Shorts
Reviews, previews and highlights of features and shorts from the myDylarama team and guest writers.
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Interview with Zachary Woods, director of David
1 March 2021, by Abla KandalaftWATCH THE FILM BELOW! Is David based on anyone you know? Nope. My co-writer Brandon Gardner and I talked about lots of people we care about when we were writing. But there wasn’t one person in particular. What gave you the idea of setting the story at a therapist’s? My dad is a therapist and would sometimes get calls from patients in crisis when we were on family vacations. He’d have to walk far away, into the woods or down the beach or whatever, to talk to them. I always thought (...) -
Interview with Ibrahim Handal, director of Bethlehem 2001
24 February 2021, by Abla KandalaftWhy did you choose to revisit this – I presume traumatic – event as a short film? Actually, I am still trying to understand what I have done and why. However, I have held in these memories and feelings throughout these years with the purpose of sharing them in a short film. Other filmmakers might have already told this story differently, but I tried to use my own memories to show events that have happened. These events might not even feel as traumatic anymore, because I shared them with (...) -
Interview with Sami Tlili, director of Hors-jeu flagrant [Obvious Offside]
24 February 2021, by Brasserie du Court team, Elise LoiseauDo you have a particular interest in football? In your opinion, what place does football have in Tunisia? I am both a big fan of football as well as a critic of its excesses (the business of football, the political exploitation of football, the fanaticism of both the fans and the major actors in this sport, to cite a few examples). I often go to the stadium to watch my favorite team play but I don’t like to talk about football, and it annoys me when debates over football are put front (...) -
Interview with Wissam Charaf, Director of Pas de Panique [Don’t Panic]
17 February 2021, by Elise LoiseauHow did your film come about? In the beginning, there was the desire to talk about what had happened to Lebanon since October 2019, precisely, a catastrophic economic crisis and the protest movement that ensued. What happened in Lebanon in the space of a year is of such tremendous violence and vulgarity, namely the loss of all the people’s savings due to the regime’s vile kleptocracy, that I wanted to make a film that would do justice to this brutal and vulgar violence. Last year in (...) -
Interview with Ramzi Bashour, director of The Trees
12 February 2021, by Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court teamHow much are you aware of the severity of the droughts in Lebanon? Is this what sparked your interest in this subject matter? A lot of the environmental science concerned in the film derived from discussions with my father who is a soil-chemist and professor of agriculture in Lebanon. Droughts were not specifically what sparked my interest. It was more about sustainable agriculture and climate change on the whole. We don’t only have dry years, we also flood sometimes – but this is (...) -
Interview with Alexe Poukine, director of Palma
10 February 2021, by Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court teamCan you explain your choice of title? During the preparatory stages and the shooting of the film, the project was called Kiki, after the class mascot. The film was written as a tragi-comedy, but the project went through a transformation as time went on. At the end of editing, we realized that the original title didn’t really correspond anymore to the film, which ended up more dramatic than I had first imagined. We decided to call it Palma because that is the name of the town where the (...) -
Interview with Lorna Nickson Brown, director of Ned And Me
7 February 2021, by Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court teamObvious question. Why did you choose to explore this subject matter? Have you had any personal experience of the issues around euthanasia? I was drawn to this subject matter because I think it is one of the greatest questions of our age, or any age, and I don’t have an answer for it. I wanted to make a film which explores my doubt surrounding euthanasia and also how it relates to other human transactions. How and when we die are often taboo subjects and, in recent years, due to (...) -
Interview with Suzannah Mirghani, director of Al-sit
7 February 2021, by Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court teamThis is a very moving story. Is it based on personal experience or someone you know? The story of the arranged marriage depicted in my film Al-Sit is a common one in Sudan and the norm for many Sudanese families. While I did not personally experience an arranged marriage, I grew up in this cultural environment and know many young girls whose marriages were arranged by their parents, or, especially, their grandmothers. I am always curious about what goes through the mind of a young girl (...) -
Interview with Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan, director of Hilum (Remedy) - AWARD WINNER!
6 February 2021, by Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court teamCan you explain the choice of title? Hilum means two different things in our language. In the Tagalog language, “hilum/hilom” means “remedy”, while in the Visayan language it means “silence”. I grew up in Manila where we speak Tagalog, while my mother grew up in the Visayan region where they speak Bisaya – the language they also speak in the Camotes Islands where we shot our film. I figured I’d combine our cultures together and create a title that captures the feeling of “a silent (...) -
Interview with Joanna Quinn and Les Mills, director and writer of Affairs of the Art
6 February 2021, by Abla KandalaftBeryl has featured in a number of your films. Can you tell us a bit more about her? Who was the inspiration for her character? How has Beryl’s character evolved since we first met her? Beryl started life as a very one-dimensional character in a comic strip that Joanna developed in art college. In Joanna’s first Beryl film, her graduation short, Girls Night Out, she emerged as one of a group of working-class women in a local factory who organized a visit to a male stripper to celebrate (...)