THE FATHER Q&A | TIFF 2020

hi i'm joanna vicente executive director and co-head of tiff hi everyone and welcome to a special q a recording of the father florian zeller's gripping debut film adapted from his 2012 play i'm happy to say this is one of the 50 official selection titles at the 45th toronto international film festival and part of our special presentations a big welcome to florian zeller and co-star sir anthony hopkins and olivia coleman who bring to life the story of a proud and beloved patriarch's tragic declining to dementia i'd also like to congratulate sir anthony will be receiving the teeth tribute ceremony uh tribute award on september 15th this this year our award ceremony will be televised on ctv in canada at 8pm est and streamed on varieties facebook live at 8 30 p.m est while this year has been challenging for so many reasons i'm so happy that we can be together virtually today and talk about the father so let's jump in i'll start with the question for florian so can you talk a little bit about the process and adapting uh the screenplay from uh from the play that you wrote yeah so you're right it's the father was first a play and i wrote it something like eight years ago and it was on stage in paris and then in many countries and it was like a personal uh story but i felt thanks to the stage that it was also very universal as a story because i remember after every performances people were coming to us to tell their own story about this issue so i had the the conviction that uh uh something was at stake to share emotions uh with people but i i really didn't want to just to film a play i wanted it to be very cinematic so i worked with a anthony christopher hampton sorry who wrote the script with me to make it uh very cinematic so we kept the the narrative of the play which was basically about uh playing with the audience playing with the experience of disorientation but i wanted to to make it even more cinematic i thought it would be interesting and exciting to play with the set and and and to to to use the set as a character and to draw it and to think about how we can use it to to to push the audience to to experience in a way a slice of dementia so as you can see the the main character is uh his name is anthony it means that when i wrote the script i i had anthony uh the real one in mind and and uh so that's the reason why uh his name is anthony so it was i remember when i wrote that i spoke with my friends and my producers and they were a bit laughing at me because you know i'm french this is my first feature film and i was aware that it's like um not a dream not easy to fulfill but you know until someone comes and says it's not possible it means that potentially it is possible so i sent the script to anthony through his agent and one day i receive a call someone letting me know that anthony wanted to to meet with me so i took a plane with christopher hampton to to have breakfast with anthony in los angeles and it was such a beautiful and joyful and intense moment and it was the the way everything started for that film wow amazing can you talk a little bit since you mentioned sir anthony how olivia got involved and how yeah so i come from theater so i knew olivia from stage because i've seen her on stage in london and also i've known her for many films and and broadchurch as well and i have always adore her i'm sorry to say that in front of you i i think it's not possible not to love her when when asu as soon as you meet her and i knew that the film needed someone you can feel empathy with immediately because it was not only about being in the main character's head it was also to feel empathy for this dilemma because i think everyone is concerned by it you know which is basically what do you do with the people you love when they are starting to suffer from uh dementia so i was so i'm aware that i'm so lucky to have olivia and anthony in this story such a an amazing thing for me can you talk a little bit about just the process of editing a non-linear film and and also balancing the different kind of tones of the film sometimes it just feels like a very realistic family drama and then it's sometimes it's almost like a psychological uh horrors thriller so just wondering how you you did such a beautiful job at balancing all those tones i wanted the film to be very realistic because i want you know when you see something on screen you you don't question it this is the reality and it was useful for me because then you have another situation it and that appears like a contradiction with what you have just seen and i wanted the audience to have to deal with that contradictions you know i wanted them i wanted the audience to be in an active position not just to sit and to watch a story already told i wanted them to be part of the narrative you know so we at the beginning of the story there is this apartment no one is questioning what it is this is anthony's apartment we recognize his space his knacks his furniture there is no doubt about it and suddenly there is that man pretending that this is his space and he's and to be ann's husband whereas we just heard ann saying that she was about to leave london to paris because she just met a frenchman so it's like you have to to go into this maze in a way to deal with the contradictions uh you do not understand exactly what is going on but you are and in a way it was a way for me to to make the audience experiencing what the main character was going through and and and it's like a puzzle in a way you can play with all the pieces it will never work entirely you know as if a piece will always miss in a way but it's done on purpose because the the moment will come when you will not be able to understand everything and you will have to in a way to let it go or to understand it on another level you know let's say an emotional level and again this is the same thing that is happening to the character you know i think in the end of the story even though the the journey was complicated sometime chaotic i think everyone can say what it was about what it is about where we are what are the emotions and what uh what is the journey of anthony so i'll ask now a question sir anthony so the the film does such a great job of making the audience feel the fear and confusion of your character uh struggling with dementia so and your character is also both charming very charming and also uh menacing but also lost and and confused so how did you find the core of um of this complex character well i go back to the um meeting with florian having read the script the screenplay i met florian and christopher and i was so knocked out by the script and once in a while you know you get a script that really grabs hold of you and i was so passionate about doing it then to meet both florin and um christopher hampton it was actually i tell you it was it was easy for me to play him i think it was probably the most fun i've ever had on the film i may have been very lucky the last five years i've had some wonderful look working with richard and mckellen and um emma thompson people are there and then to work with olivia which is the best you know um i had such fun with it because i'm of that age and i think i don't get looked up but i i i'm at the age where i feel that melancholy i understand that i can sort of feel it you know those but the the the actual thing that really got me apart from everything else the wonderful cast olivia and florian and the script was the lighting in that little set in north london wasn't it yeah those awful afternoons of heavy sunlight in a suburban street you hear a car going by where you had children god almighty that hurts so much and i think i'm at that age now not that i'm scared you know i'm fit and strong today but it was easy for me to play because my brain is that old enough to understand i mean i just jump back on another one i did leo recently and just before um the fatherhood that was an easier part for me to play at my age in the 80s it's the brain matures and one gathers wisdom in fact i know so little now and it was so easy to play and and follow um i didn't know i can't describe it it was just easy getting up in the morning going to the studio this funny little building in northwest london or wherever you were the back of a warehouse a small set is extraordinary no acting required you know it was just get up learn the lines show up there were moments when i could i had so many lines at one point about a chicken i remember and i couldn't it was something worth chicken and i thought i don't know what the hell i didn't know what i'm talking i thought i was really getting into davinci because i hope i put a word there to remind me because i always love to learn the script but you get to a point sometimes when it's sort of impossible to remember everything i mean working with such brilliant actors um it's uh i don't know it's easy i i don't play tennis i'm not a sports person but i guess it's like in plankton it's when you're working with olivia and uh looking florian it's like playing tennis it's really windy it is easy and um my sadness was watching olivia's performance the cumberland's performance and her breakdowns will serve frustration the first solution the heartbreak because it affects everyone me the actors or the guy who's dying of dementia he's so out of it now but there's the people around who really are splintered and broken up by it and her frustration was heartbreaking the hopelessness how do you help someone like this and of course it can drive you crazy because you go crazy with the sufferer of dementia and um it was the best thing i've i think it was a highlight of my life was last you know i've had some pretty good ones the last few years that's the real highlight and uh sure thank you oh anthony thank you anthony amazing what matters too it's not just back to talk it's true but i do i think i'll just have this i think when you're working with such brilliant people um you know you get moments of intensity uh but generally the whole thing was the laugh yeah you have to stand outside it if you become so important in the part i don't think you can live like that as such you know but lonely life go up and do it and improvise within that and it it's it's it's a it's fun it really is fun thing yeah if you know yourself i absolutely agree with you olivia would you like to tell us like what attracted you to the project and also your experience it seemed that it was a very intimate set and we'd love to hear from you it was exactly as as tony says i completely agree and watching tony you know just feeling everything made it so easy the script was so beautiful that it was so easy tony was so completely present that you didn't it didn't feel like acting it felt you know easy he's exactly that his word is absolutely right and uh it was an absolute dream i i got to work every day i got to sit next to tony who does hilarious impressions and tells lots of stories and how and it's just joyful to spend time with and heartbreaking to watch to watch him play that part it was just i absolutely loved it it was a dream i'd have done it for free but my agent says i'm not allowed to say it and florian i can't believe florian hadn't done a film before it was he was everyone was just completely overflowing knows what he's doing everyone felt so at ease that he was in charge of running this ship and it was a it was a compact and bijou and everyone you know trusted each other and it was a small group of people and it was just blissful florian this is your first film like how does it feel to just get this incredible words from your actors yeah to tell the truth it was a joy in intense joy from the very beginning and it's true that it was because i made the decision to do it in a studio in order to be able to to use the sets in many ways you know sometimes as you probably noticed in the film small things are changing on set i mean the apartment is has several metamorphosis during the the film so something sometimes we played we changed the proportions the paintings the furniture so sometimes we were getting uh dementia ourselves as i said because we didn't recognize from one day to the other where we were but everything has been done in a very small place but this is the magi of cinema when you are very close to a genius uh like them it something is happening and it's called magic you know thank you so much i can't believe 15 minutes went by and i would have loved to continue because this feels like magic we didn't talk to you but if there's some last words that you would like to share because i i hate that we have to cut this short well i i just say that it's i find it quite hard to believe that this florence first directing job because he did it was so simple he just he floated through it he just came and said okay do this do that yeah yeah yeah okay and what was great is that that the script is so tight and accurate that i would ask permission to change a word happy there's one because it didn't quite scan in an english way it was in the french you know so he asked permission to do but it's when you have it you don't need to change it or rewrite or mess about or you know so many axes i want to rewrite no that's rubbish you can't actually say i want to rewrite them do your job and uh yeah you know what it so it makes it so easy work with the genius like andy is a genius well you know what i remember anthony one day you came to me and you said uh may i change one sentence uh one line in the script and i was which one and you said you know in the script it's written that the character is drinking coffee and i hate coffee and it's possible to say i drink tea and i was okay let's do this it's such an honor to to work with people very respectful uh can i say respectful in english yes respectfully with the text you know because it's obvious that they are serving something else than themselves you know we are just telling a story uh for the others and we are like a very few people together but uh we are doing it for other people you know it's really about sharing things and i think this is what cinema is about it's about sharing emotions and making people feel part of something bigger than themselves great thank you all so much thank you thank you hope to see you all again soon yes i'm hoping that this thing will go away thank you bye-bye thank you bye thank you so much you

Channel: TIFF Originals

Views: 44,594

Keywords: The Father, Florian Zeller, Olivia Colman, Anthony Hopkins, Imogen Poots, Mark Gatiss, Floride, Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF20, Toronto Film Festival, The Other Woman, TIFF, Silence of the lambs, Hannibal, remains of the day, red dragon, The Two popes, Thor, The Crown, The favorite, Broadchurch, fleabag

Id: MS81ve3sFv0

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020