Swiss filmmaker Maria Nicollier’s Road’s End in Taiwan [+lee también:
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entrevista: Maria Nicollier
ficha de la película], the first co-production between Switzerland and Taiwan, tells the story of three brothers who must get to know each other after having been separated their whole lives. The film, a metaphor for a rich yet conflicted country, premiered at the 60th Solothurn Film Festival. We talked to the director about her inspirations and the challenges that her road movie put her through.

Cineuropa: How was the idea for the film born, and more crucially, why did you decide to shoot in Taiwan?
Maria Nicollier: One day, while travelling to Hong Kong, I went through Taiwan, a bit by coincidence. I immediately loved the country, I fell in love with its culture, its diverse influences. I wrote the script while travelling through the country from 2017 onwards. The story I tell in the film is a sort of metaphor for the country itself, its inhabitants who have Chinese origins but want to be considered Taiwanese. That element is present in my film, which is a family drama marked by an identity crisis, by the meeting of different cultures, but also by the fact that the characters do not know their father. I also took a lot of inspiration from my own history, my two older brothers, their difficulty in communicating their feelings.

The landscape is very important in the film, and very present, it becomes almost an actor in its own right. Can you say more about that?
Absolutely, it becomes an actor too, since in the end, my character awakens to his own identity by opening up to this country. In every place he visits, he evolves. It’s not easy to shoot in a place that’s always sunny, not to mention the small van in which the three brothers travel which, for me, was a very strong element, very characteristic of Taiwan, a real symbol. My director of photography and the crew thought it was impossible to shoot in such a small vehicle, but for me, this forced proximity was very important to show the relationship between the three brothers. This proximity of bodies, the heat, a certain feeling of oppression, are integral parts of the film.

How did you choose your actors and how did you work with them? How was the complicity between them built?
I worked alone with Elliot Malvezzi, who plays the younger brother, a lot. When I was casting his part, all the actors I saw were from the theatre and they overplayed a lot. But him, however, he had no experience but I felt that he had incredible presence. Then, I worked two full days with Pierre-Antoine Dubey, who plays Damien, and Rhydian Vaughan, who plays Steven in the film and is a real star in Taiwan. It was quite complicated because, throughout the shoot, the Taiwanese people we’d meet were intrigued by Rhydian. On the one hand, I had a Taiwanese actor with star status, and on the other hand, a Swiss actor, my protagonist, who had incredible presence in front of the camera, and it wasn’t so easy to make them work together, I felt a kind of rivalry between them. But Elliot knew how to calm them down, how to bring them back to a balanced professional relationship. In my story, the characters are of mixed origins and that’s also the case for my actors: Rhydian is half Welsh and half Taiwanese, Elliot is half French and half [native]. As for Antoine, I had already worked with him. At first, his part was meant for a woman. The film was meant to have two brothers and a sister. I had chosen him for another part that disappeared. Later, I realised that he was my protagonist and from then on, I changed everything and I took some distance from my personal story.

You used music in a very interesting way, it is present but not overwhelming. How do you make music enter your universe?
I am insufferable with music, I’m always worried that it’s too present, that it takes too much space, so I’m happy you’re saying this. It’s the second time I work with Tarek Schmidt. He’s a very talented musician and a great listener. We worked together for three months, with sound designer Laurent Jasperson. I think music is very important in films, it has to be there without being there. For me, it’s the biggest challenge in a film. And since this is a film about the unspoken, the music says a lot, so it shouldn’t be overwhelming.