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N0 2 | 20 – 22 FEB
Sat 20 Feb, GFT, 8.15pm | Sun 21 Feb, GFT, 11am
Tales from the Deep There’s something lurking in the depths in Évolution. Director Lucile Hadžihalilović shines a light on its mysteries
L
ucile Hadžihalilovi ’s much-anticipated sophomore film, Évolution, follows Nic (Max Brebant), a prepubescent boy living a simple shoreside life in a mysterious, austere village populated by uniform mother-son pairings. In this seemingly idyllic setting, Nic can’t help but indulge his existential curiosity, despite his mother’s warnings to conform. During last year’s London Film Festival, we met with
this ingenious director to discuss Évolution’s strange Jungian nightmare. Despite the critical and commercial success of her 2004 debut, Innocence, Hadžihalilovi explains that she found the pre-production of Évolution to be an arduous process. “It was very difficult to get finance,” she recalls, “so that was the reason for this long production time.” The film was ten years in the making. One of her biggest hurdles was simply getting across to the money people what the project was. “All the time it was, ‘we don’t get it.’ Even if we worked a lot on the script to try to make it more understandable, more acceptable, and in narrative terms, to explain more, it was still very hard. Sometimes the film
INTERVIEW:
Rachel Bowles
seemed impossible to make.” Hadžihalilovi prevailed, and getting the film out in the world is something that clearly excites her. “I’m so surprised that people react so well to the film – people seem to understand it and don’t find it so bizarre!” She’s particularly pleased at how well Évolution seems to have gone down with UK audiences. “It is a very big pleasure and honour,” she says of the response at London Film Festival. “A lot of [nonindustry] people go to see the films here, so it is not like it’s separate from its intended audience. That’s important to me.” In fact, Hadžihalilovi reckons the film might be even more resonant with audiences in the UK than in continues…