Former EFC-student - now critically acclaimed director

In a quiet corner of the dining hall of the European Film College, two guys have benched down with morning coffee, bacon, fruit and cereals. Joachim Trier, the director of the critically acclaimed “Reprise”, his first feature length movie, from 2006 – and me, Fredrik Stabenfeldt, a twenty-one year old Norwegian student of the EFC. A tad bit ‘reduced’ from the fun of last night’s Christmas Party, I try to gather up the threads and questions that came to my mind during yesterday’s lecture with the filmmaker.
The former EFC student of 1995/96 is born in Copenhagen and grown up in Oslo, Norway, but still wants us to speak English. In common EFC spirit, there is nothing else I can do than oblige. A bit star struck, hung-overI stutter out the first questions:

Fredrik Stabenfeldt: You have grown up in a family where film surrounded you – your grandfather and your parents all having worked in the industry. Did it feel like you had to work with film, or was it simply natural to you? When did you decide to go for it?

Joachim Trier: I think everyone tries to create a myth or tries to tell themselves a story about how turning points in their life happens, like for example when you are asking me why and when did I start to make movies. At first it was very organic in the sense that I was on film sets as a child with my parents, and then I did some animation films with my father’s camera. I think I made my first film before I could actually write, and I think this is not unusual in our generation. A lot of people are playing around with video cameras from a very early age. Without even understanding that it is a language, you just film stuff. Going through my teens, I did some documentary-type skate movies, but also more music video-ish things, you know, with only skating and music. So, at some point between I was, like, seventeen, and when I came here as a twenty-one year old, something must’ve happened. I think it has something to do with that-, when I stopped skating it was sort of a vacuum in my life and I started hanging out with a different crowd. I started going to the Cinematek (Cinemateket in Oslo, a governmentally owned cinema/film club with a huge archive of old and new films), watching, like, two films a day with my friends, and it became a ‘thing’ and there were many of us who wanted to go on and make movies. I think a lot of my fascination and urge to want to make movies comes from watching films in general.

FS: Back then, who in the movie business was the most influential to you?

JT: Who really influenced me back then, aw – that is a good question. I was always a film buff, so, you know… I remember watching “Back to the Future” like three times when it came out, but actually, my more serious fascination for film and understanding of what the possibilities of the media was, came with-… I mean – David Lynch had an enormous influence on me. I remember just watching his films over and over. And, Fellini – “Amarcord” and “8½” were great influences. A lot of cinema back then that inspired me were things that were quite abstract, and it wasn’t about realism in an everyday sense, but more about ideas and the sensuality of images. And then I went into, I guess, my sort of hardcore Alain Resnais, Tarkovsky, Bresson phase which I am still kind of dealing with. And Antonioni was incredibly important… But also a lot of the Americans, I mean, Scorsese is such an influence – Woody Allen – there are so many.

FS: What do these directors do correctly? What is it that makes their films work in such a good way, in your opinion?

JT: That is kind of a big question. It’s like asking: “What is good cinema?” – which is something we have to ask ourselves every day, and something we probably come up with various answers to. When I think back to when I was eighteen, with Lynch and Fellini, I think there were something about the authority and bravery of being incredibly personal, and dare be pretentious, daring to be sensuous, daring to go places where you know the audience don’t feel quite comfortable or at home. When I say ‘authority’ I mean it in a positive sense of the word; it’s sort of an aesthetical authority to say: “This is my world – welcome, come in!” rather than to try to apply to and meet the audience on their terms where they can identify. I think, sort of, visually and in terms of spatial treatment and how they were working a lot with seduction, which was-, you know, coming from a left-wing family and growing up as a ‘good social-democrat’ in Scandinavia, the word ‘seduction’ was very negative. But, I mean, seduction to me is also about bringing us closer to another reality. A reality that’s about more existential or spiritual things, or dealing with themes that we don’t have a capacity to deal with in the everyday – to dream and to ‘philosiphise’ as we say in Norwegian: to think philosophically about things. I think abstraction in cinema can get us closer to that part of our reality sometimes.

FS: Do you think it is some kind of escapism – like dreaming, an opportunity to get away, in a sense?

JT: This is my point: I don’t think it’s escapism. But, I think it is a way for us to challenge our perspectives. And I think dreaming is an essential and important human thing to do in that regard, because dreaming can often be triggered by a want for change. But, I’ve never believed in cinema as sort of a political working tool, that wasn’t where I came from. It’s wonderful if cinema can change the people in the way that people perceive things, but I am not a political filmmaker in the sense that I want to find and pinpoint an issue, so that politicians can go and change things. That has never quite been my concern. I am, however, very interested in human experiences, and there is an amazing ability in films that I’ve felt through my whole life – that you can actually feel alone and you can deal with issues of for example ‘loneliness’, but together with other people. Which is why I love to go to the movies, sit in the cinema – everyone’s there together, but we can all, as a shared experience, deal with very personal things that are hard to articulate verbally in everyday life. I think that is very important to me.

I am slowly turning a bit afraid that all my questions are hindering the man in eating his breakfast on a Sunday morning, but he finally sticks his spoon in the bowl of cereal situated in front of him. I take the time to eat some myself before continuing. The dining hall is starting to fill up with more students now, and their low morning chatter has filled the air with an almost electric hum.
FS: During the lecture yesterday, you were talking about earlier projects of yours, and you mentioned a spy thriller. Is this the pipe dream-ish project that has always been lying in your bottom drawer, waiting to be picked up one day?

JT: Not really. I mean, I think most ideas come up and pass you by, either because you don’t believe in them at the time or that it just ends up in the shelf, or something. But I think… no – I am working on several things now, and I think whatever would be my ideal project will hopefully be my next one.

FS: So what happened to the spy thriller?

JT: Oh, the spy thriller. Well, when I came out of the National Film and Television School (NFTS, in London), I had gotten quite fed up with the school’s really strong ethos of identification, realism, social realism and this idea that abstraction was something contrived, something removed from how we should speak to people. I almost got the sense sometimes, that anything that was abstract was seen as sort of elitist. But, you know how it is: when you are in an institution like that, you become rebellious. I was twenty-three years old when I got in there, and coming out of that – I just really wanted to do something kind of intellectual and challenging on the structural level and work with montage, rather than transparent film language. The sort of thriller that we were working on before “Reprise” was somehow going against the grain a bit with what we wanted to do at that point, and was because of this not finished. But, I also understood that the greatest stuff doesn’t only come out of a negation of something else, there must be some sort of a true essential inspiration at the bottom of things, and therefore I think “Reprise” ended up being more personal than we, Eskil (Vogt, co-writer on “Reprise”) and I, had dared to go initially. More personal in the sense of portraying characters that were closer to ourselves. It’s a paradox, though, that we had to go against our own rebellious ideas to get to where we really wanted to be.

FS: You have gotten 30-something awards for “Reprise”, now – including prestigious awards in Karlovy Vary, Istanbul and Toronto. Were there any of these that meant more to you than others – if so, how?

JT: They all mean something, because it means someone, either in a jury or by voting, sat down and was moved by the film, so that means a lot. There are of course many I could mention, but getting The Discovery Award in Toronto was special. First of all, Toronto is a great festival, but also the fact that there were five hundred journalists from around the world voting, that gives that a certain (laughs) status, you know. But also to end up on Variety’s “10 Directors to Watch” list – stuff like that is fun, because it brings you into rooms and situations with people that you wouldn’t have achieved without it. So, I think the things that matters to me are about the future, you know: To find a platform for the next project.

FS: Speaking of platforms, it is said that the EFC can give you quite a good experience base before entering the industry. What do you think, structure-wise, are the main differences from the EFC and the NFTS? How big of a difference is there? Is it the same thing, but only on a different ‘level’?

JT: I think the experience you get when going to a film school has to do with who you are and what state you are at, and what you want to achieve. You can’t expect an institution to take care of you as an artist. That would sort of be contradictory. But, it can help you evolve. And I think, yeah – absolutely, there are differences, because the NFTS is a place where people generally have more experience. There are fewer students, and you specialise, so those are huge differences. The EFC is more about figuring out what you want and who you are as a person, and I think that is very valuable. I believe a lot of people are curious about various media, like film and TV, and find it really complicated and hard to understand what is what. A lot of people that come to the EFC don’t know the difference between a producer and a director. Having been here, I am sure everyone has a very clear understanding of those differences, and it’s great. And it is also a place where people can freely experiment and dare try things out. I remember people who got into music here, who started acting here. All this stuff happens, and that’s very valuable as well. Not everyone at this school is going to end up making movies, and that’s a quality. Some people will be cinema projectionists. That’s a great value. And that’s quite different to the NFTS, [which is a place] where it is great to have figured out quite a lot about what you want to specialise in before you go there. So you have a different angle coming into the school, and that of course changes it.

FS: Very few are lucky enough to get in at the NFTS. Is it anything in particular you think you did that made you stand out amongst those hundreds of applicants?

JT: I don’t know, I mean, I had made a short film on 16mm before I came here, which they saw. Then I had to write a synopsis, or treatment, for a feature film and answer a lot of questions. Then I went for an interview, where we had a good conversation, I guess. And then that got me into the workshop. It’s very hard, and I got the feeling that it wasn’t necessarily the best people out of those twelve in the workshop that got in. I think it was the people who managed to collaborate and had a great emphasis for team collaboration, which I think a film school needs to have. But it is also important to think sometimes that not everyone should go to film school. For me it was a way of continuing to make short films and getting budgets to shoot and to get experience. A lot of the aesthetical development of how I thought about film, a lot of that is very personal and happens in the process at a film school, but it’s something that you deal with whether you go to a film school or not.


FS: Are there any important things about the EFC that you want to shed some light on?

JT: A really important thing that happened to me when coming to the EFC, was that I kind of knew that I wanted to direct when I came here. But I was fortunate enough to meet some people, some collaborators – like a really great Welsh play write, now working in theatre in Wales, Gary Owen. I also met Olivier Bugge Couté who is the editor of “Reprise” and many of the short films we went onto together at the NFTS, and there are several other people I am still in touch with. Good friends and also people that I do work with. I think teaming up with people is a wonderful thing here. Within eight months, there is sort of an organic process of people finding each other. I think that is a very good thing.

FS: When you structure your films, is this based purely on how you think, what you have seen or learned at school, or is it taken more from, for instance, literature or other films? I mean, “Reprise” is structure-wise at times really associative and multi-layered when it comes to inter-cutting, etc, which is not seen that much in film these days.

JT: I understand what you mean. I always get annoyed when people say “you can’t show thinking in film, you can only do that in books”. That’s bullshit. And I want to sort of prove it (laughs), and many-many people have proved it before me. You have so many fascinating ways of using point-of-view and perspective in film; it could be the filmmaker’s perspective, it could be the character’s perspective, it can be a multi-character perspective story; there are many ways of doing that. So, I think, more than anything, I am curious to explore ‘association’ and ‘thinking’ in cinema, without only doing it through verbal dialogue-expressions.

FS: You and Eskil Vogt have been working on many different projects together, including writing this film. As he is, like you, an educated director, do you think that you will ever co-direct a film – and most important of all, will it work?

JT: No, we talked about it. I don’t think so actually. I am very comfortable being on set and doing that sort of craft of a job myself, I enjoy it hugely. And he does as well on his own projects. I think there is something very good for a director to collaborate with various people. I mean, when I’m on set I work very closely with my actors, my cinematographer and my production designer, so there is sort of enough of a creative input from many people. In our case, a very solid base has been laid with the script. Eskil, so far, has expressed that he is very pleased with the way I’ve directed the things that we have done. It sort of works, and he comes into the edit and talks to us about editing and gives great suggestions. He is quite involved along the way; he looks at the cast and helps me think and decide. We are very close friends, so it’s impossible to sort of not have him involved. But on the actual day-to-day work on set and the pre-production stuff, I think it’s important for the other people I work with to have my full attention, as well.

FS: I also want to talk about Jakob Ihre, your cameraman on “Reprise”, because you seem to be working very well together, seeing that the film is such a visceral one. This together with Olivier’s brilliant editing, it seems like you are all part of a good team. Are you thinking of continuing your collaboration with these people in the future?

JT: Absolutely, if I can. I mean, they are both hugely popular people, now. They are both stars, which is great. I am looking forward to working more with them. I also do commercials with them. They are both incredibly creative and intelligent people, so I am just happy to know them. I believe that directors are only as good as the people they work with.

FS: You also said in one interview that Jakob Ihre has an amazing understanding of light. How do you work together to find the picture you are looking for?

JT: We are very driven by the fascination for the same things, things that we have developed an understanding for through years and years of friendship and collaboration. So, we have a good, shared instinct. It’s very rare that we completely disagree on an image. We very much like the same things. We can not see each other for five weeks, and then suddenly we talk about a new still photography book we both like, and we have both seen it in the store and both liked it, without actually communicating about it. So, it is some sort of shared sensibility towards certain kinds of aesthetics, I think. I’ve learned a lot from him, and we spend time at locations, looking at light and stuff. We are both equally patient, and know that it takes time to find a good image.

FS: To wrap this up – do you have any great stories from the EFC that you want to share with us? A fun happening, some dirty secrets – if you dare to reveal them… I mean, when you put a hundred and ten different people and their teachers together, strange things are bound to happen. Or am I wrong?

JT: There was a saying when I was here: “What happens at the EFC, stays at the EFC”. So, I don’t know if I should elaborate more…

He laughs warmly and drinks from his now cold EFC coffee. I wonder if the taste of it brings back dear memories or if it only functions as an abrupt reminder that he has thankfully moved on in his career since then. When looking out the window and onto the Danish nature surrounding us, the even-on-a-Sunday-morning-stylishly-clad man in front of me looks like he is somewhat rooted in this place. In many ways, this was where it really kicked off. And when seeing him like this, I understand how lucky I am that found this place myself, in the countryside of a small windy town, on the east coast of Jutland.