Philippe Claudel

Author-turned-director Philippe Claudel makes a calculated and self-assured debut in a tale about how guilt and the act of bonding occurs when a pair of sisters confront a fifteen year gap brought about by an unplanned prison sentence. Instead of opting for flashy visuals, Claudel avoids clichés and stays focused on the characters and peels away the layers from leads Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein's characterizations.

Both actresses deliver pitch-perfect perfs and as award season creeps in on both sides of the Atlantic, Scott Thomas can count on undoubtedly garnering further lead roles (in both her native tongue and adopted second language) that are given to those who experience a career revival of this magnitude. In the chaotic fall schedule, I've Loved You So Long is a film performance not to be missed.

Philippe Claudel

Claudel Interview I've Loved You So Long">

Yama Rahimi: Tell us about your inspiration for this story and why you wanted to tell this particular one?
Philippe Claudel: Well it was simple idea at first because I wanted to tell the story of a woman. As a novelist my stories are about the male universe, so I wanted to change. So I wanted to explore a woman's story and with that I thought the possibility of a movie and not of a novel. Maybe because I wanted to capture the soul of this woman with the camera. So I started exploring and from one woman it came to two. Then two sisters who haven't seen each other in a long time and exploring the bond between them.

YR: So it was purely fictional...?
PC: Yes but with many memories from personal experience because I was teaching at a prison for eleven years. I was constantly fascinated with the theme of secrets in life. The fact that we never know the other people.

YR: The story was so detailed that it seemed like an adaptation of somebody's life. It was finely tuned.
PC: Maybe because I wanted to work with sincerity. It was important to show the audience that this story was possible.

YR: At what point did you decide to make this story a film instead of a novel?
PC: Well when I write a novel, I use only one instrument which is the language which can be limiting. I wanted to try to use different tools like a conductor. When you imagine a work for a movie. You think about the light, architecture, sound and different tools. Film is the seventh art where all the arts converge so I wanted to work with the other tools.

YR: How long did it take you to decide to direct? Maybe your work with Yves Angelo?
PC: I started doing shorts in school but ten years ago I met my friend Yves Angelo who wanted me to write a script with him. Then I wrote other scripts for others, so it was a normal process from writing to directing because as with writing, you imagine the story visually for directing. So it was impossible for me to give this story to another director. I was ready to direct in my mind and with my experience.

Claudel Interview I've Loved You So Long">

YR: What was the biggest challenge during the process of making this film?
PC: To have the same energy everybody and keeping the focus of the film. I had a great team with me but at the same time you are the only one who knows what goes on. It was an amazing adventure.

YR: Tell us about the visual style of the film which is more subtle instead of flashy.
PC: I wanted a classic style of storytelling and wanted the filmmaking to disappear so the audience pays attention to every detail of the characters.

Claudel Interview I've Loved You So Long">

YR: Kristin Scott Thomas seems at first an odd choice in French speaking film. How did you choose her?
PC: Well I wrote the part of Lea for Elsa Zylberstein because I knew her and appreciate her as an actress. When the movie became a reality, I stopped at the face of Kristin Scott Thomas because she lived in France for 28 years and speaks perfectly French. At the same time she was underused in French cinema but paradoxically an international star. I wanted to destroy her beauty and show a new Kristin. She's an amazing talent and she understood what I wanted.

YR: Has cinema influenced your work as a novelist?
PC: Well maybe when I write a novel I'm like a director and when I direct a film, I'm like novelist. So I have two brains, one for each.

YR: Will you continue making films? How has it change your view on writing novels?
PC: Film takes a long time to get the funding. This film was a success in France and internationally. So if another film comes, I will do but also will preserve my writing. Writing is easy. I write all the time, even in the hotel.

Elsa Zylberstein

Unless you are a connoisseur of French cinema or very familiar with the filmography of Raoul Ruiz, for many of you there are good chances that the name and face of Elsa Zylberstein hardly rings a bell – but this may change this year if the buzz continues to build from art-house circuit success and critical approval into potential year-end kudos for film that won a pair of prizes at the Berlin film festival.

In author-turned-director Philippe Claudel’s "Il y a longtemps que je t'aime" a.k.a I've Loved You So Long, Zylberstein plays the younger sister role of Léa who is reunited with her older sis Juliette (Kristin Scott-Thomas), who after 15 years in prison returns to her hometown of Nancy.

A couple of weeks back I had the chance to interview the filmmaker and now I had a sit down with one of his two muses. Here is my interview with…

Elsa Zylberstein

Yama Rahimi: Philippe (Claudel) told me he wrote this part for you. Were you part of the process? How did you find out about this project? Was it a surprise?
Elsa Zylberstein: It wasn't a surprise because we had a coffee and I told him why don't you write a story about two women. He called five months later and said "Hey Elsa, I did it." Then I got the script and it was wonderful.

YR: Were you involved in the process?
EZ: No he did his thing and it was amazing for an actor that somebody would say I wouldn't do this without this actor.

YR: It's remarkable for a writer because I recently interviewed several writers and they all said they never write for any particular actors.
EZ: He's a great man, very clever and special human being.

YR: So you know him privately?
EZ: Yes we met three years ago and I just loved his writing after reading couple of his books. I was stunned by the depth and humanity. The layers and characters are lead by emotion and ambiguity between bad and evil. It's very interesting.

YR: What was the biggest challenge for this role since everything is underneath?
EZ: It was difficult to create this loss that I and Kristin had this loss and guilt after such a long time. We had to make the relationship real with the whole back story.

YR: Did you work with Kristin closely?
EZ: No. I worked with Philippe and she worked with him. I worked by myself and we saw each other once. Philippe didn't want us to meet. For me those two characters are in jail, one physically and the other psychologically. My character was very subtle because she pretends to be happy but is actually fragile like a little girl.

YR: I think your role was very hard to research because it's all internal.
EZ: It was a very hard character to create. Before her sister returns, she trusts and believes in books and they help her by giving strength and support because she a professor of literature. You see that books surround her in her house but when Kristin's character comes she loses her faith in them as she tells one of her students, "What do you know about life? Life is stronger. Fuck books. Go and live." She suddenly feels alive. She says "What do you know about murder? What did Dostoevsky know about murderers?"

YR: You are a veteran actress in French Cinema. How was your experience with Philippe as a first time director?
EZ: I trusted him. When you accept a film, you have to trust the director. I knew it would be clever that's all I knew.

YR: He's very assured as a director and knows what he wants without any insecurity.
EZ: Oh yes. He wrote a book about making the film and you see everything is on purpose.

YR: How was working with Kristin Scott Thomas who's not French but a Hollywood star.
EZ: She speaks French perfectly and very committed, so it was like two actors working normally. No difference beyond that.

YR: Are you surprised by the success of the film?
EZ: I'm so thrilled. You can't imagine. It sold 1 million tickets in France. It's continuing now beyond France because it's a universal story. It could be two brothers instead of sisters.

Mike Leigh

At the Mill Valley Film Festival this year, Brit filmmaker Mike Leigh’s latest film became the centerpiece as part of a tribute to thesp Sally Hawkins whose life won't be the same after the year-end award ceremonies have come and gone. As Leigh did previously with David Thewlis, Brenda Blethyn and Imelda Staunton, Happy-Go-Lucky is a great example of how an overlooked actor can take hold of a particular role and with the proper guidance, can make great strides, collect accolades and appreciation, and parlay this into further gut-wrenching, illuminating, heart-warming perfs.

Hawkins’s contagious character of Poppy will most likely connect with audiences and leave an impression much in the same way that archetypes like career launch pad roles such as Audrey Tautou in Amelie, Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures and Toni Collette in Muriel's Wedding.

Leigh's idiosyncratic and much talked about filmmaking process has more often than not, been stunning in design and consistent in quality. One can always expect a heartfelt and genuine slice of life portrait from a Mike Leigh stamped picture and HGL is no different, except that it has a lighter spirit that is more optimistic in the light of a harsh realties that are best displayed in the emotionally distraught character portrayed by an equally brilliant perf from actor Eddie Marsan.

As with all of Leigh's films, the sheer pleasure is the journey of discovering the unique characters in unique settings. In this film the standout scene is when the teacher Poppy decides to spice up her life by enrolling in a weekly flamenco class. Without giving too much in detail away, it's a magical scene that will tickle your fancy.

Mike Leigh

Yama Rahimi: When you commence working on a film like Happy-Go-Lucky, or for that matter any of your previous work, you’ve mentioned that you start without a screenplay but rather, a ‘feeling’, can you elaborate on this?
Mike Leigh: No I can't elaborate on it. I have elaborated on it and the elaboration is called the film. The important thing is the film itself and you are asking about the earliest beginning of the film which you don't ask normally filmmakers and you are asking me because the way I work. The truth to matter is that I can't talk about it because I discover the film by making it.

YR: In your process of filmmaking, what's the biggest challenge for you?
ML: Well obviously you can sit in your room by yourself and write a novel and all you got to do is to interact with your pen and paper or word processor and your imagination. Film involves a whole lot of practicalities and is collaboration with other people and therefore, is more sophisticated in some ways and more complex. Things have to be done on budget and on time. You have deal with the weather and so on.

YR: Would it be accurate to describe this film as a comedy?
ML: To describe it as comedy as opposed to a drama would be inaccurate. It's a drama and all my films have been comic as well as dramatic. There's a dark underside but a comic dimension as well. I mean the spirit of the film is uplifting. Having made the film I realized instinctively and intuitively what I have done is to make a film what I call anti-miserablist. It doesn't mean harm to celebrate the possibilities of life even though we are in bad times and there's much to lament. People like Poppy are positive. She's a positive person. She's a teacher and nurturing the kids and cherishing the future. She's not an escapist or airhead. She's focused, grounded and looks things in the eye.

YR: Do you think it's possible to share your process of filmmaking with young filmmakers?
ML: I'm very involved with young filmmakers; a portion of my life is devoted to it. Apart from everything else I'm a chairman on the board of governors at the London Film School which is one of the oldest film schools in the world and it has an international body of students. I do share everything I can with young filmmakers. If you are actually specifically asking me whether my idiosyncratic and eccentric way of making films is something that's young or other filmmaker should adopt, well that's an open question because what I do is very personal but certainly anyone can draw inspiration from my work if they want or can.

YR: As far as your relationship goes with your actors as you have worked with some of them previously, do you have a group of actors that usually work with?
ML: No, no we have got great actors in the UK and actually we have sixteen actors in this film and I worked with five of them before. If you work with someone that's good and it works well, of course you come back to them obviously. I work with character actors who are versatile and people who can all sort of characters. It's good to come back to people and branch out with other people and I'm very pragmatic about that.

YR: What other filmmakers do you admire?
ML: Of course I do. I love watching movies and I'm an avid movie-goer. I'm very disadvantaged frankly doing this press tour in the United States because I'm missing half of the London Film Festival which has great feast of films from around the world. I have been watching movies all of my life. I grew up on an exclusive diet of American and British movies till I was seventeen when I went to London and World Cinema exploded on my ears. My particular passion in my formative years were people like Renoir, the Nouvelle Vague guys, Ozu, Fellini and Satyajit Ray. I'm also very fond of Capra which this film has the spirit of.

Götz Spielmann

Revanche, Austria's entry in this year’s race for the Best Foreign film at the Academy Awards. A superb existential thriller that haunts you long after you’ve left the theater, writer/director Götz Spielmann cleverly uses the thriller genre to dig deep into the psyche of his characters. Petty criminal Alex works in a brothel where he falls in love with the Ukrainian prostitute Tamara. In order to escape this life, Alex plans to rob the bank in his estranged father's village. However the robbery doesn’t go as planned and those remaining are left to pick up the pieces. Avoiding cheap sentimentality and one of those scores that pushes buttons, Spielmann’s set piece will draw you in.

I interviewed the writer and director Spielmann at the Rosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.

Götz Spielmann

Yama Rahimi: What was your inspiration for this film?
Götz Spielmann: You know by being attentive and watchful in life material is collected to an idea. In this case I remember two important things. I made several hikes in the locations of the film where I walked through the magic landscape two years before the screenplay. Another source of inspiration was the ancient tragedy that my movie has something to do with.

YR: The character of Tamara is a tragic figure and she haunts the main characters and the audience throughout the film. Tell us about her.
GS: Well some years before the film I made some researches on prostitutes. In Austria a lot of the prostitutes come from the Ukraine and I learned a lot about the sad scene and needs that are part of that milieu. It was important for me not to tell the story from the outside or a moral position that judges the character.

YR: Would you agree to call this film an existential thriller?
GS: Yeah. Why not? It's not my task to make any interpretations. Any good film has several interpretations. I like your interpretation but I don't work with interpretations. I just try to make personal movies that are as personal and good as possible. I'm more interested in the audience perception than mine.

YR: What filmmakers inspired you?
GS: Well of course I was inspired by a lot of movies but the one that inspired are Cassavetes, Ozu, Tarkovsky, Fellini and Antonioni.

YR: Can you tell us backstory to how Janus picked up your film for theatrical distribution?
GS: They loved the film and want to get back to distribution again. All I can say is that I'm really happy and little proud because Janus and Criterion are for me a kind of hall of fame for the art of cinema and they are not such a bad company to be with.

YR: Are you excited about your film being considered for the Academy Awards?
GS: I'm honored but not excited. I'm rather relaxed. I will get excited if we actually get the nomination.

YR: Well Austria won the Oscar last year for the Counterfeiters, so it's great follow up. I prefer your film to that one.

Laurent Cantet

On the outset, The Class is deceptive and microscopic enough in nature that that you won’t feel the film’s powerful grip until you’re reminded of how invested you are in the plight of several of the film’s characters. Stitched together by a cast of non-professional actors, the Palme d’or-winning picture is a multi-ethnic milieu set within the limitations of an institution and within the timeline constraints of a full school year. Based on the novel by François Bégaudeau who wrote the script and stars as the film’s lead, the film is specific in its setting, but the story is timeless, universal and stretches way beyond the storyline’s settings – it could easily take place in your neck of the concentrate jungle.

Director Laurent Cantet’s demonstrates the daily grind of one teacher taking on a group of very opinionated youths. Cultures clash, and feelings get hurt. After Ressources humaines (1999), Time Out (2001) and 2005’s Heading South, it’s safe to say that Cantet feels best at home when there is human conflict. This film makes every Hollywood film set in a class room into awkwardly inadequate portraits that simply fail to ring true.

Laurent Cantet

YAMA RAHIMI: In the last two decades the world has changed a lot. What's your concern as a filmmaker?
LAURENT CANTET: What I try to do when I make a film is to show the complexity of our society and how difficult it is to find your place in it which this film deals with too. The real life gives you hundreds of scripts if you look very carefully. All my films have sociological concern but I don't try to make them like a sociological thesis but try to show them through characters whose lives are affected.

YR: What's your attraction to the working class?
LC: Not only working class but “work” itself is something that interests me. The social position that work gives to each of us and how you adapt to whatever that milieu is. I think work is an important thing to define you in the society.

YR: In this film you tapped into something that's universal. The same or similar problems that the French are experiencing, is also relevant for other Western countries. Do you think reforms are necessary to adapt for new times?
LC: No. I'm not the ministry of education but school is an important part of the society and it's not just a world onto itself. It's also a place where children not only learn knowledge but also learn to think and to argue. It's a place that concentrates all the questions that the society should look at.

YR: I know the film has been well received by the critics and the audience. How was it received by the teachers in France?
LC: In fact the film divided the teacher community. On one side you have those who identify with the teachers in the film and the others who don't want to look at themselves in the mirror. There are also those who don't have the problems in their schools and are afraid that the film may give their school a bad name. This film is about a specific class room and their specific problems. Every class and school has their problems. We shot the film not far from Henry IV, which is one of the best schools in Paris. They were also afraid that we give this negative image to parents who would be afraid to send their children to public schools. Some people tried to use the film as a documentary which is not because everything was written in the script. Unfortunately the press gave those people time to speak and attack schools in general. I'm not trying to prove anything with the film except to show how difficult it is to be together with 25 people for one year and teach. The junior school is the only place where you have this mix of different students.

YR: You make an especially powerful statement about the state of the teaching profession with the "forgotten student"….. What was the genesis how this particular character and scene and final piece of dialogue?
LC: It was already in the book. I wanted to show that the school can be a wonderful place of integration but it can also exclude others.

YR: Were any of the real students that Francois mentioned in the book used in the film?
LC: No. We shot the film near there but Francois wanted to make the two parts of his life separate.We set up workshops for students to participate. At first we had 50 students then lost more students because they lost interests and the 25 that remained are in the film.

YR: It took a year to prepare the film?
LC: Well a year that we met only every Wednesday afternoon but not the entire year. I was writing and testing situation and go back writing. The writing process was long because whatever happened in the workshop would influence the script.

YR: Did it take long to find the right students?
LC: In fact I didn't choose them, the students chose the film. Those who remained and were most involved in the workshops are in the film.

YR: How long was the actual shooting of the film?
LC: It was a seven weeks shooting during the summer holidays.

YR: Visually, in the scenes that take place in the classroom, you make a deliberate choice to film teacher-student relationship as a tug of war. I'd like to know why you choose this configuration for setting the frame.
LC: Well the idea was show like a match where both sides are equals. What amazed me was the energy of the confrontations.

YR: What was the biggest challenge for a film like this?
LC: I did short film 15 years ago where high school children preparing a demonstration. I felt a great freedom on that film which I always wanted to recreate which I finally managed with this film. Especially since I was working with HD and had three cameras that allowed for long takes.

YR: What was the biggest challenge working with Francois as an actor?
LC: It was no problem because Francois was involved in the process from the beginning. He wasn't just acting but also directing from the inside. He was too focused on what's happening next and had no time pay attention to his image. He was going back to his professional reflex as a teacher. Even at the end when he had the dilemma, I didn't have to give him any indication on what to do. He reached his own decision as if he would have in real life.

YR: Were you surprised by the success of the film…including in Cannes?
LC: Yes. When I make a film I usually have a lot doubt but with this film I knew we had something special and that it works. What was surprising that the film could speak to an international audience.

YR: Last year's Palme d'or winner (4 Months, 3 Weeks and Two Days) played at the very beginning of Cannes. Can you elaborate on your and your producer's decision to show the film towards the tail end of the festival? Why did you choose this slot?
LC: We don't know what happened. It wasn't just shown at the end but also selected later. We had to wait a week more because they already selected two French films. Maybe they were waiting for another film that didn't come but I think the schedule was good for us.

YR: The Class has just been nominated for the Prix Louis-Delluc award. In your own words – can you describe to those who live outside of France, what the award symbolizes perhaps in comparison to the Cesar award for Best Film?
LC: It's being compared to the Goncourt in Literature. The Cesar is more for films that works in the box office. The Prix Louis-Delluc is something more prestigious maybe. There's only one prize a year and for the entire film only.

Arnaud Desplechin

French auteur Arnaud Desplechin weaves a rich tapestry of pitch perfect performances for a collection of emotionally charged sequences in his latest film which curiously unfolds like a classic novel. With the help of some of the best actors in French cinema including his frequent collaborators Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric (Kings and Queen), Emmanuelle Devos and Anne Consigny, A Christmas Tale centers on the matriarch of the family, played by the impeccable Deneuve, who discovers that her cancer will require a donor which makes her upcoming gathering for the holidays with her own dysfunctional family a bit more out of the ordinary. What Desplechin delivers is not an easy task by any means, he brings vision and bravura to every detail of the film that's extraordinary capturing a family that feuds lovingly over past and present events. One of the more dynamic, energetic French films in recent years, this concretulizes Desplechin as one of the more unique visions and voices in French cinema.

Arnaud Desplechin

Yama Rahimi: It’s a great accomplishment to have such a rich and complex story with so many well developed characters. What inspired to write this story and what was the biggest challenge?
Arnaud Desplechin: I follow intuitive paths and wanted to make a Thanksgiving film which we don’t have. So that was the initial idea. This kind of films usually don’t have a good tracking record as far as nobility is concerned. I usually don’t like films where you have to wait 50 minutes for the characters confess something that the audience already knows. For example the son tells his mother after an hour that he’s gay and the mother says I never liked you, then you have twelve minutes or so and the films ends. I don’t like the idea that revelation would be a great narrative point. So I like these films where people tell about their long held emotions; which is the boiling point. So it’s fun for the screen writers to write these main scenes but sometime these become boring for the audience. So I wanted for my film all the revelations in the first scenes when we see the characters, so the audience know where the characters are. So the challenge was how to structure the narrative without the scenes of revelations.

YR: I loved and appreciated the emotional honesty of the characters which seemed refreshing. During the writing process, how much do you pay attention to potential casting since you have several actors in this film that you worked with previously like Catherine Deneuve, Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Devos?
AD: I never, never write for any particular actors because the writing process so long that you do everything with characters. I mean everything. I’m not clever so I put a chart and try every possible journey for each character that’s filled with what ifs. So if I write for a particular actor, I would be bored when it comes to the production. So we considered every actress for the role Junon until we cast Catherine Deneuve.

YR: You have some of the biggest names of French cinema in this film, was it difficult to schedule them?
AD: Not really. I know most of actors, so I’m not offended if an actor is not available or has a better role. For example, I wasn’t sure that Emmanuelle would be in my film because she had another project that had a bigger role for her. But as it happens here, some films don’t happen and that film didn’t happen and she became available again. She called me and I told her that I haven’t cast that role yet and would love her to come onboard.

YR: The cast had an amazing chemistry. How much do you rehearse?
AD: I don’t rehearse. I mean rehearse on the script but I work with each actor separately. So each actor knows what his/her character is about, so when shoot the other actors don’t know it, so it becomes our secret. No one is allowed to talk about what we talked about with other actors. So it brings more energy to the story and actors.

YR: I was amazed by the tools you used to tell the story like the shadow play or the old photographs. It helps and the audience never gets lost despite so many characters.
AD: Well every family has a myth whether it’s true or not but the characters believe in it, so the shadow play was a way to bring the myth into the story.

YR: I also loved how the dead baby became a character which was still affecting the whole family dynamics after forty years or so.
AD: Like a nice little ghost over the whole film.

YR: Tell us about your Cannes and post Cannes experience. Why is Cannes important for you?
AD: Well I had my first film in Cannes but it wasn’t in the official competition, then my second film La Sentinelle was, so for me it was normal without thinking much about. The third time around it was weird to have my film in Cannes because there wasn’t anything spectacular about it. After the fourth I was very grateful to Gilles Jacob because without the exposure, I don’t think films would have been shown around the world. Beyond that Cannes is brutal. It’s worse for French directors. People and critics are mean but you can’t complain because it’s a window of opportunity for your film. You have to play the rules. I don’t think I ever won any awards except for the actors. Every year they show the state of cinema whether it’s good or bad. Cannes is like a play where you have the hero, the villain and the fool, so they cast accordingly.

YR: What other filmmakers inspires you?
AD: Well I grew up with American and Japanese Cinema but Bergman and Truffaut were a revelation to me. They are the best storytellers for me.

YR: What was the biggest challenge on this film?
AD: Whether to be cheesy or mean once you decide to make a “Thanksgiving” or feel good movie. To have the right balance and not making it a religious film because it’s set during Christmas. So I didn’t want to bring to many Christian elements and stereotypes to it like angels, redemption and all those cliches that can be cheesy. I never think being mean is a solution either. To say this person is just mean for no reason. The idea is to make it interesting without falling in the stereotypes.

Steve McQueen

Artist-turned-filmmaker Steve McQueen makes a stunning debut – easily one of the best filmmaking debuts in recent years. Since its premiere at Cannes, the Camera D’or winning Hunger has picked up numerous film festival accolades and critical praise due to the filmmaker’s approach – one that powerfully uses the tools of filmmaking, one that exploits the frame as a larger canvas and one that does not compromise any of emotional content for the sake of art. It's set in 1981 where IRA prisoners are brutally treated at a prison without having a political status. To protest their condition, the leader Bobby Sands starves himself to death. An extremely difficult film to stomach, but a must for true cinephiles, Hunger is first rate in all departments and benefits from a tour de force performance by Michael Fassbender. I had he chance to speak to Steve McQueen in a phoner interview earlier this month.

Steve McQueen

Yama Rahimi: Tell us how this project came about?
Steve McQueen: I was eleven years old when this story unfolded in the news. I was watching this man's image on TV without knowing who he was and the number of days he was on a hunger strike but did not understand what was going on. My parents told me that this person was hurt because he was not eating and that equation was very strange to me. It was a coming of age situation where cracks appeared in the walls of my surroundings and things were not as they seemed and of course 22 years later still confused by it I had the opportunity to make a film about it.

YR: Were you looking to make a feature film or did it happen because of this project?
SM: No I wasn't at all. The opportunity aroused and I asked if I could tell this story. That narrative and story interested me enough to approach it.

YR: Why did you want to tell this story? Did the situations in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib Prisons shape how you told the story of Bobby Sands?
SM: Well they happened during the filming but when I was working on the project, there was no Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. Of course history repeats itself where people abuse their power and individuals abuse their bodies. Nowadays people abuse their bodies by taking other people with them and not with hunger strike.

YR: That's what struck me while watching the film and how the Bobby Sands story is still relevant today. How important was to you to strike a fair balance between both sides -- the prisoners and the officers?
SM: I wanted to tell a story of human beings, I identified with prisoners as much as I did with the prison officers. It has to be a situation where you look at people as if they were you. I don't think anyone is evil but they are put in a situation where they can advantage of people. It was to look at those people and embracing them.

YR: The film is very stylized without sacrificing the substance. Were you concerned about the style coming in the way of story?
SM: No because the camera was dictated by the architecture. It was a necessity of what I was doing. It wasn't much about the style, it was about how the space dictated me where to put the camera. So I was free to do what I wanted because the space was very limited. The cells were 5 foot by 7 foot.

YR: Tell us about the casting of Michael Fassbender who gives a phenomenal performance as Bobby Sands?
SM: Well the situation with Michael was that I didn't think much of him the first time. I thought he was a bit arrogant but it was my naiveté because it was my first time doing auditions. It was also my naiveté that actors are nervous at auditions but after the second time I knew he was the guy.

YR: How much of the script was storyboarded?
SM: None.

YR: What was the biggest challenge?
SM: Convincing people that I could do something which was not conventional.

YR: Were you surprised by the success of the film in Cannes and beyond?
SM: I was, but I knew we made a good movie but what I'm most happy about is that the people that worked on this film will work again and make more films.

YR: What are some filmmakers or films that inspired you?
SM: I'm not inspired by filmmakers or films but more by life itself but I love Jean Vigo's Zéro de Conduite and Andy Warhol's Couch.

Ari Folman

The word “unusual” comes to mind when describing Waltz with Bashir. Part documentary film and part animation, Ari Folman merges surrealist imagery with realism, mixes docu-tools like archive footage and talking heads with vivid, not vomit inducing rotoscope techniques and punk rock music. Though innately political (Folman’s pieced archive of friend’s personal memories does describe the Sabra and Shatila massacres) this oeuvre is far from politicized, instead the Israeli filmmaker is more interested in how the memory both protects and reminds us about a past that would have preferably been better avoided.

Never has plunging into one’s own psychosis offered such pulsating results and not surprisingly, the need to categorize the film may hinder its chances at receiving the year end award recognition when measured up against the best animated film being a Pixar picture and the best documentary film being the tale about a tightrope walking Frenchman who took on the Twin Towers.

Yama Rahimi: Tell us about the genesis of this project?
Ari Folman: It all started five years ago when I wanted an early release from Israeli Reserve Army where you serve like two weeks in a year. I was a screenwriter doing silly instruction films for TV but I wanted to get out and they said you can't unless you go to the army therapist and tell them everything you have been through during your army service. I did that and did ten sessions and was pretty much amazed at the end to hear my story for the first time. Not by the story but the fact that I never heard it before. It was amazing then came the dog dreams of my friend and I started to talk to other friends and decided I wanted to make a film about it.

YR: So how long did it take to make this film?
AF: Four years.

YR: At what point did you decide to animate the film?
AF: From the beginning I imagined the film being animated. I knew it had to be animated because in my imagination the characters were drawn. The film is always on the verge between reality, dreams and lost memories.There was no other way to do it than animation which gave me total freedom.

YR: Tell us about the animators and process for this striking film that we haven't seen before?
AF: Basically it was dictated by the design and the fact that we didn't have much money. It's part classic animation, flash and 3D animation for certain shots.

YR: What was the biggest challenge on this film?
AF: The biggest challenge was to complete it. Once I decided on the journey, we had to figure what's animated documentary since there was no reference for us to look at. How to make the characters and the story believable.

YR: How was the film received in Israel?
AF: It was very well received and warm which was a total surprise. The people and government supported it and still do.

YR: The Israeli Cinema is very strong and political and there seems to be a call for peace from artists. Is it embraced by the people and the government or are this films made for outside of Israel?
AF: This film was received well but some do better outside of Israel. This is the best era of Israeli Cinema because there's a lot of money coming from Europe and there's more co-productions. A lot of filmmakers have matured where they can express their voices and helps them make better films.

YR: Were you surprised that the film didn't receive any awards in Cannes?
AF: Yes but so was everybody else. I don't know what happened and there are so many theories. We thought we would take something but heard that our film didn't need it which is full of bullshit.

YR: What are some of the filmmakers and films that have inspired you for this picture?
AF: Well I was inspired by graphic novels and books about war where people experienced war and then came and took a step back to write about their experience, the stupidity of war and the surrealism of war.

YR: What's next for you?
AF: I optioned a Stanislaw Lem (Solaris) novel called, The Futurological Congress that will be animated.