Das Interview wurde auf Englisch geführt.
Barbara Wurm: Welcome Tudor, let's look behind the curtains of your film DE CAPUL NOSTRU. There was a significant change in the English title from ‘On Their Own’ to ON OUR OWN. Why did you decide to change the title?
Tudor Cristian Jurgiu: The original title ‘De capul lor’, is an expression in Romanian, which is hard to translate. It’s used by adults referring to kids, who are a bit crazy or not behaving. When you have some kids who are a bit wild you say they're on their own, ‘de capul lor’. But I realized that this is actually the adult’s point of view. The inspiration for the script came from a lot of interviews I conducted with teenagers and kids who were in this situation. So I realized that it's not about us looking at them, but it's about them telling their story. I feel that the title DE CAPUL NOSTRU (ON OUR OWN) serves the film better and the perspective that we focus on.
Christiane Büchner: This film and this young cast, which is so wonderful, tell another story about caretaking. Can you tell us about the long trip with these kids?
TCJ: A lot of things changed from the script to the final cut. The trip started very naturally because I know a lot of people – relatives, friends, students from the film school in Bucharest, where I teach – who are in this same situation. I kept hearing stories about these kids growing up on their own or with only one of their parents left with them. I felt the story had to be told. It was difficult to choose from all the stories. Every time I watch the film I think about all the stories I could not tell and I hope I did right by the people that opened up to me. I decided not to go with the very extreme ones, because there are some very sad stories with kids who even committed suicide. I chose to go with this middle ground, in which the parents are not so easy to blame, because they had to go and work abroad. It is hard when you as a kid feel lonely and angry, but you cannot really blame anyone. The parents had to choose between poverty and leaving their family, tough choice. If there is something most parents do wrong, it is the way they communicate. Flavia’s mom left in the night without saying goodbye. Some parents think this makes it easier but it is actually a very deep trauma for the kid. So they grow up and become avoidant or sceptical towards the idea of family or a relationship because they just assume, unconsciously, that being in a family or having kids can lead to these painful situations. What's the point? So we better just stay away from it. This was the main inner tension for the main character Flavia. This avoidant behaviour towards Luca, who is in love with her, but she's always keeping him at a safe distance. She’s keeping everybody at a safe distance, and is not really opening up to anybody. And then these other two kids show up and she creates this illusion of a surrogate family that they can build. But of course, things don't work out like that. The runaway girl Lia is very independent and in a way similar to Flavia. So she refuses almost instinctively to be a part of this replacement family. The lack of a family in the traditional sense makes these kids look for alternatives. Sometimes a neighbour or a distant relative or a friend becomes closer to you. So on the narrow bright side they grown up with a new conception of community. A lot of the script changed after we started the casting because the characters in the script were, with the exception of Flavia, pretty different to what we ended up with. Maybe the most striking deviation from the script is Dudu, the little boy. In the script, he was a very aggressive kid. But at the casting, I just found this boy, Dominique, who was very special in his way of talking and his way of imagining things. I just fell in love with him and I said, okay, we're going to change the character and take him.
BW: What about Vlad, who plays Luka?
TCJ: He started to study acting, but then he stopped and he’s a professional dancer now. He also does his own choreographies. He has this special energy and in the way he moves, a kind of fragility and goofiness even though he is well built. And his expression is very intense with big eyes that can be like a puppy but also angry and tough. The first time I saw them together, he was a bit intimidated by Flavia, and that was great because I wanted this power dynamic in which she's more dominant, and he's a bit anxious. He has this sensitivity.
BW: Can you tell us how you created the scenes and worked with the performances?
In terms of the dynamics, a lot of things are decided when you choose the actors.
TCJ: In terms of the dynamics, a lot of things are decided when you choose the actors. And if you get it right, most of the work is already done. After I chose Flavia and Luka, even while working or rehearsing, there was this feeling of awkwardness between them. I tried to do all these intimacy exercises of dancing or just lying in bed close to one another because they didn't know each other. But still there was this distance. I started to like that. I realized at some point that maybe I don't need to do all these exercises and just let it be. And then at the shooting, this awkwardness was there too because it wasn't over-rehearsed, and they weren't too comfortable with either the text or the situation. This brought a certain tension that made some scenes more intense. It was their first time acting in a feature film, and it was difficult for them, but I feel these difficulties also helped by bringing a lot of nuances to the scenes. So I didn't rehearse too much. They discovered the characters while shooting. It was a risk that I took, of course. When you don't have the characters very well defined before the shooting, there's a bit of anxiety. Because we had to explore this tension during the shoot, which is a bit stressful for the whole team. But I prefer to do that, at least this time.
CB: Your film has a very strange way of being fluid. You can see how the mood of a character changes over a long time. You are always in this tension, because the danger that we as adults envision in a situation when children are on their own like this, never happens. They stay in their world and they are able to control this world somehow. That's very special and I was absolutely fascinated by it. Can you say something about the suspense in your film?
TCJ: That’s very interesting. I don't think I thought about this so consciously as you described it. But there was a lot of talk about this with the screenwriter and DOP, who also worked on the script with me. We talked a lot about how the film should have more energy because it's a teenage film, they should be wilder, they should be crazier. Maybe most teenagers are wild, but I decided these ones are like this, a bit weird, or a bit introvert and silent. They observe more than they talk and they have these expressions that tell more about them than a dialogue.
CB: What about the suspense?
TCJ: The suspense. I think I enjoyed it even from the moment of the casting. At the casting I did these Sanford Meisner exercises that actors do, in which you ask two of them to just look at one another and not say anything. And then they start to say some small observations about one another. Like, your hair is curly, my hair is curly. And it's very absurd. But at some point, because you don't really say anything, a connection appears, and I started from that and I realized that the faces I chose are expressive enough that they can be expressive without dialogue. There is this inner world that we don't have access to completely. We feel its energy, we feel the tension. We don't know the motives. We don't know the background and the psychology of it. For me, it's more interesting.
There is this inner world that we don't have access to completely. We feel its energy, we feel the tension. We don't know the motives.
You just see Lia or Dudu behaving or looking at things in a certain way, and you guess that the place they come from must be kind of bad. But I think their faces or their expressions do the speaking. You just have to trust it. So the suspense comes from the refusal to give information and also from a way of looking at their faces when they are silent. I am a fan of observational cinema and believe that sometimes faces reveal a lot if you just look through the camera with patience and intensity. The face of a silent actor becomes a kind of journey. The fluidity of the film was also very much connected to sound. In the first cut I did didn't have this fluidity, and I became very anxious. Then we started working on the sound, and suddenly, all the scenes started to work together much better. The sound is really the connection that brings the film together. I wanted to create this feeling of tension that is hidden underneath and rarely comes out in a conventional way. They don't argue in a dramatic way, they're not violent in an aggressive way. But there is this tension that I wanted to build up and it’s always there. This is the frustration I mentioned earlier: they are angry, but they cannot blame anybody. You cannot really blame the poverty in Romania or the economical situation because it's very abstract. Flavia cannot blame her mom, even though it makes her angry how her mom acts. We chose to do an anti-teenage film, let's say, in terms of what you expect from a teenage film.
CB: I would say it's a film about adulthood. It's about growing up into all these questions of responsibility. There is this moment when they know that they should call the police. That would be an adult decision. They do not because they are young and decide not to. And so much happens: They share, they give warmth to each other, they understand what they need, and then they let them go when they want to go. And of course, as an adult, you think, ‘aaaah!’ And then you have all their parents on zoom and they are such teenagers.
TCJ: Yes, of course. We wanted to have Flavia’s mom who is in love with some guy in Italy, and she's very unsure of herself, and seems like a teenager. And Flavia is the more mature one in their relationship sometimes. We wanted to create this inverted dynamic of what you would expect. But at the same time they are also teenagers and young and refuse to consider consequences.
BW: It makes little sense to relate your film to the so-called Romanian wave. The feeling is much more experimental, it’s more humble in the plot. You said that you deliberately tried not to make the drama go in all directions. At the same time, it's much freer in the development of certain characters. It turned out more like Eric Rohmer who has this world of young people… Would you like to say something about your relationship to other filmmakers or about your own philosophy in terms of film style?
TCJ: As a reference for myself, I rewatched some of Apichatpong's films. I know it might be a very far away reference. But for me, some of the scenes in UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (2010) have this great quality or tension. I felt inspired by them when I developed my film. Or the scenes in which Flavia is walking through the deserted city, and she's alone, and it's very strange. Then also maybe Maurice Pialat. NAKED CHILDHOOD (1968), which is about an orphan, is a wonderful film. It's so non-sentimental but very emotional at the same time, and it's a bit rough. I know our film doesn't have this roughness, but I thought about this film. Also Pialat has this way of working with actors that I feel is wonderful. I guess these references speak to the combination I wanted between the social aspect and a surreal and strange atmosphere. In terms of film style I tried to blend this strange atmosphere with lively and funny scenes while having the social background as well. I love to mix themes and different styles and hope they can blend. It is not a pure way of thinking of style, more like a kind of Frankenstein created from different pieces, but I like that and it helps me have fun and stay fresh.
BW: Did you work with teenagers in your earlier films?
TCJ: No, this is the first time.
BW: I also wanted to ask about your really extraordinary cameraman, Andrei Butică. Can you say how you worked with him and what makes him special for you?
TCJ: Yes, I worked with him on my first short film and on my first feature film. And now we got back together for this one. The way we work is that we read the script, then we watch films, and then we start talking about the scenes. And he likes to write down by hand a lot of notes. He has this very meticulous small handwriting. I really love the way we talk and the way we decide something. But I have to admit that for this film, we weren't this well prepared. I don't know if I did it consciously or not, but we didn't go through all the scenes before the shoot. And he was a bit anxious because of this and there was a bit of tension. But I feel it was good in a way for him. And I noticed that he felt a bit insecure. But this also brought up something else. A similar effect as with the actors. I think one of the core ideas that we had was this unpreparedness that I tried to use.
I think one of the core ideas that we had was this unpreparedness that I tried to use.
Now, you might say that I'm making this up and I was just lazy, but this doesn't matter. I'm glad we didn't prepare some of the scenes and we didn't have a storyboard and we just used the spaces. We walked through this small town where we shot, and all these Communist housing blocks, they look depressing but also beautiful, There is this feeling of a deserted town, like a ghost town, that we liked a lot. We tried to use it as much as we could, these wide shots with deserted buildings. I didn't want to over-exploit this post-communist, post-industrial feeling, which is in a lot of films from Eastern Europe. But we tried to link it to Flavia's inner feelings. Even though we are very far from her, we're going to feel like we are inside her head. Then we tried to build a contrast with the forest and the natural world, the cave and the forest. There is this escape when they go there. And they feel more free, or suspended in this kind of teenage limbo, waiting for something to happen and get them out of here. In the urban spaces, we use wide shots, but in the forest, we try to come closer to the characters and not have the context very clear so that you feel a bit more confused. I wanted this feeling that you don't know where they are, and they feel a bit lost. Especially the cave scene, there was this eerie atmosphere. We didn’t storyboard this scene and so we were more free to have fun. It helped to develop the visual style for the rest of the film.
CB: I want to go back to what you said in the beginning about your interviews with teenagers. How long did you collect these interviews until you realized that you have to make a film?
TCJ: I did it very systematically for a year. But even before, these stories were around me. The really powerful stories came from people who I was close to. There weren't really strangers who I interviewed. Most of the people who gave me more intimate accounts were friends of mine. We were already close. They were eager to talk to me about this topic. I just told them that I am interested, and they gave me some really intimate and terrible details about their ordeal or the things they went through.
BW: Were you tempted to cast those whose stories you collected?
TCJ: Yes, I was tempted to do that. But I had a very clear idea about Flavia's character, and this idea is not really related to this family context. I made three short films and my last feature film with these feminine characters who behave similarly, and they're not in the same social context. But the same dynamics can exist in many situations. The suffering that these kids go through manifests itself in a similar way as it does with kids who are growing up with their parents. We live in different contexts, but the way we behave or suffer might be similar. And there is some comfort in this. That the context, which makes you feel this bad, doesn't isolate you. Somebody suffering from a breakup, may be feeling exactly like Flavia because of the relationship with her mom. That's why it was more important for me to have an actress who is expressive in the way I imagined for the character than to have the real people.
We live in different contexts, but the way we behave or suffer might be similar.
BW: Maybe the cast also gave you some ideas about youth. I'm thinking of the scene in the gym when they have this party. Did they give you some idea about what young people listen to?
TCJ: Yes, of course. We did a lot of research on the music, and most of them listened to trap. But it was just something I didn't like. So I said, again, I'm not going to do a film about all the teenagers in Romania. I'm not going to try to be authentic. These are my weird teenagers who like this weird electronic music. But that song was one of the songs that my editor found, which is very popular with teenagers now, and I loved it. I felt that the voice, the feminine voice, was very sensual and sexy, and it worked very well with this party that should have been crazy, but actually is not, and this is very sad.
BW: It’s fantastic. It's very authentic.
TCJ: Yeah. I mean, the ending of the parties were usually like this.
CB: Will you be able to bring your cast to Berlin?
TCJ: Yes, we managed to get some financial help from the Romanian CNC and the Romanian cultural institute in Berlin. The five main actors are going to be there, the kids and the two older ones, and also three of the guys from the bigger group. And the mom is also going to come.
