email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

CANNES 2021 Cannes Premiere

Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber • Director and writer of Evolution

"We wanted to talk about how trauma and memory work"

by 

- CANNES 2021: The Hungarian director and screenwriter discuss their prodigious, experimental and impactful film in fragments, unveiled in the Cannes Premiere section

Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber  • Director and writer of Evolution

Part of the Official Selection on the Croisette for the 6th time, Hungarian filmmaker Kornél Mundruczó, together with his screenwriter Kata Wéber (the duo just met with international success for their film Pieces of a Woman [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kornél Mundruczó and Kata W…
film profile
]
), discuss their striking new film Evolution [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kornél Mundruczó and Kata W…
film profile
]
, unveiled in the Cannes Premiere section of the 74th Cannes Film Festival.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Cineuropa: Evolution tackles an important topic, but one that is heavy and sensitive. What motivated you to make this film?
Kornél Mundruczó: There were many personal reasons. When we started the process, we weren’t even sure that it would become a film. It absolutely isn’t a work of fiction since everything comes from Kata’s family, from friends and from other families. We collected and assembled all of that. Moreover, Kata’s mother was ill and we were scared of losing her, so she interviewed her, and that constitutes the inspiration for the film. Most importantly, when we moved to Berlin two years ago, we started to talk about our identity a lot and we wanted to make a film on this subject. Because Evolution isn’t a film about the Holocaust, but a film about our contemporary identity. However, we had to look back and to face its historical component in order to understand why identity is now so fluid.

Why this choice to follow across three parts the members of one family?
Kata Wéber: Our self-questioning is in the third part, set in the present day, but we needed reference points. It wasn’t necessary to tell the whole story of all the characters, but we needed elements that help to understand what is alarming today. This structure allows the audience to fill in the gaps themselves, at least we hope so. In that way, there is a space left for the imagination. We wanted to talk about personal histories, about how trauma and memory work, without that being factual or narrative. The fragments allow to measure the impact of historical events on people’s lives. And these histories are complex and ambiguous: there is always love between people, but also some hate, and we have to understand how these two powerful forces have consequences for people’s lives. With these fragments, we could go further into the almost documentary-like details that make up the life of an individual. And this also allowed us to talk about this unconscious level of fears that gets transmitted from generation to generation.

How would you define those three parts?
KM: The first is trauma. Knowing how to film anything in Auschwitz is a rather delicate question. We had a few references from film history, but we needed to find our own way and it is of being in a way in someone else’s mind, on an almost surreal level that is closer to our fears and traumas than it is to the factual reality of a concentration camp. What we tried to create, was the ability for the audience to physically understand that a survivor is here: a child. The second chapter is a big portrait of the communist past. From the point of view of an Eastern European family, we have to accept the fact that we’re going from one dictatorship to another, and it’s a history retraced from the perspective of the Jewish minority during the communist era: they did not leave the country, but what kind of existence do they have to face? The final part, which takes place in the present day or perhaps even some time into the future, is no longer in black and white. The main consequence for everyone is that the past, communism, the Second World War, were mistakes, and that what exists today is very complex. Antisemitism, islamophobia, populism, political correctness: it is so much pressure put on a young identity, on an adolescent. What to choose? There are so many possibilities but no freedom, and that is very difficult for a young existence. This is what we’ve tried to talk about a little and to question in this part, set in contemporary Berlin, in a contemporary metropolis.

Of all your films, is this the one that is the freest on an artistic level?
KM: To not have the pressure of the market and to be able to work in a completely free way, in Europe and with an experimental concept, is truly wonderful. We had also decided that each of the three fragments would have an experimental structure and different, unconventional cinematic languages, and we thought that the theme of the film was powerful enough to unify it all into a single film. I do not think that this could have been normally finance in the market. We only had 13 days of filming, seven in Budapest and six in Germany. We didn’t really know whether the structure would work, but making the film was really energising. It’s almost an anti-film (laughs). The script for the first part was just one page long and I wondered how I would film that. Then I remembered this phrase by Imre Kertész, "then the Polish Red Cross arrived and tried to clean what it was impossible to clean" and that gave me the idea for the characters of the three men who try to clean what it is impossible to clean. But the second part was 45 pages of dialogue, and the same question was facing me. It was a real challenge. Finally, only the third part is conventional, in the sense that it resembles the kind of film we’re used to seeing.

The film begins in horror and ends with the birth of a teenager love between a jewish man and a muslim woman.
KM: There is hope, but also worry because we wonder whether they won’t soon be in trouble.

KW: It is a sort of naive hope on our part, that this generation would ignore all the pressures and the bad paths that say how one is supposed to react to another, that this generation might have faith in a certain kind of equality. But like all naive hopes, it is always very dangerous.

Why did you get Yorick Le Saux as the director of photography?
KM: Because he is a genius. I’ve loved his work for a long time and I’d already tried to work with him on Pieces of a Woman, but he wasn’t available. Here, surely because of the pandemic, he was available and we shot in April-May this year. His framing, his sensitivity when he works with the camera and the light, are wonderful. In my eyes, he is one of the best European directors of photography.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

(Translated from French)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

See also

Privacy Policy