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The playful surrealism of Greek writer\/\u200bdirector Athina Rachel Tsangari\u2019s 2012<\/span>\u00a0second feature, Attenberg<\/i>, landed her on the map of filmmakers to watch, while also providing a\u00a0curious starting point for a\u00a0journey that has taken in withering satire (2015<\/span>\u2019s Chevalier<\/i>), small screen domestic comedy (2019<\/span>\u2019s Trigonometry<\/i>, made for the BBC<\/span>), and most recently, the existential historical epic (2024<\/span>\u2019s Harvest<\/i>), adapted from the 2013<\/span> novel by Jim Crace and starring Caleb Landry Jones.\u00a0<\/p>\n LWLies: As someone from Greece, were you ever conscious of an outsider perspective on the material of this\u00a0novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n Tsangari: I\u00a0felt like it was completely my story because I\u00a0come from a\u00a0long lineage of farmers who recently lost their island to a\u00a0highway. It\u2019s like the biggest highway that connects the centre of Athens all the way to the north. It literally went over my family\u2019s ancestral land. We were labourers since I\u00a0was like four years old. And it doesn\u2019t matter what we\u2019re doing in the city in the winter when we\u2019re there, we were 100<\/span> per cent indoctrinated into the arts of the earth. So yes, it was a\u00a0very personal. And also, I\u00a0live in a\u00a0borderland, a\u00a0very poor border with migrants and migrant workers everywhere around me. So this particular historical moment, talking about the enclosure act, in a\u00a0way, created the first recorded Western refugee movement.<\/p>\n Yet <\/strong>Harvest<\/strong><\/i> is political without being polemical; it does not romanticise the world that is being\u00a0lost.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It was more about posing the questions and not giving any answers. And also not being judgmental about about the central hero\u2019s, passivity. And the townsfolk, are they innocent and na\u00efve? Is it a\u00a0prelapsarian innocence, or are they all complicit in their own downfall? Are they pacifists or are they violent? They\u2019re both, you know. Even the mapmaker, has he been co-opted or is he just a\u00a0romantic? It\u2019s about how easily the narcissism of artists can turn into a\u00a0tool in the hands of power. And you kind of forget that it has a\u00a0real-world impact as well; that people see it as having a\u00a0real-world impact.<\/p>\n Tell us about working with Caleb Landry Jones and building this strange, anxious, passive character together.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I think he really suffered. And sometimes he would explode. He had to release all this tension. As a\u00a0person himself, he\u2019s just so proactive. He has so much respect for humanity. And he has such a\u00a0such a\u00a0strong code of honour. In terms of the story, there was so much against him that I\u00a0think all of this conflict, all of this boiling inside him, really created a\u00a0extraordinary world. And I\u00a0would say he is inactive, but he\u2019s not passive \u2013 because you can feel the tension inside him. You see it on his face, that he wants to do something. Yeah, but but feels like he can\u2019t, it\u2019s not his place. You know, he\u2019s not quite ready to make a\u00a0decision.<\/p>\n The film looks absolutely gorgeous, shot on film by Sean Price Williams. How did that collaboration work?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The first thing that I\u00a0do is a\u00a0playlist before I\u00a0even start bringing in images, because he works with music as an inspiration. I\u00a0come from theatre, so I\u00a0shoot the entire scene. I\u00a0don\u2019t stop. We don\u2019t do coverage. The fact that he works with natural light is perfect for me. And then he also knows, when he shoots with me, he\u2019s just going to set up a\u00a0few lights and then hardly change them. And we\u2019re going to shoot 360<\/span> degrees. No one will ever know when they\u2019re going to be on camera. There is a\u00a0sacred handshake between us. A\u00a0secret relationship where we don\u2019t talk. We don\u2019t need\u00a0to.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n