When director Lucas Dunnett was a child, his parents went through a painful divorce. He stayed with his mother, and he said she was in a perpetual somber mood, until one evening she came home in an ecstasy. “I didn’t understand what had happened, until she explained to me that she had returned from the screening of ‘Titanic,'” he says in an interview with “Maariv”. “The film completely changed her mood. She came back from it a different woman, at least for one evening. When I watched her talk about the experience, I realized what an impact cinema can have on the audience – and I told myself that this is what I want to do when I grow up.”
Donat’s love affair with the art of cinematography began at the age of 12, when his mother bought him his first camera, and developed in his youth, when he enrolled in a film school in his native Belgium. Initially, his ambition was to create spectacles of the type of “Titanic”, but after watching “Jean Dillman”, the challenging and rough film of his compatriot Chantal Akerman, which was chosen this year as the best film of all time, he decided to turn in a different direction – a more personal and intimate one.
Donut’s first feature film, “Girl”, came out four years ago and caused enthusiasm, but also a storm. It dealt with a high school girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina but is trapped in the body of a boy, and was initially received with praise from wall to wall. But then the hit was met with the automatic self-righteousness of the American media, which pleased for the way he portrays the trans community, and blocked his way to the Oscars.
Donut’s second film, “Close” came out this year, and this time there was no stopping him. The film had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last spring and immediately became the talk of the day on the Riviera. It won the grand prize of the jury, the decoration The second most important film at the festival. In addition to this, it also received rave reviews and was honored with a host of other awards and nominations – including a nomination in the international category at the Oscar ceremony, which will take place in about a week and a half. “Kirba” even received massive distribution around the world, and yesterday it was released here as well.
Director Lucas Dunnet (Photo: Pascal Le Segretain.GettyImages)
It is difficult to talk about the film without revealing essential plot twists, so we will say only three things. First of all: almost everyone who watches it, comes out bitter in tears. Second thing: it deals with a close friendship between two children, which is undermined by tragic circumstances. Third thing: this tragedy raises questions about our society, and the way it treats those who deviate from the norms. Mainly, she talks about the way we judge boys who externalize qualities considered “feminine” – sensitivity, vulnerability and warmth, and how we frown in front of boys who dare to show closeness to other boys.
“The film talks about a universal phenomenon, but it’s also a personal story for me,” Dont says. “In my youth, I was afraid to be in intimate or physical contact with other guys, just because of the fear of how the world would look at me. I pushed people away from me – far too many people, and there were also People who kept me away from them.”
The film also talks about our double standards. No one says anything if a girl hugs her best friend, but if boys do it – everyone has something to say.
“Exactly – I wanted to talk about these double standards. One of the main inspirations for the film was a book by the American psychologist Nyuba Wei. She talked to 150 boys throughout their childhood and adolescence. At first, they were open about their feelings and their relationships with other boys, but the older they got, the more distant they became, not wanting to talk about feelings or relationships. I had a hard time reading it.”
It is not really clear what the nature of the relationship between the two heroes is and what exactly their feelings are. Did you intentionally want it to be ambiguous?
“Yes, this ambivalence is significant for me. What is interesting to me is that their environment directly frames their relationship in a sexual way, and why? Because this is the custom of Olam. What interested me is not the identity of the heroes, whatever that may be, but the external view of the world in them. The film is about our need to put labels on others.”
Without making spoilers, God forbid, we can say that something dramatic happens in the film. In other films it would happen at the 12th minute or the 80th minute, but here it happens at a completely different stage. How difficult was it to decide when to place it?
“It was the most complicated thing in working on the film. We thought for a long time about the most suitable place for this turn, and in the end we arrived at the place we chose.”
“Kirba” is a rather abstract name. Was it always the name you chose for the film, or were there other options as well?
“There were also other options, but I really wanted a name that would both say something and leave a little mystery. My desire was to talk about close friendship between boys – a topic that has not been explored that much in cinema. At the Cannes Film Festival this year, I saw several more films on the subject, so maybe you can say that there is finally a wave of films that touch on it.”
Donette’s mother works in the fashion industry, and he is also a very fashionable guy, as you can see in all his photos from red carpets and award ceremonies. “Girl” was full of style, and this is also true for “Kirba”, one of the most aesthetic and beautiful films of the year, thanks to the way in which director and cinematographer Frank van den Eden plays with the lighting and colors. “We worked a lot on these elements,” the director admits. “My inner world is colorful and I wanted to externalize it. For me, the film is divided into two parts. The first part talks about childhood, so we see children running among colorful flowers. Flowers symbolize childhood in my eyes. The second, the flowers are picked, and the girl is also picked. Instead of flowers, there are machines. The colors change. We use them to show how time passes, and this is also a central theme in the film. It was important to me that the room of one of the protagonists be red. The room is a central scene in the film , and red represents many things. As far as I’m concerned, cinema should speak in images and not words, and that’s why the use of lighting and colors was so essential here.”
One of the heroes plays hockey, and this sport occupies a place in the plot. Why did you choose to play sports? And why hockey?
“Because of the hockey uniform. They are so massive, they literally close the figure behind them. The mask hides most of the boy’s face playing hockey. They also make it look bigger. This uniform is also heavy, and so it becomes, for example, a weight that the hero carries. The film deals, among other things, with responsibility, and with such a dramatic moment when a teenage boy realizes that he has responsibility for someone else. It’s a feeling that’s hard to express, and the weight of the hockey uniform is, for me, an image that represents it.”
Morrissey once sang “Don’t forget the songs that saved you.” May I ask, what are the songs and movies that saved you?
“As a teenager, I felt lonely. I felt that there was no one around me, that I didn’t belong anywhere – neither boys nor girls, and I wanted to be liked. I acted like an actor – I pretended for others. Music and cinema were there for me, to save me. That’s why I saw movies, and that’s why I make movies. The power of the cinema is that you can sit alone, without anyone looking at you and judging you, and look at other people that you identify with and connect with. The cinema gave me something and I want to give it something back: to make films that people can relate to.”
Your movie causes a massive waste of tissues because of all the tears shed in it.
“The film is about a wound that I have carried with me since childhood – a wound that many in the audience carry as well. It’s a wound we haven’t yet faced, a wound we haven’t cried over yet. Regret is a strong and powerful feeling. I’m not Greek but Belgian, but I believe in what the Greeks call ‘catharsis’. When we deal with a collective wound, it leads to catharsis. The film deals with trauma and dealing with it, and I am one of the optimists who believe that wounds can be healed.”
Avner Shavit is the film critic of Walla!