Exclusive Interview with Paolo Consorti

“Havana Kyrie”

Directed by Paolo Consorti

1 - First of all, congratulations for your remarkable and Finalist feature film! How were your first steps as a director?

Actually I started late. I was born a painter and at fifty I had a “cinematic raptus”. let's be honest, cinema has always been a lovely dream. after the Academy of Fine Arts, I had a wonderful experience with Serghey Bondarciuk, who saw my Dante pictorial works and proposed to me to collaborate for a project on the Divine Comedy. Due to Serghey's health conditions, the project did not come true, but for me it was an unforgettable adventure. 2 - How would you define your personal experience with cinema as a filmmaker?

Like a curious and affable stray dog. I think of the cimematographic work with the same lightness of the pictorial work. Of course, building a film is much more complex and stressful, but also interesting and fun. cinema has brought out the passions I have always had, such as philosophy, writing and music.

3 - How did the idea for this project come about?

The idea started with a proposal from Franco Nero. He asks me to think of an idea for a film to shoot in Cuba. I didn't get told twice, I went looking for inspiration and I thought of a story that posed an elderly and rigid Italian conductor, struggling with the ease of a Cuban children's choir. the idea of this contrast amused me and also excited me.

4 - We would like to know more about the choice of your shots. How has the process been of the selection of each of them?

As I said, our protagonist is an austere expert on Rossini's music. the obligation to work in Havana puts in contrast the Italian environment of the theater and its Renaissance villa in Pesaro, with the colorful theaters and the crumbling and fascinating architecture of Cuba. This apparently only aesthetic aspect , has a much deeper meaning: being united! Every scene shot had to remind me of this basic concept.

5 - What industry figure do you feel identified with, what have your influences been?

My nature spontaneously drags me to imagine a story, forces me to direct it so as not to lose it and condemns me to produce it to make it come true. Cinema is very similar to Renaissance art. In the Italian sixteenth century, art was not free, yet it is still unsurpassed today. this seems a contradiction, but in reality, the artist gives the best of himself, when he also plays with compromise. freedom is an illusion.

6 - Tell us about the backstage. What were the most complex or difficult things you had to solve during filming (technically and/or emotionally)?

I have been painting in solitude for decades. Directing so many people, in different languages, was certainly not easy. But the charm and emotion of the encounters, of the same clashes, up to the achievement of the final single work, are priceless. I really think I did well.

7 – Can you tell us something about your next job?

Now? Many and none ;-)

-- Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak with you! We will be attentive to your next jobs!

Madrid Film Awards I Press Team madridfilmawards.com

Exclusive Interview with Emiliano Sette & Raúl Koler

"Anacronte" by Emiliano Sette y Raúl Koler

Emiliano Sette

Raúl Koler

- First of all, congratulations for your remarkable short film!

Your film tells a strong story! How did the idea come about?

Well, this is an original idea by Raul Koler who thought in the first time in making big paint with this concept. The first picture in his mind was all humanity walking in an infinity plane and behind them were Anacronte and the sorcerers of evil, that transforming their bodies become in bows and arrow, they shoot to the humanity their evil.  

Later Raúl talked with a common friend and he finds better the idea to make a film. We began to work building the dramatic arc with the writer Sabrina Pace while we start to explore the firsts characters' design with our art director Nelson Luty, another big process on this trip.    

- How was the relationship with your team?

Anacronte has a big family. The project was a co-production Argentina-Mexico and we had to find the best workflow to articulate both teams. We made in Argentina all the creative phases (script, character design, storyboard, environments, original score, sound design), and in Mexico with Exodo animation studio´s friends, we work modeling, textures, animation and render. Today we have the possibility to work big projects and a long process with an online workflow without hesitation, the first time 4 years ago this was a big challenge, but we had the luck to find the correct artists to do it.      

- In addition to a great story, the animation is impeccable. How has the process of creating the settings and characters been? (inspirations, times, details)

Anacronte is a Universal story and that pushed us to create environments that represent different places worldwide, like a refugee camp, a Chinese circus, a street of Buenos Aires among others. We were looking for a realistic look and in this sense the concept art of Nelson Luty and his team and the textures in the final look were fantastic. But I think that the real challenge for us was the Anacronte´s character design because we needed to find a design without a reference´s realistic element. This character represents humanity´s evils and that don't have a similar in life. After many drawing sketches of Nelson, we could know the spooky Anacronte´s face.   - How would you define your personal experience with cinema as a filmmaker?

Maybe like in other art expressions the cinematographic projects say a lot about ourselves, each phase of our life has a project that represents us in some way. My experience as a filmmaker is about learning because the set is a great crash in where a lot of artists from different places collision in an event that has some map for making the way, but really the result is a big mystery.

- What is the life of the filmmaker like in Argentina?

The life of the filmmaker in my country is like hunting, here we need to find the lifestyle that give us the possibility to make our personal projects, instead of that our projects be our style life. The filmmaker life is that I think, but Argentina has a deficit of opportunities for its artists among a lot of other priorities stuff.  

In other hands, we are living times where the projects have the possibility to find fertile ground in more than one place, don´t just for the co-production budget but also for the possibility to find a workflow with people all over the world with the same necessity of you, and the communication tools for that are in our hands.  

- Has the film met your expectations when planning it?

Definitely and more, yesterday we arrive at 100 festivals won worldwide this was unexpected for us.  

We believed in this story and when we began to find the visual concept we had a lot of expectations, but we are so surprised for the great reception, the festivals trip, and the audience's words after each screening. This was a very emotional project for us and when the people and the juries talk about their own experience after the screenings we go back to connect with the creation´s moment.

We have one year of distribution front us and we are excited to see what´ll happen with the short. - Can you tell us something about your next job? Do you have in mind the making of a feature film?

Well, the short film is having its echo. We are working in Anacronte´s spin-off that became in Tv series, we are writing the project with the compromise of the show it this year. This project gave us big know-how, we create a fantastic team and all that synergy full us of energy to make new things.

In other hand, we hope that the feature film landing soon.  

- Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak with you!

We will be attentive to your next works!

Madrid Film Awards I Press Team

madridfilmawards.com

Exclusive Interview with Toma Enache

“Between Pain and Amen”

Written and directed by Toma Enache

1 - First of all, congratulations for your remarkable feature film!

How were your first steps as a director?

Thank you! I m happy you liked it! I made my debut with a feature film spoken in the Aromanian language, a film entitled I'm not famous but I'm Aromanian. It was released in 2013 and it was the first film ever made in Aromanian, an old language still spoken today in parts of Greece, North Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. We shot parts of the film in all these countries and in the US.

All my grandparents were from Greece, my father was born in North Macedonia and my mother in Bulgaria, and their language was Aromanian. So I wanted to make this film in honor of their origins and language. Let's not forget that the Manakia Brothers, the first filmmakers in the Balkans were Aromanian. They shot their first film 10 years after the Lumiere brothers – a silent film, of course. So I had a very strong drive to make this film spoken in Aromanian, 108 years on. We got some national and international awards and the film was very well received by audiences at home and abroad. All these gave me the confidence to go on, so I continued with two documentaries and, in 2019, with the feature film BETWEEN PAIN AND AMEN.

2 - What is the life of the filmmaker like in Romania?

I don't think the life of a filmmaker in Romania is much different from that of filmmakers in other European countries. We are dealing much or less with the same challenges, the biggest of which is having a reasonable budget for our productions. I am glad that we have many young and talented people here, passionate about making films. I worked with some of them on my latest production and I think they did a great job.

3 - Tell us about the backstage. What were the most complex or difficult things you had to solve during filming (technically and/or emotionally)?

Most of the film was shot inside an actual prison. I wanted to present the horrors of the communist prisons as faithfully as I could. The inmates used to be held in cold, wet cells, with the windows barricaded, as they were not allowed to see the sunlight. One of the challenges was to recreate that dark atmosphere inside the cells. Being a film about torture and pain, based on true events, I was constantly trying to strike a balance between sufferance (life in prison) and joy (happy memories, freedom), so as to make it bearable for the audience to watch it. Even so, many people tell me it is hard to watch. But in the memory of the prisoners who were tortured and killed there, and in honor of the survivors, some of whom were present at the premiere, I had to tell the truth, even if some find it unbearable. Then, the fact that we shot in an actual communist prison, fully aware of the fact that innocent people were tortured and killed there, was very challenging emotionally for the entire team. We felt we had to give it all, to be our best version in our attempt to tell their extraordinary story to the world.

4 - Which directors do you think have influenced you in your work?

Innaritu, Fellini, Almodovar, Orson Wells and more recently Bong Joon-ho are some of my favorite directors, but there are many others.

5 - Your movie has a great reflexive approach. Do you have another project in mind with a similar approach?

I usually pick a theme that has a powerful meaning, about extraordinary people or extraordinary events. I want the story to be based on, or connected to the reality. Usually, a strong story reveals a powerful or painful truth that in most cases is kept in the dark. In my films, I like to bring the truth to light, no matter how hard this is or how much some people might resent it. This is the only thing that gives my work a meaning.

6 - How was the relationship with your team during the filming?

I carefully select the team I work with, because we have to get along like a family in order to get the expected result. So I surround myself with talented people, who are at least as passionate about making films as I am. I worked with the same DOP on my both feature films, Alexander Sachs from Germany. He is extremely talented and intuitive. We speak English on set because I don't understand German and he doesn't speak Romanian, but we need very few words to understand each other. I get deeply involved in the work of all departments, such as set design and music and I have a very clear idea of how I want the film to look like, from the scriptwriting stage.

7 – Can you tell us something about your next job?

I have started working on the script and I get more excited by the day. Just like Between pain and amen, it will be deeply rooted into reality but it will be very different from my first two feature films. I will definitely submit it to the MFA. I think you do a great job with the festival.

- Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak with you! We will be attentive to your next jobs!

Thank you for having me!

-- Madrid Film Awards I Press Team

madridfilmawards.com