email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

IFFR 2023 Big Screen Competition

Jessica Woodworth • Director of Luka

“Sometimes it feels like we haven’t learned anything”

by 

- We met with the Belgian-American director, who presents a free and inspired adaptation of the cult novel by Dino Buzzati

Jessica Woodworth • Director of Luka

With Luka [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth
film profile
]
, screening in the Big Screen section at the IFFR, Jessica Woodworth is for the first time alone in the director’s chair (after five features co-directed with Peter Brosens, here present in the production department). The film is an inhabited and visually striking adaptation of the universal and timeless questions posed by Buzzati's book about the absurdity of war, the need to invent enemies for ourselves, and the power of doubt.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Cineuropa: When did you first encounter Buzzati's text, The Desert of the Tartars?

Jessica Woodworth: I encountered it a long time ago, when I was studying Italian literature. It’s a book that penetrates you, that turns, that stumbles, that hides and then reveals itself. There is something very universal about it, despite the abstraction.

Was it a desire to make a literary adaptation?
I found myself with a little bit of time ahead of me between King of the Belgians [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth, Peter Br…
film profile
]
and The Barefoot Emperor [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth
film profile
]
, so I signed up for the Torino Film Lab. And it felt so obvious, it was this book. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to set the story in a distant, post-apocalyptic future, that it would be in black and white, and that it would be set in Armenia! The book takes place over 30 years and I wanted a shorter period. And I also wanted to change the ending. I wanted something more mysterious, with more open questions, and more hope.

How did you conceive of the main protagonists of the story?
I wanted to be able to work with the actors very early on, to find the dynamics and identify the relationships between the characters. We did a lot of research on the physical level, to find what degree of intimacy and sensuality existed between these men, especially Luka and Constantine. One of the challenges was to find the right balance between what to reveal and what to suggest.

The fortress is also a character in the film?

At the beginning I was going to shoot in Armenia, I had found some incredible locations, a salt mine, a cosmic research centre. Then came Covid, and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We went back to Italy and Sicily, where we found other incredible places, a dam that was never finished. And then Etna, that volcano rumbling in the distance, very much alive, which became our North. It is a frightening place, which animates the characters. These places made me think of the post-apocalyptic context of a world that would have destroyed itself, probably because of man, without it ever being made explicit.

How did you work on the incarnation of the characters, within this rather abstract and imposing set?

I think it's very demanding to ask actors to imagine how we move, how we behave in a context so far removed from their own, how to make it authentic and not too abstract. That's also why we filmed very close to the body, in a very fluid way, creating a sort of dance between the camera and the actors. I kept telling my cinematographer Virginie Surdej: "It has to breathe!” We shot on film, but in 16mm. The advantage over 35mm is that you can move more easily. All the rehearsals were done in motion. We let them live the scenes fully.

Their bodies are so full of strength and desire, while there is no war, nothing. We have to let all this energy emerge and get out, to release the volcanic desires that reside within us. I worked a lot with Sam Louwyck, who is also a choreographer as well as an actor. We did dance workshops with him in Belgium. It was a bit like sculpting. Searching a lot, gathering a lot of material, and then purging, purifying.

They are prisoners of a history, of a founding myth, which Luka will gradually deconstruct?

It's a classic motif in history, when you start asking questions, that's when the trouble comes, the danger. You destabilise the system. It's a first step towards the unknown, before even considering freedom. Without this illusion, they have nothing. Fear is a weapon to keep them in their blindness, tiredness and work too, which leave no room for questioning.

The book was written 70 years ago, the film takes place in the distant future, what does it say about today?

We are surrounded by emergencies, at least already environmental ones. There is a collective anguish about the fate of the planet. The climate catastrophe, the absurdity of the wars that are still going on today, the military posture and the need to have an enemy. Sometimes it feels like we haven’t learned anything.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

See also

Privacy Policy