Interview: Ritesh Batra on 'Photograph' and why he makes movies about longing

by Murtada Elfadl

By his own admission Ritesh Batra makes movies about longing. Movies about people trying to connect. That was evident in The Lunchbox (2013), where two strangers meet and bond through a case of mistaken lunch deliveries. In Our Souls at Night (2017) two older neighbors - played by Jane Fonda and Robert Redford - try to fill their lonely nights by sleeping in the same bed, for companionship not sex.

In his latest film, Photograph, two strangers from different backgrounds also try to connect. He’s Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a struggling street photographer. She’s Sanya (Sanya Malhotra) a shy Accounting student. They meet when he takes her photo at the Gateway of India, the famous arch monument in Mumbai. Rafi is being pressured to marry by his grandmother so he convinces Sanya to pose as his fiancée during a family visit. The film tells more with the silences between the strangers than any words, Batra is able to let emotions rise quietly but clearly to the audience. We recently interviewed him in New York about why these themes keep attracting him. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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Interview: Jia Zhang-Ke on 'Ash Is Purest White' and his collaboration with Zhao Tao

by Murtada Elfadl

Fan Liao, Zhao and Jia at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival

Ash Is Purest White, opening tomorrow in select theaters, is Jia Zhang-Ke’s latest film. It has his trademark immersive, decades spanning storytelling. This time it is also a blend of gangster film, romance, and social critique. Again it starts his muse and collaborator Zhao Tao, this time playing Qiao, a quick-witted resourceful woman who falls into a decades long epic entalegment with her mobster boyfriend Bin (Fan Liao) within the jianghu (criminal underworld) of post-industrial Datong. We called it "bold, epic and fully detailed in equal measures" in our review. While in New York last October for NYFF, we got a chance to talk with Jia about his film. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Murtada Elfadl: What ideas did you want to push forward with this film?

Jia Zhang-Ke: This film spans from 2001 to 2018 and within these 17 years I wanted to examine how Chinese people are living in this particular historic context. For this particular film, even though it has the same thread of my previous films of examining the transformation of society and its impact on interpersonal relationships among characters, this time I focused on the principles and values that people either uphold or give up during societal transformation. I created these two characters who are moving in opposing directions. Bin was a drifter at the beginning, then he decided to join the mainstream culture which is very much about power, money and fame whereas the female character Qiao takes the opposite route so we can see how diametrically they have changed...

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Maysaloun Hamoud on tackling taboos, cinematic influences, and her homage to "Thelma and Louise"

by Murtada

In Between, Arab-Israeli director Maysaloun Hamoud’s debut feature, is about three young, independent-minded Palestinian women who share an apartment in Tel Aviv. Laila (Mouna Hawa) is a criminal lawyer who loves to burn off stress in the underground club scene. Her roommate Salma (Sana Jammelieh,) is an aspiring DJ and bartender who falls in love with a female medical intern. Their new roommate Nur (Shaden Kanboura, Sand Storm) is a reserved, religious university student with a conservative fiancé.

Away from the constraints of their families and tradition, they find themselves “in between” the unfettered lives they are trying to lead and the restrictions imposed on them by their conservative culture. The film has already won several awards including honors at the San Sebastian Film Festival and the 2017 Women in Motion's Young Talents Award at the Cannes Film festival, presented to her by none other than Isabelle Huppert!

The film is a funny and sensitive portrait of female friendship. Its depiction of the three women at the center, is explosive in its head-on tackling of taboo topics in Arab society, and warm in its care to present multi-faceted characters. We recently spoke with the director Maysaloun Hamoud in New York. [The conversation has been edited and condensed...]

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Interview: Director Petra Volpe on Swiss Oscar Submission 'The Divine Order'

By Jose Solís

I don’t remember exactly what horrible thing the new US administration had announced it wanted to do the day I found myself walking into The Divine Order at the Tribeca Film Festival. I knew nothing about the movie and decided I’d give it ten minutes to capture my attention and help me escape whatever ghastly reality was shaping outside. I didn’t want to watch anything about war, genocide etcetera.

All I wanted was hope, and boy did Petra Volpe’s lovely film deliver...

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Interview: Nikolaj Lie Kaas on Playing the Complex Lead in Denmark's Oscar Submission 'You Disappear'

By Jose Solís.

Since his breakthrough performance in The Idiots, where he played the sensitive, tragic Jeppe, Nikolaj Lie Kaas has remained one of the most interesting male actors in the world. Jumping from genre to genre, and from big Hollywood productions, to intellectual television series, his body of work is as varied as it’s complex. He’s played real life people, an assassin trying to thwart Tom Hank’s plans, a romantic hero, and one of the most beloved literary characters in contemporary Scandinavian fiction. But in Peter Schønau Fog’s You Disappear he reveals layers previously unseen as he plays Frederik Halling, a school headmaster whose world is shaken when he’s accused of embezzlement. Could it be that the brain tumor affecting his personality is to blame, or has Frederik always been this way?

The late, great Michael Nyqvist plays Frederik’s lawyer, and Trine Dyrholm plays his loving wife. You Disappear has been selected to represent Denmark at the Academy Awards next year, so I caught up with leading man Kaas, to discuss his work in the film, the way in which he approached a character like Frederik, and his opinion on awards season.

Read the interview after the jump.

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