00:00This is Tim Wasper from Festtrek Concert TV.
00:28I'm here at the Regal Cinemas Union Square in New York City for Dances with Films New York.
00:33Basically, I mean, the girl inside the photograph, what we tried to do with this concept,
00:39it was to talk about in the sub-layer for something else that it wasn't just horror.
00:44You know, the pure experience of horror by being in a house that is haunted or that has evil forces.
00:52It's more about, like, what happens when a family is broken, when the relation between mom and daughter is not working,
01:00and then it's very easy for them to become prayers of whatever it could happen.
01:05So they blame the evil entity or the forces that live in the house.
01:10But the real truth is that they have trouble communicating to each other because the daughter is a young woman
01:21and the mother is going through a broken marriage.
01:25So basically, this affects the relation of both of them to communicate.
01:29And so the communication, when it's broken, they start to go in different directions and opposite directions.
01:35And that's what happened to that.
01:37So I will say that people, if they want to see it in a very superficial level,
01:42the movie, it's about a haunted house, you know, where you find that there's an evil entity in there.
01:48But the truth, if you go into the sub-layers and you peel that onion,
01:52you will see that the core of the problem is not the evil entity.
01:57It's more about the relation between mom and daughter.
02:01Even now, when it's quiet,
02:11I can hear them in my house
02:13standing there
02:18just out of sight.
02:21I haven't seen anything, but
02:33my cat went missing and
02:36my mom's
02:38she's
02:43I mean, because we have always, I mean, in my experience and what I like is to use
03:08the genre, right, like the horror genre to tell sub-layers of like different message, right?
03:15It's not about like just like for the other movies that they like, like the slashers,
03:20that they are like just killing people because of the satisfaction of it, right?
03:27In this case, we wanted to send a message, a strong message, right?
03:31Whatever is just like at the same time entertainment, but with a message that can give the audience
03:37the sense of what is happening here, right?
03:40If it's about trauma, as you say, like, you know, there's a lot of like trauma that it's happening here
03:45because all of the residents that have gone to that house have lost something.
03:50So it's not the first family that has been missing something, right?
03:56And with Freya, what happens is that everything starts with the missing cat, right?
04:02That later on, we find out that that's not the element, that it's something bigger under.
04:08So basically, this trauma that everybody's going, the mom is going through the trauma of missing or losing his husband, right?
04:15And then we have the former residents that were Ugo Petrov, right?
04:22That Ugo also has lost someone in his life that is a mother.
04:26And then we have Raymond Walker that also lost her daughter.
04:31So all of these people are victims of this house, right?
04:35And all of them are looking for something.
04:37If we find out like different, the different subplots of every of these characters,
04:42we will find that each of them are looking for exactly the same thing.
04:46Even now, when it's quiet, I can hear them in my house standing there, just outside of here, watching me.
05:16I think we work a lot on basically using the darkness and the shadow to hide a lot of things that we didn't want to show.
05:29Like, if you pay attention to the movie in detail, you will find out that the darkness is meaning something.
05:36There's always something in those corners that feels that they're watching these residents, right?
05:41And basically, we were trying to work with those inspired by many movies that we have seen before,
05:47like the latest movies that we really like, like, for instance, Bavarian or Long Legs,
05:53where we saw that, okay, we can use the shadows in a very smart way to hide that evil entity that is hunting them,
06:03but without showing them too much.
06:06So when people see the movie for the second time or the third time,
06:09they start like looking to things that they never expected to be there, right?
06:14But also, we wanted to create a contrast with, as you said, with, you know, the down,
06:19with being sometimes a day, but we find out that in those moments where there is the contrast, right?
06:27There's like moments of peace, you know, like, for instance, when we find Freya connecting with Hugo for the very first time, right?
06:39And we see that there's a bound in there that they can connect, and everything connects through the camera,
06:44you know, through the Polaroid, like taking this first picture, and then suddenly they are, like, communicating, you know?
06:50So there's like these moments where we use, like, basically, as you said, like a lot of the lighting and the shadows and the darkness
06:58in order to try to convey certain emotions in the spectator.
07:08Cheers.
07:14To
07:14Mothers and daughters.
07:20Yeah, I mean, I co-directed this project with Ed Alexander.
07:47Unfortunately, he's in UK, and he couldn't join us.
07:50But he was the one that started the idea of writing this project, right?
07:56Everything started in the very beginning to be about a haunted house, you know?
08:00And it was this concept in a short format.
08:04Then when I read it for the very first time, I was like, you know what?
08:08We need to extend it.
08:09We need to expand it because this universe can be expanded, right?
08:12So when we were thinking about, like, okay, what is happening other than just the haunted house,
08:19we found out that the photograph, that was a very important thing.
08:26Because as you were describing this, it's still, it takes, like, a still moment, and it doesn't go anywhere.
08:33And this is exactly what is happening with each of the residents.
08:36They have been stuck in the same trauma for too long.
08:40So that's why we came with the instant Polaroid, you know, the instant picture where you develop the picture.
08:46You don't know what you're going to get.
08:48Once you see the picture, you will see the frozen moment that doesn't move anywhere, right?
08:53And that's exactly what happens to the residents, you know?
08:55We have the residents that are, like, stuck in the moment.
08:59And that's how we came with the idea of, like, calling it the current side of the photograph.
09:04And as you see, there's, like, a scene where we see the burning picture, you know, that is just, like, getting all their answers and finishing that stuck moment.
09:17Because at that moment, it's revealed the message, you know?
09:21So that's the concept.
09:22The whole thing about, like, holding those moments, it was a lot of inspiration from David Lynch, which I'm a big fan, you know?
09:31And you will find out that moment where they're having this conversation and Raymond starts to whistling and just going around the table.
09:39And we wanted to hold it as much as we can so that you can see the pain that he's going through to the memories, right?
09:46And, again, it's connecting with the moment of the photography, like the stillness of the photography that it never goes away, right?
09:54So he's stuck in that moment where he's, like, just remembering everything, all the trauma that he's going through.
10:00So we wanted the narrative to be exactly that, you know, very pause in moments so we can enjoy those stillness, as you call it, you know?
10:10We'll see you next time.
10:11We'll see you next time.
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