21/02/2023 - BERLINALE 2023: The filmmaker talks about his third feature, a journey not only geographically, but also spiritually and sensorially on his path of constant audiovisual experimentation

Samsara [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lois Patiño
film profile] marks the return of Lois Patiño to the Berlin Film Festival, where his third feature film premieres in the Encounters section. He previously attended the event in 2020 with Red Moon Tide [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lois Patiño
film profile], in the Forum section, and in 2022 with his short film El sembrador de estrellas.

Cineuropa: Your new film, especially in its transition phase between its two halves, has something hypnotic about it.
Lois Patiño: With Samsara I doubled down on my commitment to the cinema that interests me, as a meditative and contemplative experience. In the middle of the film it becomes a collective meditation experience. Intimate and introspective, with the viewer closing their eyes for 15 minutes, listening to sounds. This can be powerful in a room full of people.

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Of your three feature films, perhaps in this last one the sound is more important.
In this middle part, you are guided by the sound, which articulates the light experience. And in the Laos and Zanzibar parts we wanted it stripped down, without many layers of sound. In Red Moon Tide we needed textures, but here, because we mixed documentary and fiction, we wanted it to be listening to the places. That’s why Xabier Erkizia used microphones that amplified the sound and listening experience.

Why did you decide to film in places as far away from Europe as Laos and Tanzania?
Like all my films, the project came out of a formal exploration of the language of film. In Coast of Death [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lois Patiño
film profile] I explored distance, and in the second one I delved into immobility and here I wanted to explore the invisible. That's when I thought about the possibility of making a film to watch with your eyes closed. I came across The Tibetan Book of the Dead and found it to be the perfect text to link to this eye-closing cinema experience. From there I needed a country of Buddhist religion to introduce the book, and after the changeover I wanted a different place in every sense: landscape, culture, religious framework, personality, character of the people, etc. And by chance I was invited to give a video art workshop in Tanzania, I got to know Zanzibar and I thought it was perfect. I'm very interested in ethnographic and anthropological cinema, and with Samsara I've been able to do it outside Galicia, something I've always wanted to do.

During shooting, we get up close and personal with both the monks in Laos and the families in Tanzania... How did you manage to communicate with them?
That was the biggest handicap, getting close to and understanding the reality of countries where we don’t know their language. As it was a low-budget film, only four people travelled from Spain: the director of photography, the sound engineer, someone from production and myself. The rest of the crew (sound, camera and production assistants) were local and this helped us to go over the dialogues with them and avoid intrusions from us. I also slept in the monks' temple for several nights to get to know their routines, and of the 300 novices living there, some speak English and they were chosen as actors.

Why are there two directors of photography in Samsara, Mauro Herce and Jessica Sarah Rinland?
As it was about reincarnation, I wanted it so that when we were reincarnated in the second part of the film, our vision and the way we relate to that reality would change.

And did you shoot at very different times?
Zanzibar is easy to get into, but not Laos, which is a one-party, controlling, communist country, so we had to write several versions of the script until we got it accepted and could shoot there. A person from the government was always controlling the filming. And we shot both parts last year: in March in Laos and in June in Zanzibar. Two months in each country, between pre-production and about two weeks of shooting in each place.

On the screen we see some monks wearing masks and others using mobile phones...
The film has an anachronistic feel to it, like it was filmed in another era. We go to places with very fixed cultural and behavioural codes, which have been like this generation after generation, but the monks have mobile phones because they have an escape route from their confinement and a connection with the outside world. I also wanted to portray ways of life that we’re not used to seeing: cinemas are dominated by the west and I feel it is important to reflect other minority ways of life that are not often seen, to show that life can be experienced in many different ways. We see two countries taken out of time, but Samsara is definitely contemporary.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)