03/07/2024 - The Bulgarian director decodes his second feature, which follows a young man who’s detached from his past and his homeland as he deals with the sale of a family apartment

(© Veselka Kiryakova)

We spoke to Pavel G Vesnakov on the occasion of his latest film, Windless [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pavel G Vesnakov
film profile], world-premiering in the Proxima Competition, unspooling within the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. As the most promising director of Bulgarian arthouse cinema, Vesnakov sheds light on elements of his distinctive style by sharing his views on storytelling and his approach to characters.

Cineuropa: In our previous interview (read here) you promised Windless would be more radical in form than German Lessons [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pavel G Vesnakov
film profile], and here it is, with its square format aspect ratio, penetrating close-ups, and fragmented shots of reality aligned with the main character’s dispersed life. What were your intentions behind these aesthetic decisions?
Pavel G Vesnakov: To date, I’ve strived for credibility in my films by incorporating documentary aesthetics, which have also imposed limitations on my work – no music, no extra lighting - in an effort to capture everything in the most realistic way possible. Such an approach inevitably prioritises content over form. It’s been 15 years since my first short film, and I wanted to escape the comfort of well-versed cinematic expression – repeating the same patterns no longer made sense. That said, I did want the film to reflect how I felt. As a child, I lived in a tiny apartment for a long time. The place where the main character’s father lived is very similar: an extremely claustrophobic space. I thought the square format was perfect for conveying the sensation of being trapped. When the character returns to his birthplace, the past overwhelms him and there’s no way out. He finds himself forced into hearing stories about his deceased father. The film’s dialogues and monologues aren’t interrupted by editing either, so they remain as un-interfered with as possible. My aim was to offer a detached and more poetic view of an ultimately grim domestic reality.

The plot is also radical as it deals with a cleansing of memory from both a personal and a societal viewpoint. Does a careless attitude towards the past explain the disintegration of Bulgarian society?
That was the leitmotif in my head while filming. We began shooting just a week after the war in Ukraine started, and the preparation period, charged with global anxiety, greatly influenced the working process. It’s intimately connected with the disintegration of the protagonist's family. However, the most important aspect of this collapse is in the private space. The initial script was cluttered with everyday details, so I wanted to clean it up to focus on the personal side and eventually make references to the bigger picture. Throughout filming, we followed the script in the mornings, and in the afternoons, we documented the reality around us.

The overarching theme in Windless does seem to be the issues associated with private and collective memory - is this correct?
Memory and the passage of time are indeed the central themes. Windless, as a title, refers to the frightening stagnation in the memories of young people, the lack of breath to ruffle the different layers. In fact, the film is inspired by Anuk Arudpragasam’s novel, A Passage North, in which the main character returns to his native Sri Lanka for his nanny's funeral. The book is a kind of meditation set against a horrific socio-political backdrop of civil war, bloody crimes, and a wider harsh reality. However, the tone remains deeply poetical. I felt compelled to experiment with the language of film and to break with the established storytelling style in recent Bulgarian cinema. I aim to make viewers think about something beyond the narrative, as I find the mere act of narration too pragmatic. I also try not to involve my characters in sensational plotlines or genre frameworks, and I avoid exploring speculative intentions in the situations described. The social status of the protagonist in German Lessons, for example, could be higher, but he’d still be in the same mess with his friends and family. It’s just that I grew up in these kinds of dodgy neighbourhoods, so it’s the reality I know how to describe best.

In German Lessons, your character is a hesitant non-leaver, and in Windless, he’s a hesitant non-returner. Where is the intersection between the two of them, and where do you fit in in this context?
My feeling is that both of them have never truly left, and I’m a non-leaver as well. I’ve been here the whole time, serving as a crosspoint between the characters. I identify with their uncertainty. Hesitation is a burden, but creative paths are marked by it. Assertiveness and confident statements in cinema annoy me. The search for cause-and-effect relationships in a given plot sets boundaries which the characters don’t seem to be allowed to cross. I try to do the exact opposite. There’s something beautiful and poetic about unexpected and illogical actions.

Beyond all logic, for example, I cast Ognyan Pavlov “FYRE” for the main role. He’s a very popular and influential rapper but an outsider to the story, so I added aspects of his personality to the character. He’s a non-professional actor but he has extensive experience in making music videos, which helped a lot for the film.