Would you mind giving a brief synopsis of your film?
ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI: I’m terrible at that, so I’m passing this to Harry.
Are we in the future?
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
We meet this community of people on their harvest day, and something awful happens.
I don’t want to give too much away now.
It’s very hard to do, isn’t it?
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
I think that’s all I can say.
Athina, I want to talk a little bit about the script because it is based on a book.
One of my favorite things about adaptations is seeing something evolve.
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
There is no catharsis; there is no redemption.
There is none of this.
This is a wildly ambitious story and production in a multitude of respects.
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
Don’t ask me why it was so difficult since the book is a masterpiece.
All of our team was incredible, an incredible cast and incredible crew.
It really took the best out of us, but we did it.
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
I just found the story so compelling.
It was a wonderful opportunity to play this very sort of fragile human being.
It felt like it was gonna be something that was extremely difficult.
Image via TIFF 2024
Mud was the only thing that I kept thinking about before going to Scotland.
I knew it’d be a lot of mud, and it’d be really hard.
I really gave her a hell of a time.
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
JONES: Every day, “Who am I?”
“Look to God.”
“Who am I?”
Image via TIFF 2024
“There is no God.”
TSANGARI: No answers.
For me, that is what I learned from the experience.
Image via Photagonist at TIFF 2024
That was an amazing opportunity.
I want to follow up on what you just said “Who am I?”
A time when something clicked and it made you think, “I get him now?”
JONES: That’s what we were talking about earlier today.
Every time thinking you’re on solid ground and then realizing that you’re not and going with it.
We’re trying to understand that.
I remember at that distinct moment thinking, Yes!
TSANGARI:We don’t discuss the characters.
We don’t really verbalize any of this.
Every day is a process of doing and undoing a character.
Crew and cast, we’re all getting in the trance together, and there is very little talk.
It was more like looking at each other and sensing each other.
I approach cinema as a sensory experience.
I wanted to be experienced more than understood.
Whatever that means, but they got it.
[Laughs]
Caleb, you mentioned that everyone looked at this as an impossible thing to make.
MELLING: The whole film operated on such a different level that it was channeling into that.
There is not that word in our vocabulary."
Athina, I’ll throw that to you as well.
TSANGARI: The entire film.
At lunch today, I was just mourning how difficult it was to make a film like that.
It’s a beast with such little time.
Also because we had the villagers who were never background artists.There was not a single extra.
The entire scene was always everyone together.
All of this happened in one night.
So, that was one night.
We didn’t even go over time because we couldn’t.
MELLING: It was wet.
TSANGARI: It was pouring rain throughout.
We couldn’t record sound because there was so much noise.
It was like flooding, actually.
JONES: And long takes.
TSANGARI: And long takes.
We became this…
MELLING: Mad family.
TSANGARI: A mad family living and shooting and being.
JONES: She’s made it extremely difficult.
We were talking about that today, too.
I would believe that.
MELLING: So true.
Maybe this might work."
That is a real privilege to get in making a film.
Now you go to something, and it’s like, “Where’s our two-week rehearsal?”
I’m glad that that’s been caught.
TSANGARI: Hear, hear!
JONES: Youve had good questions today.
I appreciate you saying that!
A movie like this deserves it.
JONES: Gregor [Warnok].
There was a young man on the film.
He came with so much vigor and enthusiasm and excitement and willingness and joy.
His love was very infectious, and his excitement was very infectious.
TSANGARI: He’s a kid from the area who played one of the farmers.
I actually saw him in one of the dances from his high school graduation.
He’s like, “Yeah, but I would just love to act.”
He’d never been in a film before, and he was just a natural.
Now he’s really considering going to drama school.
JONES: It’s a very hard question.
Very unfair, like you said.
It’s every single one.
We wish we were all together, which actually in Venice we were all together.
It felt like a wedding, celebrating us marrying each other forever.
JONES: And now we got Harry.
MELLING: Its just so hard because there are so many brilliant people.
I thought Kirsty, who did the costumes, did an exquisite job.
The individual little things, as well, I just thought was magic.
So, I say Kirsty.
TSANGARI: And she did it with, like, five pounds.
One unsung hero that I really have to mention because a producer is always an unsung hero.
Rebecca OBrien is such a warrior.
The film fell apart so many times during the four years, full-on through the pandemic.
All of us were there, we were rehearsing, and she almost didn’t let us know.
JONES: I was being a baby, wasting time.
She should have told me to take a hike a few times.
She was always enjoying it, just laughing and smiling like a proud sister.
And also Roxstar Entertainment, our event producing partner and Photagonist Canada for the photo and video services.
The narrative unfolds in a hallucinatory and tragicomic manner, questioning the costs of modernity and societal change.
