We interviewed the two directors to ask about making the transition from page to screen, the role given to French comedian François Damiens, and of course, what it was like working with Ms Tautou…

Q: When you wrote the book, did you know that you were going to make it in to a movie?
David: No, each time I write a book, I only think about the book. It was my brother, when he read the book, he said to me that we [should] do it by ourselves – “even if you have a phone call from Woody Allen, or whoever!” We made a short movie five years ago…
Stéphane: Don’t see it. It didn’t do well internationally because it’s an in-joke, a French joke, and it’s a lot of puns and puns about feet. You only see feet, so you don’t know who’s talking – so it was impossible to translate.
D: So we were waiting for a story for another movie. It took five years, and when he read this book he said to me, “this is the story we are waiting for”. I wrote the script – at the beginning it was like a dream to try to give it Audrey Tautou. We really wanted her, we love her, but she only does one movie a year.

Q: How did she say yes in the end?
D: She loved that we had very precise ideas about the aesthetics of the film. She liked that we had envisioned the whole thing. Also, her last question was, who is going to play Markus? That was a big deal for us too. Even though I did casting for a long time, this was a challenge because he’s Swedish – and there are not so many Swedish actors who speak French. We did a casting session in Sweden but… it did not go well. We had this actor (Damiens) that we loved and physically was exactly what we were looking for . He’s Belgian, but Audrey was very fond of him, and it was a plus for her.
But for him, when we said to him, “We have a romantic comedy with Audrey Tautou,” he was like “Haha”. He’s doing a lot of pranks and candid camera shows in France, where he is very famous for playing these outrageous characters, so he thought it was another joke.

Q: Why was it so important that Markus’ character is Swedish?
D: Because I wanted to make a depressive character, and the first country that came to my mind was Sweden. It’s a cliché – I’m not saying it’s true, but… if I say ‘he is Swedish’ then most of my job is already done.
S: He doesn’t describe his characters very much, but he gives them their citizenship.
D: The first sentence of the book is about Nathalie, I wrote: “Nathalie was rather private, a kind of Swiss femininity”.
S: So everyone in France said, “It’s strange that you’ve picked Audrey Tautou, because [Nathalie] is blonde” – but no. In France, the book is a huge bestseller, and it because a best-seller while we were filming.
D: The paperback edition sold almost one million copies, it’s crazy!
S: So people have a passion for the book, and it’s very difficult that the film had to be faithful to that.

Q: How did you switch between the two mediums – a novel to a screenplay?
D: It was very important to keep the heart of the book, but to make it into a movie script. In the book you have all the childhood of Markus in Sweden – it would have been impossible to have it in the movie (unless you want to see a three-hour movie), so we decided to put only a short scene with his parents, without subtitles. I think that in 30 seconds, you can understand all his life. It was always on my mind to try to explain in my scenes what I have tried to explain in my book.

Q: Does it matters that international audiences will not recognise Francois Damiens as a famous comedian?
S: Of course in France, the moment François Damiens appears, people love him. But it was also very difficult for him to be accepted as a character that is not that outrageous. To him, it was hard because sometimes he would say to us, “But I’m doing nothing?” but it was like, “But you’re brilliant!”. The fact that he was not that at ease, in the way that he was dressed especially – he said, “Oh no, another beige sweater, please no! How can I seduce Audrey Tautou dressed like that? It’s not possible!” There is a link between him and the audience in France which exists… but people bought the fact that he was Swedish. Now, when we go abroad, [audiences] love him the same way, even though they don’t know who he is.

Q: You tackle quite a sensitive subject for a comedy with the death of her husband towards the beginning of this film – were you keen to keep it light-hearted? How did you go about merging the comic and tragic elements?
S: We followed the book. It was very difficult when we adapted it – we had a big discussion with the producers and they said, “You have the biggest comedian in your country, and he’s making an entrance 30 minutes into the film!” It was really tricky, but we said, “No, we cannot change that. It will be cheating the readers and cheating the audience.” We even did something that is really perverse: [Nathalie] has a meeting with all her colleagues and we see [Markus] from behind – we don’t see his face, but we know it is him.
D: This is a joke for France, because a lot of people came to see him, and they were saying, “Where is François Damiens? What is this movie? Oh I see him!”
S: We are waiting for him like [Nathalie] is waiting for him, even if it is unconscious.
D: (pointing at another journalist’s Jaw’s t-shirt) I like your t-shirt!
S: Do you know that there is a link between your t-shirt and our film? There’s a cameo from Steven Spielberg’s daughter in the film. When Nathalie comes back to the café where she met [Francis], and she sees this couple, and they ask her to take a picture – that’s Sasha Spielberg. So Steven Spielberg wants to see the movie! (laughing) We hope he does the remake with Will Ferrell and Natalie Portman.

Q: What was it like working with Audrey Tautou?
S: It was quite impressive. She’s so normal in real life, she’s not a diva, she hates everything that is associated with being a star – if she could, she would run away from the media. It’s not because she doesn’t like it; she loves her job as an actor, and she is extra generous to other actors, which is very rare for someone of her status.
D: It was funny, François Damiens would say when we were shooting the same scene five times, “You are waiting for me to be good, because Audrey is always perfect first time.” She is really amazing. She said, for this film, that she wanted everything that came out of her mouth to be truthful, she didn’t want to think too much. That’s why we didn’t want her to read the book before – she read the script, but we didn’t want the actors to read the book because there is too much information in it.

Delicacy is released in UK cinemas on Friday 13th April – take a look at our review here.

From her assured performance, you wouldn’t have assumed that Booked Out was Claire Garvey’s first feature film role. A career actor, the film marked a turning point in her career: “I’ve been quite busy since [Booked Out],” she says. “I went to Cannes film festival, did a couple of shorts, completed two more features last year, and I’m working on another two this year. And that’s all stemmed from Booked Out – Booked Out was my first feature film, things snowballed a little bit afterwards.”

Having applied for the role, advertised on Spotlight, Garvey took a unique approach to preparing a piece to read at the audition. “I picked some dialogue from Monster, the Charlize Theron film. It’s a voiceover, so they had nothing to compare it to.” She felt the character reflected what she saw in the role of Jacqueline, and this approach landed her the part.

Jacqueline, as a character, is an odd entity – extremely quiet, unresponsive, with a mood that swings more often than a golf club. I’m curious as to how she pulled off the role, as to me it seems quite difficult to communicate more in silence than in dialogue.

“That’s what really drew me to Jacqueline as a character, because she was a bit of a challenge. She’s mute for most of the film, and you want to have that seriousness about her, because she has to have the layers there, but she’s got no action and she’s got no dialogue, and that’s what really drew me to it and want to create that character. Someone you could empathise with and someone who’s also a bit mysterious. I did a lot of research – it’s not a situation I’ve ever been in myself, so I did a lot of research and spoke to a lot of people, and that’s where I managed to create that character from.”

To have no prior knowledge of the dark places Jacqueline must have visited in Booked Out and to do justice to these is no small feat, but it does call into question whether someone would want to place themselves in that mindset in future roles. I suggest this to Garvey.

“Every role I’ve taken on has been different from the last,” she says. “I’ve been quite lucky. And I think I’ve been quite lucky to find a strong female role as well, because they’re few and far between [laughs]. You’re just the girlfriend, or the mum, or someone who happens to be there for the sake of it, it’s not usually got a strong storyline, which again is what drew me to Jacqueline. She’s not usually a character that you’d come across.”

This seems clear – Jacqueline may depend on someone else for emotional support, but to have survived the trauma she has experienced is a miracle. I agree with Garvey – if there’s anything that Booked Out suggests, it’s that strong female characters who are not afraid to take charge, or to grieve in their own way are not anathema to the director, Bryan O’Neil.

What caught my eye when researching the film was that during production, Garvey and Mirren Burke (who plays Ailidh in the film) were never allowed to interact with one another off the set. Presumably this was to encourage a more natural feel to their interactions in the film. “The first couple of days it was tricky,” Garvey states. “You’re working on location, a small place – it’s quite hard to ignore people if they’re sat right next to you.” But the film definitely benefits from it, I think, and she appears to agree. “When you’re watching the film, you can see the tension there.”

One of the reasons I’m a big fan of indie media in general is that quite often they tend to throw the rulebook out the window. I’m curious to see if Garvey thinks there are any advantages to working without studio backing.

“The whole low-budget aspect of it I actually quite enjoy,” she says, taking an optimistic approach to an aspect of any indie project that usually comes bundled with stress and desperation. Would she collaborate with the Booked Out crew again? “Definitely.”

One of the aspects of Booked Out that allows the film to work so well is its small cast, with only four characters of any real importance. ”It keeps it real, doesn’t it? You can grow an attachment to each character, you’re not amongst too many different people.” Since then she’s featured in a film that has a “massive cast” – her fond memories of Booked Out coming to the fore as it allowed her to form strong friendships with the cast due to the intimate nature of its production, especially in comparison with later work. Words like “family” and “unit” are bandied around, and it paints a heartwarming picture of a small crew becoming friends through a shared cinematic purpose.

With the project now largely finished, save for promotion and release, where does her future lead now, and what characters does she specifically want to play? She states she’s open to almost anything, and I think that’s an enterprising approach. But a relationship with the director is paramount to her taking a role: “if I get on with a director really well, then that’s a massive thing, because you work so closely.”

We move on to her past, and she explains that her family’s mining background, hailing from further North than London, placed the film Brassed Off - a tale of a colliery brass band who hit hard times when their pit is closed – top of the list as far as her favourite film goes. I inquire as to whether or not she has any guilty pleasures – films most people would cringe to admit they enjoy. Interestingly, she goes with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet - a film that many would label as a masterpiece, rather than a guilty pleasure, and a choice that should spark some debate amongst those who ask the same question in future.

Interviews are only ever as interesting and informative as the participants are willing to make them, and it’s always enjoyable to meet someone whose genuine enthusiasm – she then interviews me about my favourite films after the interview finishes – helps take the edge off their professional reasons for engaging in conversation in the first place.

Claire Garvey can be found on Twitter, and our review of Booked Out can be found here.

After pursuing the rights to Colin Clark’s two books (The Prince, The Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn) for several years, it’s good to hear Curtis is pleased with the results, “I don’t think I could be happier actually.”

Naturally, there will be more than a few people who are keen to find out how much truth there is in this fascinating tale. While only Clark, and perhaps Monroe, could say how accurate Clark’s books are, Curtis is keen to confirm that My Week with Marilyn certainly sticks closely to Clark’s account.

“I thought that was sort of the point, in a way. There are so many different versions of what you could do here: you could have the Olivier version or the Arthur Miller version… What we were doing was telling Colin Clark’s version of Marilyn at a particular moment in her life, which was in England in 1956. Also, we weren’t just doing the well-known cliché of Marilyn, we were trying to investigate her in a deeper, more serious way.”

The film certainly portrays the screen legend in a way that many audiences will not have seen before. The question of who would take on the responsibility of playing Monroe herself was one which hung over My Week with Marilyn from the early stages of production. Despite much public speculation that actress Scarlett Johansson was the frontrunner for the part – something which Curtis dismisses as “a lot of internet chatter” – it was Michelle Williams who was eventually cast in the much coveted role.

“As soon as Michelle read it and I met her, I was just desperate for her to do it, and I had total confidence in her from that moment on…I just loved her.”

Indeed, Williams gives what is perhaps her most impressive performance to date, capturing the something of the essence of Monroe not purely in her appearance, but her character as a whole. Yet Curtis reveals that he wasn’t aware of the full extent of her talents until after she had been cast.

“To tell the truth, I just knew she was a phenomenal actress, I didn’t know she was also a phenomenal singer and dancer as well, that came later.”

Despite revealing that he has, in the past, experienced issues similar to those Olivier put up with working with Monroe, Curtis is keen assure me that it was not the case in working on this film. Watching My Week with Marilyn, it’s not hard to imagine that the seemingly effortless on-screen dynamics between the cast are grounded in a solid working relationship behind the cameras. While The Prince and The Showgirl may not have been quite the artistic collaboration that both Monroe and Olivier were hoping for, My Week with Marilyn is far more likely to have positive repercussions for all those in involved.

Read more of our interview with Simon Curtis here.

It’s difficult to tell whether or not Chegwin really is exceptionally excited about his part in Kill Keith, or whether his cheery demeanour is simply a by-product of his years spent presenting breakfast television. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

“I did lots of movies when I was a kid,” he tells me, “I did Roman Polanski‘s Macbeth, I did Robin Hood Junior, but then to be asked to make a feature film now… oh my God!”

It seems that despite having been given a cameo appearance in Ricky Gervais’ 2006 series of Extras, Chegwin is relatively unaware of his own popularity. Having received a fair bit of negative press over the years, many people these days seem to view him with the same a sense of nostalgia reserved for the childhood TV shows which he presented, such as Swap Shop and Cheggers Plays Pop. It is perhaps, then, less surprising than he might expect to hear that the film’s director, Andy Thompson, recruited him for the role before the script was even written.

“I bumped into Andy Thompson, and he said ‘I’ve got an idea for a movie,’” he explains, “I said, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘It’s called Kill Keith!’” He stops to chuckle to himself, clearly a fan of the film’s irony. “But [Thompson] went away and came back with a script, which I personally laughed my head off at.”

He’s not lying either. While it remains to be seen whether or not the public find this film quite as funny, it’s clear that Chegwin thoroughly enjoyed his dual role in this dark horror-comedy. Yet despite the fact that Kill Keith seems keen to ham up the perils of breakfast television, Chegwin points out that much of the humour is, in fact, in-keeping with his own personal experiences.

“I do think the underlying thing is, there is a lot of backstabbing in morning TV – but this stabbing [in Kill Keith] is a little bit more pointed! We’ve got the phone scam, that’s in, we’ve got people’s egos, that’s in, the light-heartedness, but at the same time someone wants to be number one on the show… that’s always been prevalent, when I’ve done The Big Breakfast, through to GMTV.”

With this wealth of experience behind him, it’s little wonder that Chegwin appears extremely at ease on screen. However, he reveals that he actually found acting to be somewhat different from the presenter roles in which he is more commonly seen.

“I found playing myself more difficult – I really had to think ‘what does Keith Chegwin do?!’ We did a few takes of me running up and down the road and Andy said, ‘Er, just a bit tighter, like you do when you’re normally on telly,’ and it clicked, I went ‘Oh yeah, ok!’”

There are a number of scenes which are a millions miles from Cheggers as we know him. I wonder aloud how much persuading it took for him to film the leather-clad pole-dancing scene, for example.

“Quite a lot actually! I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s me Mum going to say?’ But you know what, I just thought, it’s in the spirit of the movie… if the script requires it, then I’ll do it!”

“The only thing I won’t ever do again is take me clothes off!” he admits – a reference to the Channel 5 game show, Naked Jungle, which he reportedly volunteered to present in the nude.

Although deciding against being involved in the writing of Kill Keith, there’s no denying that this film largely revolves around Chegwin’s own career and persona. Indeed, aside from his own role, it soon emerges that he has has an impact on other areas of the film, with many of his co-stars being lifted straight out of his personal phonebook.

“Andy went through my mobile phone saying, ‘Oh I like him, we’ll have him!’ Joe Pasquale I worked with on the cabaret circuit for years, Russell Grant and I worked together when we were fifteen years of age in a West End stage show called Tom Brown’s School Days, along with Simon Le Bon. Tony Blackburn and I used to present shows on Radio 1. I was quite worried about what their performances were going to be like, and they were quite worried about what my performance was going to be like! But I think everybody put in 100%, so I’m really pleased with what we’ve done.”

One thing that becomes increasingly evident during our discussion is that Chegwin is not ungrateful for the opportunities which he has been given over the years. After all, there are plenty of ex-television presenters who rarely continue to appear on screens so many decades later, except for the odd stint on celebrity-based reality television shows. Perhaps Chegwin has simply been lucky – that certainly seems to be his, rather endearing, interpretation of events.

“I luckily did Extras with Ricky Gervais, and it was quite funny because he turned around to me and said ‘Look, I’ve got a part for you to play in Extras… I don’t want Keith Chegwin, I want you to play a role.’ I suddenly thought, Oh my gosh, that’s quite a responsibility really, isn’t it? It was nice to be asked to do Life’s Too Short, the new series with Ricky Gervais. I was so shocked when Ricky said, ‘I know you did Extras, but I want you to do this as well,’ – I’m going, ‘Bloomin’ heck!’”

Chegwin’s somewhat unexpected favour amongst Gervais and his team certainly seems to have opened up a number of opportunities. It’s no surprise that he was keen to work with Gervais for the second time; he’s undoubtedly a big fan.

“[Gervais] writes such blimmin great material and he’s – how do I explain it? – he’s a real generous performer,” he explains, still as enthusiastic as ever.

“Like, if you think of something funnier, which I haven’t done, but I’ve seen other people on the set do it, he goes ‘Oh yeh, do it!’ He wants to make you shine, which is unusual, because normally comics want to make themselves shine – so they take all the best lines, and look the best and get the greatest parts. With Ricky Gervais, his whole ambition is just to make fantastic series’ where everybody does the greatest cameo they can.”

It seems ideal, yet Chegwin is not without any sense any responsibility for the chances which he’s been given, and I find myself hoping that the critical reaction to his upcoming work is more positive than that which some of his previous projects.

“It’s nice that people like Andy Thompson and Gervais and Steve Merchant and that are willing to trust you… they’re actually trusting their production on you. Which is a hell of a worry, isn’t it?”

Yes, I imagine it is.

Kill Keith is out in UK cinemas from 11th November.

Check out our review here.

Weekend has been taking the world by storm and The Film Review was lucky enough to catch up with Haigh and the two lead actors, Tom Cullen, who plays the soft-spoken life guard Russell, and Chris New, who plays the politically outspoken Glen.

In the US, Weekend has done well for a small indie film, especially a one with a subject matter which can struggle to get attention in the mainstream media. It opened on a single screen and increased to 50 three weeks later, with box office and ‘screen averages’ that have been better than expected. Whatever the film’s success with audiences, the critics have certainly taken it to their hearts. All three of the guys are obviously pleased that their movie has had such a rapturous reception, but it doesn’t seem like it’s gone to their heads.

“You always hope for a good response, but the American response has been mental” says Haigh. Of course, this can only help the viewing figures, “it’s great for a film like this, it gets it out there and seen by a larger bunch of people.” But positive reviews are not the only factor in ensuring that Weekend carries all before it. Something about it resonates with audiences whatever their sexuality. According to Haigh, “people think the film’s about two gay kids, but it’s not just about that. That’s what makes that resonate further.”

None the less, important issues within gay community are discussed by Glen and Russell, such as gay marriage and the appeal of gay art to appeal to straight audiences. The artist, Glen, feels that his project of recording his lovers’ recollections of their nights together will put off straights by its explicitness and disappoint gays with its tameness. “I wrote that thinking that is what the response to the film would be like,” says Haigh, although he admits that an early version of the script mentioned critics who had annoyed him. “In the end people have seen it, so now I can shut up,” he admits.

These political points are important for Weekend, but at its heart are two characters, Glen and Russell, who ring true. For Chris New, who plays the rather mouthy Glen, his character “is always trying to say who he is, he’s trying to say ‘I am this’ and by that he’s constantly reducing himself by his own thought processes.” At the other end of the spectrum lies the mouse-like Russell. His lack of openness is an problem, Haigh feels that “Russell’s problem is he’s not happy to decide ‘this is who I am’ and I’m going to show people.” Despite his character’s personal struggles, Tom Cullen found playing Russell “lovely, really enjoyable, but scary.”

Read more of our interview with Andrew Haigh, Tom Cullen and Chris New here.

Read Weekend reviewed on The Film Review here.

Spoiler alert: The last two questions of the interview contains spoilers.

What elements of the story interested you in particular ?

I’m South African originally and I came of age during that period, so I’m a little bit younger than the photographers were at the time. I was a student activist and lived through a number of events that are described, not in the film, but in the book. So, I have quite a strong and intimate connection with that period in South Africa, for me personally it was a way to revisit that past without doing something autobiographical.

The story itself was fascinating, because like a number of my other films, it was about ordinary people who put themselves in the middle of unusual events. This was a chance to get a look at what the life of a photo-journalist is like and how they put themselves in harm’s way and what it takes to bring those images to the world at large.

Do you think this is the sort of film that could only be made by a South African?

No, I don’t think that. I brought something to it because I am South African, but also I am a bit too close to it.

Early in the film, a Zulu leader explains the reasoning of Inkatha supporters – they were fighting the ANC because the ANC wanted Zulus to strike, but the Zulus were poor and simply wanted to work. Can film bring out the complexities of a situation like this?

I think that film isn’t necessarily the best medium for bringing out the subtleties of what was going on between the ANC and Inkatha at that time. For me it was just important that Inkatha was not cast as the crude villains of the piece and that they were given a legitimate narrative and that you understood their point of view.

The [ANC] comrades are youths who are ordering them about, while the Inkatha migrant workers come from traditional communities where young people are not meant to order adults around. So, I tried to give voice to those feelings in the film. One because it was accurate and two because I think it was important to the film that this is not a simple case of good guys and bad guys.

The other thing for me, the Zulu migrants who got caught up in Inkatha’s political battle with the ANC were the ‘oppressed of the oppressed’, they were primarily peasants who had been forced out of the rural areas to come and work in the mines in large cities like Johannesburg. They were put in these hostels where they would live for most of the year, they were completely disconnected from their families and urban cultured life. They were the perfect pawns both for Inkatha leadership and the South African government who were quick to use them to create violence against the ANC.

Read more of our interview with Steven Silver here.

Read The Bang Bang Club reviewed on The Film Review here.

Buy The Bang Bang Club on DVD at Amazon.co.uk

Buy The Bang Bang Club book at Amazon.co.uk

Mr. Nobody (read our review of Mr. Nobody here) is a film which explores the multiverse theory and the idea of parallel universes. There seem to be many films in the last ten years that ask similar questions, such Inception, The Adjustment Bureau, Source Code etc. What do you think the reason for this is?

More and more, we are accepting the fact that the world is complex, perhaps. If the question is complex, the answer cannot be simple. Usually we think that the reality is what we see with our eyes and what we feel… but I think that is only perception, and nobody knows what the reality is.

Are you worried that audiences might not fully understand some of Mr. Nobody‘s more surreal moments?

Like most film-makers, I don’t know what I’m doing, really. When I’m working, I don’t know where I am going. Most of the time, I just write every day, and then after a year it becomes something. Mr. Nobody is not a film about reality, it’s a film about all the different lives we could have. The film works a little bit like our brains work… it jumps from one life to another.

The look of the film was apparently influenced by the photography Martin Parr – could you elaborate?

I read the same thing, but I don’t think I said that! Perhaps with my broken English in one interview…!

What was it like working with Jared Leto and Diane Kruger?

I was really lucky to have such great actors and great actresses. I started by finding the kids. Jared was, I think, a very good choice because he is able to make himself very different. Sometimes he is not recognisable and I realise, after a while, that there are films I have seen without recognising him. So I thought that this kind if actor was perfect for the part to play different Nemos, that not only look different, but breathe in a different way, eat in a different way, walk in a different way.

Diane was fantastic too, she has a sense of spontaneity. In her memory, she can think back to the emotions of the love of the teenager – that was very useful because one of the difficult parts for the actors was that the teenagers had to take what the kids were doing, and the adults had to take what the teenagers were doing, to make one character through different ages.

Mr. Nobody features actors who hail from Canada, France, the UK, Germany – why did you decide to have such a multi-cultural cast?

I liked to jump between the UK and Canada [within the film], and to put emotion between. The character with his mother in Canada cannot go back for the weekend to see his father, and the opposite. So this was true to the film… two different styles of architecture, and accents also.

Actress Sarah Polley was one of the first to be cast in the film – what made her so perfect for the role of Elise?

She was really great, she was my first idea for the character of Elise. She already has twenty-four years of acting behind her; she’s really fantastic. [Her character] has depression, and so she had to cry for two weeks in a bed! The first thing I asked her when I met her was, can you play this character without hurting yourself? She said, ‘of course, no problem’, and it was the truth. She cried at ‘action!’ and she stopped at ‘cut’. In between, she is a very happy woman!

What made you decide to make a cameo appearance in the film?

It was perhaps because it’s the character which is getting all the other characters in deep trouble without knowing it. It’s the Brazilian guy that boils an egg – he doesn’t know that because of him the main characters will not find each other.

Why did it take six years before you were able to make Mr. Nobody?

It took about five to six years to write, and I think writing is the most important part of film-making. When the writing is ok, everything after that is simple because I know what I’m doing. [Writing] is one of the parts which I like very much, and to imagine all the different possible films, before choosing one. [Mr. Nobody] is the kind of film where I choose all the films.

The production budget for Mr. Nobody meant it was the most expensive Belgium film ever made – did this put the film under a certain amount of pressure?

Not during the filming. During filming it is always great to have a big budget – because you have time, it is not a pressure at all. It’s spending money – I can do that very easily. I had a lot of imagination to spend money. When the film is done, that’s more pressure because, of course, [investors] want their money back. If the investors think that the film will be successful, that makes a big difference in the way the film is written.

I think that [Mr. Nobody] was too expensive. In the future, I would like to make films that you can do in a garage – like, you have a rock and roll band, instead of having a symphony orchestra.

Why did you make the unusual decision to publish the screenplay for the film?

Most of the time, I have kept the scripts a secret, we don’t reveal what the film is about. I wanted to publish it so that everyone who wanted to know [what the film was about] could just read it, so there was no secret. It is very different to read a script [before] you’ve seen a film, than afterwards. When you haven’t seen the film, you can make your own film in your head. It was a way of giving people who wanted [to see] the film [a chance to] imagine their own film, before I made mine.

Why did you decide to set your futuristic scenery against a relatively old-fashioned soundtrack?

The soundtrack is more sort of mixed – there are operas, some [music] from the 50s, the 60s, the 70s, the 90s. Sometimes it is a record from the period of time when the scene happens, but for the future [scenes], they do like we do, you know? I listen often to Joni Mitchell, and she’s not a singer from 2011, so I imagine that in 2070-something, they would also have older songs.

How did directing your English-language feature début differ from your previous films?

For me it wasn’t difficult – I thought it wasn’t for the actors [either], I don’t know. When the text is written, the voice is like music… I think it is possible to hear in every language when it speaks the truth, when the emotion is right.

Read our review of Mr. Nobody here.

Mr. Nobody is out now on DVD and Blu-Ray.

The Taquacores tells the story of a rather square and naive Pakistani Muslim engineering student who moves into an unusual Islamic centre in Buffalo, New York State. The inhabitants are representatives of a lesser known youth sub-culture: Muslim punks. Not only is the place plastered in graffiti and all the house mates are kitted out in torn denim and leather, but they have in-depth discussions about all their actions in light of Koranic instruction. It is a film of ideas.

The Taqwacores was originally a novel written in zine format by American Muslim convert Michael Muhammed Knight. After reading the book, Ehad, whose parents moved to the US from Syria, felt as if it was written for him, “I wanted to get those ideas out there.” But, he says, what made The Taqwacores punk wasn’t just “having these characters bang drums and play guitars. It was more about the discussions they had.” This is theology with a healthy dose of never mind the dogma.

Handsome and thoughtful, Dominic Rains was born Amin Nazemzadeh in Tehran in 1982. In the mid-eighties his family fled to London  to escape the horrific war with Iraq. Although they later moved to the US after five years, Dominic feels his time in the UK had a formative effect on his character – it also left him with a nifty English accent which he demonstrates a few times in the film. He feels that the key to the Taqwacores’ understanding of Islam is the importance given to individual understanding. “Interpretation has to brew into something that becomes either solely ours or we start living someone else’s idea. The beauty of this film is to somehow break down the walls and, just for a moment in time, allows Islam and punk to be the individual’s… and not something that’s controlled.”

The film contains quite a lot of discussion about what is Islamic and what is not. Jehangir, Dominic’s character, at one point explains that drinking tea is considered makruh, that is it is frowned upon, but not actually haram or sinful. “We tried to stay true to the novel” says Eyad, “but it’s important to have that vernacular amongst these characters, because they are still Muslim, and if you strip that away they’re just caricatures of Muslims.” Eyad also makes the point that rather than spoon feeding the trickier points to the audience this approach properly respects their intelligence, before adding, “we get away with it because it is a punk film… and the end the audience can Google it.”

The book contains even fuller discussions about doctrine, chapter and verse than appear in the movie, but the UK edition was edited to remove controversial elements. “The book has been out for a while and it gets reactions and gets people talking,” says Eyad, “I think that is a reflection of how understanding and diverse the Muslim community is.” Although the media often bring up the fear of strong reactions from certain sections of the Muslim community, for Eyad, anger towards Terry Jones and his Koran burning, among other examples, is rooted in a reaction to hate-filled and insincere provocation. “Obviously [Muslim] people do get a little perturbed by what they see or hear about this film,” he goes on “but ultimately I feel that people understand where it is coming from so although they might not like it, they still give it some respect.”

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Read our review of The Taqwacores here.

Last week I cycled down to the ICA (the Institute of Contemporary Arts) in London to talk to two key figures from the film. The director, Jerry Rothwell, who was also responsible for the affecting Deep Water, and JoEllen Marsh, the strikingly good-looking donor child, whose journey of self-discovery Donor Unknown focuses on.

Sperm donation is complex, but Jerry was more interested in creating a film with many different perspectives – those of the sperm donation industry, the donors, the donor children, and the parents – that prompts the viewer to go away and think about the issues. Nonetheless, he says, “the film did shift my opinions about those issues, I was much more struck about the child’s need, or right, to know their biological parent, if that’s possible.”

The film has also had an impact on JoEllen, “I know that for me it has been a way to look at how this whole thing has affected me and sit down and really think about it. I’m really happy that I’ll have this film to show my kids and show my friends for the rest of my life.” The rest of her family were so enthusiastic about it that 15 of them drove the 350 miles from Western Pennsylvania to a special screening in New York City.

Donor Unknown came about when Jeffrey Harrison called the film’s producer Hilary Durman in London with his story. He’d received an email alert informing him that her production company in the UK was going to make a BBC drama about a donor child. As Jerry puts it, “it’s a story that is built on a whole series of coincidences.” Sometime earlier Jeffrey had found a copy of the New York Times in the bin of his local café with a front page article about the children of prolific sperm donor no. 150. He instantly recognised himself. As Jerry points out, “Jeffrey isn’t the kind of guy who gets the New York Times delivered to his RV every day.” He thought Hilary might be interested in his story.

Focusing on these issues could have created difficulties for the film’s subjects. “It’s a film that in some ways is about some private and intimate things,” Jerry concedes, but he tried to remain in the background and avoid the reality TV tactic of creating events for the sake of drama. “There was a need to film things like the meeting [with Jeffrey] that respected the fact that the meeting was probably more important than the film.”

JoEllen’s meeting with Jeffrey came after three years of emails and phone calls, and a final six months of planning. Now she says, “We email each other a couple of times a month, and try to keep in touch as much as possible.” She is currently studying in Jordan but will go to visit him when she returns to the States.

As anyone who has seen Donor Unknown will testify, Jeffrey is an unusual man. The idea of a donor father who lives with his animal friends in a dilapidated camper van among the hippies of Venice Beach, California might spook some people. JoEllen is more composed about the situation, “We already have this crazy story about being donor conceived, and you add Jeffrey on top of it… I mean Jeffrey is just the way he is and he’s a very, very nice guy. We’re very glad that he came forward most of all, and we’re not really looking for a father-type relationship with him.”

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Read our review of Donor Unknown here.

Melissa was a finalist in the Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search For the Next Doll and also appeared in Making the Band 3. These are both big shows, but it wasn’t until she appeared in an advert for the clothes store Old Navy that people really sat up and took notice. And we can see why, she’s beautiful (a lot of people think she looks like a petite Kim Kardashian) and she’s a triple threat. She sings, she dances and she acts. Her début album The Love/Dance Project has just been released and of course she’s dancing and acting playing the feisty and sexy Carla in Honey 2, the sequel to the hugely popular Honey.

So, tell us about how you got involved with the film?

When I heard about the project I definitely wanted to go and audition for it. I got a meeting and auditioned after for the main role. Seychelle (Seychelle Gabirel, who ended up playing Tina), Kat (Katerina Graham who plays Maria) and I all auditioned for the same role. They liked us all and found a role for all of us. Being a fan of the first film with Jessica Alba and growing up dancing it was a dream to be part of the second one.

You play Carla in the film, do you think you are like her in any way?

I definitely do, parts of me. I feel like I’m sassy sometimes, I’m definitely a tell you like it is sort of girl and Carla has the same sort of similarities.

What was the highlight of being part of the film for you?

Just that I got to be part of the sequel, I was such a fan the original. I remember watching that when I was in grade school and thinking wow this would be a dream of mine to be part of a dance movie like this and now I am which is kind of mind blowing, you have to pinch yourself .

Is this the most exciting project you have been a part of in your career so far?

I think Honey is definitely up there. I shot another film with Dolph Lundgren called Command Performance where I went to Moscow. That film was really fun to be a part of too, I played a popstar and I was singing and dancing and stuff.

Do you think you could pick between the singing, dancing and acting?

I couldn’t. I need them all three, they go by side by side. Singing and dancing for me just kind of goes in one and then the acting is just another passion that I have, I really enjoy all three.

You’ve been in showbiz for what seems like forever, haven’t you?

Yeah I grew up singing and dancing and knew it was always what I wanted to do .

Did you ever have any self doubt that you weren’t going to make it?

You know you always have those doubts, you’re gonna hear a lot of nos but for me that wasn’t important, for me it was that I believed in myself that I knew where I wanted to go and just kept on going.

In the US you’re well known for a whole variety of things but for those of us in the UK who don’t know much about you just yet, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?

I think that I’m a fun loving girl. This is definitely what I have been pursuing. It’s great to go from those shows (Pussycat Dolls and Making the Band) and having those platforms. I’ve kind of been like the underdog my whole life, but I still continued to pursue and now it’s all beginning to pay off.

Finally, why do you think we should go and see the film?

It’s a feel-good movie that people will love to see. There’s comedy, there’s romance, there’s all the entertainment value with the dancing. It’s just an amazing, fun movie to watch.

As I get up leave Melissa gushes “ I love your bag”. I look down, she’s pointing to my £9 bag from Primark. A five minute conversation follows in which I try to explain to her what Primark is and that she might not want to take the trip to Primark herself. She’s not having any of it and asks for the store name to be written down. I chuckle to myself as I leave Melissa and her Chanel handbag, imagining her pushing past all the other shoppers looking for my bag in Primark.

Honey 2 is released in UK cinemas from June 10. Read our review of Honey 2 here.

If you think you know a lot about dance films then have a go at our dance quiz.