08/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: We spoke to the Ukrainian director about his second film, which, in a way, is a continuation of his previous effort, My Thoughts Are Silent

In the new film by Antonio Lukich, Luxembourg, Luxembourg [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Antonio Lukich
film profile], screening in Orizzonti at the Venice Film Festival, the action takes place in the city of Lubny, in the Poltava region of Ukraine. The heroes are twin brothers, one of whom is a policeman and the other a bus driver who sells marijuana. It turns out that somewhere in Luxembourg, their father – a man they have not seen since the age of six – is dying. We spoke with Lukich about the idea behind his movie, his influences and the unique dialect in which the film was shot.

Cineuropa: Do your two films so far form a kind of diptych for you? Did you have this in mind from the beginning?
Antonio Lukic: The first film I made was about my mother and a tall guy, the second about my dad and a little guy. Therefore, yes, they probably formed some kind of diptych, but rather subconsciously. It always seemed to me that a person – each of us – is the bearer of a unique story. The act of our birth is already a miracle, and as a cinematographer, I am a researcher into the nature of this miracle called “life”. That is why I think you need to share your own, personal story – the heroes of those archetypical dramas about “finding a father” have not yet spoken in your unique voice.

Why did you choose the guys from the band Kurgan and Agregat for the main roles?
Firstly, they are real-life twins. Secondly, they are not tall, and for this film, it was important to find small people. Thirdly, they speak a unique dialect, Surzhyk, and I sincerely wanted to tell a serious story, but in Surzhyk. I gave myself a challenge to make the dialect sound serious so that people would have serious, earnest feelings. Before this, Surzhyk basically made everyone laugh, and if we’re talking about Soviet cinema, as part of the propaganda apparatus, those characters who spoke in that dialect were not always smart or attractive. But I wanted to add both to the story, to make Surzhyk sound smart, attractive and serious all at once. And fourthly, I should probably add that both guys are naturally good at organic comedy acting – it’s easier for them to do comedy. And just like in my first film, I used a certain casting tool: I gave a comedy actor a dramatic role.

How autobiographical is this story? At the end, there is a dedication to the father…
Basically, the story is inspired by real life and was then reimagined with the help of my cinematographer. This is more a metaphor for life: each of us loves and hates our parents at the same time. This “love-hate” relationship involved twins, in my case. And I knew my dad very poorly, that's a fact. It was this ignorance that was basically the driving force behind the movie. After all, cinema is nothing more than a way to satisfy the curiosity of the auteur – and, as a result, that of the audience.

How did you write all the jokes in which Ukrainian life is so recognisable? Did you just walk down the street and write it all down in a notebook?
I consider observation to be the main quality of a good director, along with a decent memory and the ability to manipulate people. Therefore, of course, much is taken from real life. In fact, Amil Nasirov, who plays the bus driver, often travelled around with real bus drivers and watched them work.

There seems to be a reference to Woody Allen in the ice-rink scene. Was that intentional? What other directors have you been inspired by?
Annie Hall is definitely on the list of the best films ever made about love. But we didn’t rely on it that much, to be honest. Rather, it's just one of my favourite tricks: you send an actor into an uncomfortable, live environment and just watch him. A director’s task is to make the actor uncomfortable, and then shoot it all on camera as he tries to get out of that situation. Many much-loved directors whose work was a source of inspiration for me make use of this – for example, the Coen brothers, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Istvan Szabo and, perhaps most of all, Milos Forman.

Do you feel a desire to try out a genre other than dramedy?
I wouldn’t say that “dramedy” is the right definition of the genre I work with, but I'll leave that to the film critics. So far, since the start of the war, I have felt as though it would be difficult for me to come up with a comedy. At the same time, there is a demand for comedy, and this suggests that in the future, cinema will branch off in two different directions in Ukraine: a “distracting” branch, like 1950s US cinema, and a “neorealism” branch, like in 1940s Italy. The ruins of the war will become the main backdrop for new stories, and if only there were people who could film them, and people for whom they needed to be filmed. The ruins are not only external, but also internal.