Eran Riklis
Eran Riklis has already whipped up a storm with the likes of Lemon Tree during his directorial career and now he is back with his new movie Zaytoun - a project that is once again set in the Middle East.
Zaytoun is playing at the BFI London Film Festival and that was where we caught up with the director to chat about the new movie, working with Stephen Dorff and Abdullah El Akal as well as what lies ahead.
- Zaytoun is your new movie so can you tell me a little bit about it?
The story follows a young boy in Beirut in 1982 who has recently just lost his father and is facing a tough life as a street kid.
One day an Israeli pilot falls from the sky and is captured by the Palestinians and the young boy sees this as an opportunity to release the pilot and get him to take him to what he calls Palestine, the land of his forefathers, which is now Israel.
I think the pilot sees an opportunity as well. And it becomes a journey of two enemies who somehow become buddies as they both try to find their way home, different homes obviously.
- So where did this project start for you? And what was it about t his script that really interested you?
Well it’s interesting because when the script reached me I didn’t particularly like it as it was somewhere in a place where it was a little bit dogmatic. Also I have done my fair share of Middle East stories with The Lemon Tree and so on.
But then I started working on the script and I found a richness in the story and also what drew me the most was the basic structure and the basic relationship was one that you could find in any American film of this type.
So this meant that I could use a dramatic device to make it almost a very approachable and accessible type of film and yet I could still hold on to the things that I wanted to portray and bring across - not politically but just in terms of the situation.
It was almost like the structure allowed for a lot of content to be inserted in a very fluid and natural way.
- Stephen Dorff takes on the role of Yoni in the movie in what is perhaps a very different role for him. So what was it about this actor that you thought would be perfect for the role?
It was a certain kind of intuition I think because when I met him I was like ‘Ok here is Californian boy who doesn’t really know a lot about the Middle East’ so it was a strange beginning.
I was really planning to cast an Israeli actor but the size of the budget really meant that we needed an international name and we started looking at various options - Stephen was one of them. So I flew over to meet him in New York and my initial reaction was ‘I can’t make this work. Even accent wise how is it going to work?’
But after thinking about it for a little bit longer I felt that there was something about him which hides something - there is a secret - and once I see a secret in an actor then that intrigues me.
So we just embarked on a joint venture in a way because he knew that he would have to change his whole accent, change his whole demeanour and become Yoni, the Israeli pilot.
And while he does have this American movie star presence was not only good for the film but it was interesting in the eyes of the kid as he looks at someone who has just parachuted from the sky - he is the enemy on one hand and on the other intrigues him as well as becoming a vehicle for him to use him.
Behind the scenes level this is really what happened because you had Abdallah this local Palestinian/Israeli kid who has come together with this pretty famous American star and so it was almost like the same journey.
- You have mentioned Abdallah El Akal already and he really steals this film so what were you looking for when you were casting the role of Fahed? And what did you see in this young actor?
I was looking for intelligence, intuition, warmth, toughness and a sense of the world somehow - despite his young age. I knew Abdallah already because I had shot a short film with him three years ago and while it was only one day of filming I really felt ‘wow, this kid is something special’.
I was a little disappointed when I came back to him because he has done a lot of films since and I felt that he was too much of an actor and so the process of working him was really tearing all that away.
But it was like I had two actors from different schools of acting and putting them together was a challenge but it was also a joy because it worked.
- Fahed is a character who is full of anger and taught to hate the enemy from a very young age so I wondered how well Abdallah understood that because it is quite a complex idea?
The answer is he understood it amazingly well - there is something about this kid which… I think maybe it is the reality as he was born to Palestinian parents who live in Israel and have Israelian citizenship.
He has seven or eight brothers and sisters and he lives in a very tough neighbourhood in Tel Aviv so he is a survivor - he is a virtual movie star in a way. And I think that it is because he had a deep notion of the way things worked and he has a very deep feel for life and the conflict.
It surprised me all the time because at some points you would think ‘he is just a kid he doesn’t understand anything’ and yet he understood so much more than we thought.
- So how have you found the response to the movie so far?
Well Toronto Film Festival was our first testing ground and that was really great and we won the runner up People’s Choice Award - that was a good feeling because we went totally anonymous as we hadn’t played any other festivals. We went to Rio ten days ago and showed it there at the festival and that was also great.
And here in London the screening was great. I sat through the screening and there were about seven hundred people and it felt really good and I felt that the humour works - I think when the humour works in England it really means something (laughs).
The reviews so far have been really good but I have seen a few that didn’t get it. But the complexity of the film that deals with the core of a conflict but on the other hand is a human film about a human situation and I think those two elements come across quite well.
- Well you have slightly touched on my next question really as Zaytoun is a war film, road trip movie, buddy movie as well as a coming of age film so how you see the movie?
I think all of the above are correct. The basic story is very thin in a way as it is about two guys on the run and so you have to fill it with all these elements to make it work.
I think because it is basically a road movie you can really inject everything that you want - that is the principle of a road movie - you can go from station to station and at one stage it is a love moment and another station it is a violent moment.
In that sense I felt a certain freedom but I also felt a natural progression in a way and when I look at the film I see what was written, shot and edited and it is very similar and that is very unique, for me at least.
When I got to the cutting room there were no big dilemmas it all really happened by itself and it really flowed from scene to scene.
- You shot in Israel, the movie looks stunning by the way, so did you face any major challenges during the shoot?
I think there were two major challenges; the first was Israel is has changed a lot over the last twenty or thirty years and so now it is ultra modern.
So the challenge was A. find the right locations. B. if we did find them but they had skyscrapers in the background we had to work out how we were going to get rid of them - that meant extensive post production work.
So it was a combination of finding the right locations, envisioning what the special effects could do as well as maintaining a very cinematic look.
Dan Lausten was the DP for the film and has had done horror movies such as Solomon Kane and Silent Hill but together we found a sense that we wanted the film to be dynamic but in a smooth way - so a lot of motion but not hand-held stuff; we used a lot of cranes and dollies.
And I think there was an internal rhythm that I had to maintain. I didn’t want people to sit there and say ‘fantastic DP’ or ‘fantastic director’ in terms of the visuals but I think it was important that the film had this striking visual quality - both because of the landscapes and this internal rhythm.
- It was interesting because it was both beautiful and yet scarred by war and how scarred by war can actually be beautiful.
It is an interesting notion in that sense. I think it came from a very natural place and it is almost beyond everything; story, characters, plot and all that. I wanted to make it a cinematic event.
- Tension between Israeli and Palestinian forces is well documented upon but I was wondering what research you did into the conflict - particularly at this time?
I did everything that you can expect so I did a lot of YouTube, Google, libraries and books. There are always arguments about this but I think I can say that the film is very honest and realistic - some people don’t like that.
When I show a training session of kids holding AK47’s it is obviously horrifying but on the other hand that is the reality of the time and it does not make them monsters. I think it is just as horrifying to sit in a plane and drop bombs without seeing the devastation that you are causing.
In a way that is what this film is about as this kid is trained to hate this anonymous enemy while this anonymous enemy is treating the ground as something almost anonymous.
All of a sudden they are both on the ground and face to face and they have to learn to survive together and trust each other.
- You are very well travelled and have lived all over the world so how do you think that that has informed you as a filmmaker?
I think a lot. I thin it goes back to my childhood and youth as I spent a lot of time in America and a little in Brazil.
So as a kid coming from sixties Israel, which was still very provincial, I think that my perception of things changed over those years as I absorbed a lot American culture and European culture.
Even today the fact that I can travel and feel comfortable in a lot of places just means that I am open to hearing and seeing various schools of thought, absorb all of them and then bring them out on the big screen. It is an integral part of me I think.
- You have worked in TV, documentary, shorts and movies throughout your career so how do you find that the mediums compare? Do you have a medium that you prefer?
I have a history of commercials and documentaries and stuff like that but today, with time running out; it is feature films for me.
I guess at the end of the day I love to tell stories and I love to tell stories that have relevance and no matter how hard it is to re-invent yourself ever time it is what I do.
- You went back to the short project last year with A Soldier And A Boy so what different challenges does telling the story pose to you as a filmmaker? It is almost more difficult that doing a feature film?
Well when I did commercials I had to tell mini stories in just thirty seconds and I really did learn how to do that. You may be doing commercials about some sill coffee but it really does teach you something.
This ability to condense elements which means that you need the visual ability to really tell the story, the way that you frame it, the way that you put the elements in the film, the way that you cut it and you learn from experience that sometimes a visual can be more powerful than words.
I think toady if you want to make films about problematic issues you still have to make the movie in a wrapping of a accessible and enjoyable film because you are competing in a massive market with film such as Looper and Taken 2.
These kinds of films are never going to make it that big but you have got to give it a decent fight and people expect from you a certain professional look and tempo.
- The film screened here at the BFI London Film Festival earlier this week so how excited are you to be in London and showing off your film?
I went to school here, I went to the National Film School; actually the old director of the school Colin Young attended the screening. He is eighty five years old and he it was really fantastic.
For me it is like coming back to your home town in a sense because London… England is always considered as a place that Israelis like to go. So for me it is like a second home and in was nice to present the film in Leicester Square and present the movie in one of those big theatres.
- Finally what is next for you?
Don’t know yet. I have been developing a lot of projects so I will either be doing something that is once again set in the Middle East or a thriller set in France.
I don’t know yet, I am still debating what I want to do next. It is difficult to say now because I still have one foot in this film so I am not really sure.
Read our review of Zaytoun here
The BFI London Film Festival runs 10 - 21 October
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in BFI