While discussing their Oscar-eligible short films, four directors from around the world recognized a common thread between their vastly different projects: they’re all political.
These filmmakers (Mary Pat Bentel, Hugo Francker, Damian Kosowski and Jakob Krese) sat down with TheWrap’s Steve Pond to discuss their latest shorts as part of our Screening Series. Here, they shared how various political issues around the world affected their distinct live-action and documentary projects.
Take Francker, for example. The non-binary Danish documentarian’s latest film, “Adult Child,” sees the director turn the camera on their own life — specifically, their relationship with their father. Throughout the documentary short, Francker connects with their father in a bid to “learn how to become a man”; Francker’s father, meanwhile, “slowly learns to let go of his ‘baby girl’ to make space for his adult child.”
It’s an intensely personal short film, one that comes amid a time of significant transphobia and anti-trans policies (such as those from Donald Trump’s presidential administration).
“It’s not just in the States, honestly. It’s throughout all of Europe as well,” Francker said. “I think the right wing turn that’s happening, it’s really pressing down on all minorities and everyone not fitting this very narrow idea of how to be a person, so, yeah, I don’t know. It feels like the more progress that’s happening, also the more backlash we’re getting.”
Bentel concurred that many minority groups are feeling the pressure of the current political climate, including individuals with disabilities. She wrote, directed and produced “The Cockroach,” a film about a woman learning to acclimate to her new reality following an incident that permanently alters her body. Prior to making this short film, Bentel’s time in Los Angeles as a producer comprised of her supporting underrepresented voices in a mostly straight-white-male-dominated field. When she hoped to start writing and directing her own short film, a bad accident left her with a broken back and a shattered arm.
“Between surgeries, I just started taking notes,” Bentel said. “I think when things like that happen to you, you have to find a reason why, and also a reason to keep going. Healing’s not a straight line, and every time you go back under, it’s like you’re losing months of your life, sometimes years. Like I said, it was five years ago, and I’m still in recovery in some ways.”
Personal tragedy also inspired Kosowski’s narrative short, titled “People & Things.” Set in an imagined near-future, post-war Ukraine, the film follows a woman called in to identify the apparent body of her husband who disappeared during the conflict. This aspect of the film, Kosowski said, was inspired by witnessing his mother grappling with grief following his father’s death.
“People & Things” was the Polish director’s project out of film school. Kosowski noted that the film also grew from his own observations of the Russia/Ukraine war from Poland. “In war, what was completely abstract always for me now was . . . [dangerously close], so that was the main inspiration,” Kosowski said.
Krese’s “Ceasefire” similarly looks at life after devastation, though it’s based entirely in reality. The documentary short follows Hazira, a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide who now, 30 years later, lives in the Jezevac refugee camp because she’s unable to return to her home (now part of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina).
“Our wars were very exploited, and the violence as well, so [I looked for] how to honor somehow — I would use the name “honor” — a genocide survivor from Srebrenica and not being exploitive and not just doing a film about the tragedy, but being respectful and sensitive,” Krese said.
Filming “Ceasefire” was a challenge for Krese because he wanted to maintain intimacy while following Hazira for the film. This required him to become a lone director, sound technician and cameraman as he sought to “throw away all my pretentious ideas about how to depict the survivors of a genocide” and simply take in Hazira’s life.
“Somehow we managed to do a film which is not just remembering the tragedy, but is as well about the dignity to those who are forgotten,” Krese said. “I think this was super rewarding to see, because the people in Jezevac —Hazira and everybody — these are really people who are totally forgotten. Nobody is taking care of them, there are no donations.”
Watch the full interview here.
