Filmmaking as political act?

Oliver Laxe: I think that just deciding what you are going to shoot, what is interesting for you, is a political act. There is nothing more political than the poetic. And cinema is really a tool that can heal the collective imagination. I think it can elevate conscience. There are a lot of different kind of filmmakers. There are ones who are more ideological, others more poetical. I think the purpose is to touch the human heart. If we do this, this is the most political act we can do. No matter the way. This is the important thing, to move you.

Laxe: I think that we are, all of us, broken because of different factors. We are broken, but in a way, we hide this wound. The ravers in Sirât, they are broken but they show it. I think that’s really healthy — in order to stop the pain, to stop this suffering.

Powerful soundtrack from electronic artist Kangding Ray–deep techno.

Laxe:  The idea of deep techno is that through shadows you arrive to the light. That was the idea with Sirât, to take this tunnel, to look inside. Sometimes it’s painful. But the idea was at some point, to arrive at a kind of transcendence. I hope that people could feel light at the end of this demanding film.

Laxe: I don’t know what I’m doing? I just give myself to my intuition. Now with my future project, I’m already feeling something in the body, as you say, Masha, my body knows things that my head doesn’t yet.

Official Oscar submissions

Theatrical movies

At the same time, I think the chronology of cinema has to be respected. It’s how also we can finance our films, and how we can maintain our independence. I’m happy to be a European filmmaker. We have an expression in Spanish, which in English would be: ‘Bread for today, hungry for tomorrow.’ It means if you take the easy path today, you will be hungry tomorrow. I think we have to think about the future and [be suspicious of] the easy path.

Courage to meet the moment, to make movies about our world now?

Laxe: We are kidnapped by the films. I think we don’t decide. We give our bodies, not to the science, we give them to the art. We get drunk on it and through us, through our bodies, we express something that is reflecting something of our time. In my case, when it comes to courage, I find that even failure, even crisis, can make me grow. Obviously, I have fears. But I think we are learning to deal with fears. That’s the point, to accept being fragile and vulnerable, to understand that it’s part of the creative process. When you surrender, when you give yourself over to intuition, it is like the film is using you.