemas from November 3. It was supposed to be for two weeks, but it is so popular than its run has been extending and it is stilll playing in one of the theaters.

Did Waltz with Bashir influence your use of animation ?

Absolutely. It was the first animated documentary I saw, but then I followed all of them.

The majority of the film’s runtime is animation. Animation is a very powerful medium for portraying something as difficult as trauma. It explicitly portrays the representation of an event and not the event itself, bridges this distance, and allows for the viewer to be deeply engaged with the narrative and thematic core of the story. At the same time, animation is medium that can communicate not only the colors of the story, but even its smells, tastes, and textures. It becomes the soul of the film, and lets Aurora’s now forgotten story become vivid again. It goes further than reproducing the events: it interprets them, like our brain does with memories, and allows symbols and motifs to speak loudly instead of drowning them in the utter realism of hundreds of details.

Of course, the danger of animation is that it may produce a sense of unreality — and this is why it is so crucial that the film also features archival footage of the real Aurora and that of her film: to let the woman and her work speak for itself and to remind the audience that all this really did happen.

How long did it take you to make this film ?

The overall production was about seven years out of which about three yearswere spent in the development/script stage.

Five years into the making of Aurora’s Sunrise production of the film hit a major obstacle. In September 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing — which had already put production, especially animation into a precarious position — a new conflict erupted over the landlocked region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been disputed territory between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the collapse of the USSR.

For Armenia, over forty-four days of fighting, it was nothing less than a state of total war. By the time a ceasefire was signed on 10 November 2020, Armenia, a tiny country of only 3 million, had lost more soldiers per capita than the United States did in WWII.

During the fighting, all of the men on Bars Media’s staff were on the front lines, some under direct fire. The strain of the war put the entire project in jeopardy, and the studio itself nearly shut down. But thanks to the perseverance of the German and Lithuanian co-producers the project kept moving forward.

Are you happy with the result ?

I am very content. I would still make changes. One could always do more but one must decide at some point to stop, Overall I am satisfield — we did tremendous work.

With a blend of vivid animation, interviews with Aurora herself, and 18 minutes of surviving footage from the lost silent epic, Aurora’s Sunrise revives a forgotten story of survival.

Above all, I believe this film is important because in Aurora Mardiganian’s story we see a brave young Armenian woman who, despite enduring genocide, hunger, slavery, and exploitation, refused to be a victim. She refused to be swept away by the tides of history. It’s a timeless story of the resilience of the human spirit, the power of hope, and the importance of never giving up. In our evermore uncertain world, this kind of story should be told.

Screenplay by Inna Sahakyan, Kerstin Meyer-Beetz, Peter Liakhov

Produced by Vardan Hovhannisyan, Christian Beetz, Justė Michailinaitė, Kęstutis Drazdauskas, Eric Esrailian (Bars Media, Artbox Laisvalaikio Klubas, Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion)

The Zoryan Institute, non-profit and charity provided a crucial level of research and financial support in the making of this production and this film is based on its Oral History Archive.

Featuring Aurora (Arshaluys) Mardiganian as herself (archival documentary footage), Anzhelika Hakobyan as Aurora, Arpi Petrossian as the voice of Aurora (animation)

Art Director: Tigran Arakelyan

Editor & Live Action Director: Ruben Ghazaryan

Original Music: Christine Aufderhaar, Additional Music: Andranik Berberyan, Garegin Arakelyan

Lead Illustrator: Gediminas Skyrius

Armenian with English subtitles

Run Time: 96 minutes

* Best Baltic co-production film at Tallinn’s Black Nights Flim Festival 2022

*Asia Pacific Screen Award Winner — Best Animated Film 2022

*Animation is Film- Audience Award Winner 2022

*World Premiere, Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2022, in competition

*Winner Silver Apricot- Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival 2022

* Official Selection- Fantoche International Animation Film Festival 2022,

*Official Selection- Doclisboa 2022, From the Earth to the Moon section

*Official Selection- Film Fest Hamburg 2022, Kaleidoskop section, in competition
*North American Premiere, Animation is Film Festival 2022, in competition

*Official Selection- Asian World Film 2022, in competition

*Official Selection- IDFA 2022, Best of Fests

*Official Selection — Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival 2022, in Baltic competition

Turkey’s Oscar© 2023 Entry for Best International Feature: ‘Kerr’ directed by Tayfun Pirselimglu

Turkey’s Oscar© 2023 Entry for Best International Feature: ‘Kerr’ directed by Tayfun Pirselimglu;Tayfun Pirselimglu

An interview with the film’s director sheds some light on one of the strangest, most surreal of films. Michael Gondry meets Kafka with a particularly Turkish twist, this story centers around a simple man who is trapped in a town when he goes to his father’s funeral. Everyone seems to have met and spoken to him there, but he seems not to know anyone or to remember them. In fact, he never understands anything, nor does he ask what’s going on until it is too late.

“Everything is bizarre here. Even the weather is strange,” says one of his father’s friends.

Gradually he begins to ask questions and yet he never understands what is happening. He is told he is asking the wrong questions. None of his questions is ever answered. But questions are always asked of him, for which he has no answers either. One of the most frequent questions asked of him is, “What do you think of the state of the country?” Endlessly asked and never addressed, it seems to me to be the main point of the movie.

It all begins at the train station where Kerr is waiting for the train to take him back to his hometown where, now divorced, he lives alone and runs his own little printing shop. While at the train station, he becomes the sole witness to a murder. The murderer leaves the scene calmly, strangely showing no interest in his presence. When the police will not let him leave town, he goes to his father’s home where the woman who kept house and nursed his father introduces herself. He later sees her with the murderer and he runs away in fear when the man sees him and follows him. At the same time, a quarantine is declared due to roaming rabid dogs. The whole town turns into an existential purgatory with no exit.

View the TRAILER here.

Tayfun Pirselimglu

Writer, director, author and visual artist Tayfun Pirselimglu is one of the most idiosyncratic Turkish auteurs working today. Best known for his unusual phantasm, distinctive philosophical approach and themes of eternal recurrence, his allegorical plots are also politically dense.

“Entering the unique worlds he creates is like plunging into a Kafkaesque labyrinth with echoes of classical film noirs.” (MUBI)

You may recall Michel Godry and Charlie Kaufman’s collaboration on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories forever, or their earlier film Human Nature in which a woman is in love with a man in love with another woman, and all three have designs on a young man raised as an ape. Similarly, Pirselimglu criticizes social and ethical problems in a deeply humorous way with characters dragged by absurdity.

Could this be how Turkey is today? A country cut off with curfews, quarantined, and ruled by a falsely elected dictator where crimes are forgotten while those who witness them are arrested or living in fear of being arrested. (Today’s news announced the arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul for calling a public official a fool, in the context of calling out the name that official called him.) It is a very strange country indeed. Only beautiful music redeems it and then, only in part, from incessant repetitive warnings to citizens to stay indoors.

The murderer and the housekeeper

We are all somewhat like Kerr in an environment where there seems to be some who comprehend it. We cannot but feel we have entered a strange and alien environment which we can either adjust to or leave for …something worse? It is not at all a neat package though it seems as if it could be if only we had a clue as to what was going on. The questions not asked, the questions not answered; nothing gives us a clue until it is too late and we face only a bigger abyss when we try to get answers or try to escape.

What inspired you to make this film?

To me it seemed very subversive.

Prevailing absurdity. Logic is evaporating and insanity is coming into power. We’re stuck in a world on the edge of madness and people are living happily in this abnormality. This is making me scared and I’m asking the question as the one in the film is asking ‘What’s happening really?’ among society living in such established craziness.

How did you get away making it in Turkey and not getting exiled for it?

Instead at Antalya you won the top awards. Is Antalya so independent of Erdoğan?

The plot is universal and it is pointing to the anomaly of humanity’s and society’s current state of insanity. This absurdity happens everywhere including in the USA where the Capitol was raided. The whole world is in this foolishness and I’m conveying the story of a common madness.

Kerr has been awarded in various festivals in Turkey and abroad by the way.

How did you find your actors? Erdem Senocak seems made for the part.

Yes, indeed, he amazingly built a character that completely fits the one in the script. Erdem Şenocak is a very talented actor and this is his first leading role. Some of the actors in the film are ones that had sunk into oblivion and I’m very glad to reintroduce them. The casting period did not take too long as I visualized the faces of the characters during the script writing and consequently settled on them. There were no auditions but instead long conversations.

Do you have back stories on this character? Is it more explained in the novel you wrote that you based this film upon?

Novels offer the readers and the writers the opportunity to shoot films in their minds, through their imagination. Words are the tools to create a universe. Films are compulsive, on the other hand. The mind of the audience is implemented by the formerly made vision. I dare to challenge my own book from this aspect. Regarding the character, yes, I almost always follow the same person lost in absurdity in my books. The reader does not have any previous information on him but gradually the background is revealed through his reactions in the plot.

What did you leave out that was in the novel?

The script is not completely and exactly based on the novel, meaning, I left some characters out and I put some other elements in from my other stories.

Did you add anything?

A couple of new figures. Alligators are replaced by the dogs, by the way!

How was it adapting your own novel to film?

I have not attempted to adapt any of my books before. I write my own scripts and this one was different from my previous experience. I think I wanted to expose my own film shot in my mind while writing the novel. This is a challenge between the writer and the director who are normally rivals. Anyway, it was not a schizoid process, but compelling.

What happens to you in the process of writing and directing?

Writing is an isolated act. Film making is a collective process and the director is encircled by the problems of others beside his/her own ones. Ironically, writing is the healing period of my wounds received in film making.

What happens to you now that the film is shot?

Nothing happens any different than with previous ones. Same problems, same solutions, same wounds, same healing.

What do you consider your strongest attribute as a director?

Clever directors never answer this question.

Where do you feel least assured?

Time pressure on the set during the shooting is not a desirable situation.

What do you like most about directing?

Creating a universe with pictures is eternal.

How did you find being in LA? Have you been there before?

I’ve never been LA before. I visited the east coast various times but I did not have the chance to visit the west before. LA is the Olympus of the cinema and to be there is an interesting experience in this sense, as a director.

Did you learn anything about international sales and US distribution?

My producer Ms. Ersen is dealing with this subject.

Kerr received its world premiere in Competition at the Warsaw Film Festival in 2021 and won the Best Director and Best Music Awards at Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival 2021 and Best Director and Best Art Director Awards at the Istanbul Film Festival in 202.

Directed and written by Tayfun Pirselimoglu http://www.tayfunpirselimoglu.com/default.asp

Tayfun Pirselimoglu graduated from Middle East Technical University after which he went to Vienna and studied painting at Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst (Academy of Applied Arts) He held various exhibitions in different cities of the world, including Vienna, Istanbul, Ankara, Budapest, Tallinn, etc. He is one of the founders of the independent art initiative of Akademie Genius which he lectured on scriptwriting, cinema, and painting. He also conducted workshops on film making in Wien, Athens, Ankara, etc.

Pirselimoglu wrote six novels (Tales from the Desert, Album of the Missing Persons, Melancholia, Towers of the City, Kerr and the Barber) and three storybooks (Rooms of the Hotels, The Newest Lives of Harry Lime and Other Side of the Desert).

He started his film career as a scriptwriter and wrote various scripts of shorts and features. He directed his first short film Dayim (My Uncle) in 1999 and then Il Silenzio e d’Oro (Silent is Golden) in 2002; both have received numerous international awards. In 2002 he also shot Hiçbiryerde (In Nowhereland), his first feature film supported by Eurimages which has also received many awards. He shot the trilogy of ‘conscience and death’ including Riza (Riza) 2007 premiered in Berlinale Forum, Pus (Haze) 2009 premiered as well in Berlinale Forum, and Saç (Hair) 2010 premiered in Locarno FF, all awarded. Sideway (2017) premiered in Warsaw and has received six awards from many festivals. The shooting of his last feature film, adapted from his book named Kerr, was completed in 2020. Pirselimoglu currently has a film retrospective streaming on MUBI, Turkey.

Cast: Erdem Şenocak, Jale Arıkan, Rıza Akın

Produced by: Vildan Ersen, Gataki Films

Running time: 101 mins