Iranian Luxembourg filmmaker Cyrus Neshvad’s work THE RED SUITCASE recently received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Short Film. The Paris educated director’s somber story of forced decisions builds a subtle rush.
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Short listed for the 2023 Oscar, ALMOST HOME is a futuristic sci-fi short film with moral resonates today, responsibility for a life and death decision.
An interview with Producer Jonas Lembeck.
A sci-fi short film, not an easy assignment, why did you decide on this one project? Where there times you had to say, “NO”?
When Nils pitched me the idea for the first time, I was amazed by the concept of setting a coming-of-drama in space. I liked the idea of telling a story about isolation and growing up in this contained environment. The genre elevates the dilemma very well for me. So, for me, it was not a Covid film. It poses a broader question of what a life worth living is. I guess everyone made his own opinion about that during the pandemic and probably everyone went through this. Therefore, I thought this is the right film at the right time and we must shoot this. After the decision was made to engage as a Producer it became clear instantly that this project won’t be easy to realize and we`ll have to overcome some obstacles. This is by the way also a reason I decided on ALMOST HOME: I really liked that this idea was ambitious and not an easy assignment, but I believed in the visuality as well. During the whole production & postproduction, we always had to find creative ways to work around and deal with the limited resources we had. For example, we couldn´t afford to rent a proper stage to build up the spaceship and shoot. We rented an old hall in Munich, Germany that was used by wastewater management before. So we had some issues with the smell but it fitted the budget. I remember me and some members of our production crew standing on the roof of this hall covering the roof, so it gets dark in there. When it comes to saying “NO” I have to admit that this was part of the daily work, but I am not a fan of just saying “NO”. For me, it is more of a discussion about what exactly we need and there may be some ways to work around it. It was the top priority in this project (maybe with every project but especially here) to find the very best balance between creative needs and our resources. In the end, it was an amazing team effort and so many team members really gave a lot for the film. Our cast & crew and partners made this possible. I am super grateful for that!
A genre known for mega budgets, where you a nervous about how the film would look and the comparisons?
Sure, Sci-Fi is known for mega budgets. For me ALMOST HOME is kind of more a grounded Sci-Fi film. It is an honour to be shortlisted as one of the first Sci-Fi shorts among these other great filmmakers. As I said for us as a team it was a challenge to make this happen. I would lie if I were saying their haven´t been times when I was thinking about decisions more than twice. I am still happy that we were able to attach such great partners like ARRI and our film school in Munich who trusted in the creative vision as much as we did. Also, I discussed decisions with our Executive Producers Philip Hofmann and Robert Richarz from my company lehof.
What type of interaction did you and Nils have on this project?
We both met each other at film school. ALMOST HOME was our first project together. Nils and I share the same vision of projects we want to realize, also when it comes to what we want to shoot as our next movie. During the last two years realizing ALMOST HOME, we have been working together shoulder to shoulder. This was quite an intense journey. As you can imagine we believed in the same creative vision and part of the work as Director-Producer-Duo was always to align everybody on this vision. I really like the way Nils works he is very clear about his creative vision and at the same time, he is very pragmatic and always hands-on and open-minded to find solutions. That’s what I meant with “there was no simple ‘NO’”. Even though everybody has his principles we always tried to balance decisions to find the perfect solution without losing the underlying creative vision of course. I think we complement very well in many aspects so that’s why we currently developing the next projects together.
Do you have a rule for filmmaking?
I think I don’t have this ONE rule. What I´ve learned again while producing ALMOST HOME and what kind of speaks for the project is the importance of TRUST. For me, every step builds on that, and trust must be the foundation, especially for ambitious projects. As simple as it sounds: Trust in the creative vision, trust your team and your partners and of course vice versa.
Check out the interview with director Nils Keller.
Almost Home is short listed for the Academy Awards.
Short listed for the 2023 Oscar, ALMOST HOME is a the present day topical sci-fi short film from Nils Keller explores decisions and relationships in the future on spaceship.
A interview with director Nils Keller.
A very today reference set in the future, how did you develop this storyline?
The idea for ALMOST HOME was inspired by a newspaper article I read in March 2020 about a cruise ship’s odyssey due to the mounting fear of Covid 19. What really shook me was the mention of people who, after being trapped aboard their floating steel prison for weeks and despite the prospect of finally being able to leave it, wondered if it was safer to stay. Absurd at first glance, I immediately wondered what this might say about our lifelong struggle to draw a line between safety and freedom. The idea of using certain aspects of this article and turning it into a more universal short film story that departs from Covid’s reality and takes the form of a character-driven coming-of-age drama set in space evolved over the next few days.
Almost Home, the choices and conflicts in the story, you stayed away from the good guy, bad guy, can you explain this?
In creating the film, which at its core was meant to be a metaphor for our lifelong struggle to determine the right balance between freedom and security, two things were very important to us: we wanted to ask questions, not provide answers – and in order to achieve that, we wanted to create multidimensional characters with very good but very contrary intentions. Let’s face it: life would be so much easier if it consisted mostly of circumstances where there was a clearly good and a clearly bad option. But in fact, that is rarely the case. Most of the things we must decide on are tremendously complex and become even more complicated as more people are involved in the calculation and emotions as well as individual perceptions start playing their parts. The pandemic has given us a very global and painful example of this. And in some ways ALMOST HOME draws from this confusion while intentionally moving away from Covid itself and asking more general questions about growing up, handling social conflict, sharing and taking responsibility and navigating life-changing situations where it’s hard to know what long-term consequences will arise.
Why did you decide on a sci-fi film with CGI as a project, not exactly an easy choice.
As a director, my passion goes towards these grounded yet cinematic genre films that focus on the characters and highlight their drama. I think it’s one of the most magical powers of cinema that narrative distance can pave the way to talk about essential issues in our lives that would otherwise be buried under too many strange or personal circumstances, or too hurtful to address. I also like the entertaining and world-building part of genre narratives, where you’re a little freer to tell your story. In the specific case of ALMOST HOME, the main reason for setting the story in a futuristic and isolated environment was to distance it as much as possible from Covid 19. The spaceship is meant to provide a confined cinematic stage to reflect on what it means to be dependent – on our parents or other people who try to have a saying in our life choices – and how hard it can be to break away from that while not destroying the relationship. It’s that very physical yet metaphorical expression of not being able to run or hide. I wanted to focus on our characters and their dramatic conflict and see the larger implications of life in that.
Of course, we knew from the beginning that it would be very difficult, some even said impossible, to create a no-budget sci-fi film with so many challenging elements. There was an ongoing pandemic, little money, the need to build a full-scale walkable spaceship and tons of visual effects. On the other hand, the fact that we were students offered us a unique chance for support, funding and trying things out. People tend to love these passion projects and there were so many great filmmakers and supporters helping us with almost no payment involved. Among them companies like ARRI giving us their cameras and lights for free, our film school (the University of Television and Film Munich) etc. Since DoP Georg Nikolaus and I had done some commissioned CGI projects before, we were also confident, that this could be a manageable thing. Of course, everything turned out to be much more difficult. But thanks to the great team and the hard work of everyone involved, our dream didn’t crash but started flying. And it’s an amazing honour for all of us involved to receive such great feedback now on such a high level. It really is beyond our wildest dreams.
Obviously you worked closed with a veteran cinematographer, what was the relationship?
I wouldn’t necessarily say that Georg Nikolaus is a veteran cinematographer, even if he has the calm and many impressive skills of one. I think it was very important for this project that he and I know each other since the beginning of film school. We did almost all our short films together and worked on some commissioned productions for commercials and television together. There has always been a shared understanding that story and characters must come first when we think about visual language. In the case of ALMOST HOME, we discussed the possible layout of the spaceship early on to make sure we had the right mix of a narrative stage for our story and enough opportunity to visually approach the characters and their environment in an intimate way. Further down the road, we used the 3D model of the spaceship, created by our incredible production designer Pan Patellis, to work out literally every shot, the blocking and camera movements. The spaceship was so cramped, the shooting time so short and the technical demands so advanced, that we had to exactly know where to put the camera and determine what walls and ceilings had to be disassembled for certain scenes. Yet we also often took a step back from planning and considered how to visually help express Jakob’s emotionality and his longing for Earth as it felt important to convey a human and poetic note in a cold environment like ours. Through highlighting Jakob’s personal items with their used surfaces, the presence of the earth through moving sunlight glimpses through the windows with the blue marble in sight etc. As a result, there was a lot of planning together with the art department as well. We also stayed true to the idea of letting the camera playfully float at the beginning of the film where Jakob feels free and optimistic in zero gravity. Advertently, when gravity sets in, the visual language becomes as stiff as his body. In order to emphasise the relationship between Jakob and his mother and their shifting understanding of each other, we discussed every angle, inch and trick possible inside a confined set like ours. It was of incredible help here, that ARRI Rental supported our work with their amazing equipment like the ALEXA Mini LF, lights and much more. Later in post-production, Georg continued to be an integral part of our naturally understaffed project, having ongoing conversations about the right perspectives for visual effects, dispelling, preparing the colour grading, creating screen inserts, artworks etc.
ALMOST HOME has been shortlisted for the Oscar 2023.
My first Pitti Uomo after the lockdowns, opinion, good to be back, but you can’t go back. This time around in Florence the menswear event came across a bit melancolic. The parties were subdued. The number of dressed up peacocks was down. Moving from exhibitor to exhibitor feelings were high yet realistic. There were no expectations of big orders, rather a relief for potential customers to see designers are still around. The best part of attending Pitti Uomo is seeing the range of mens fashion. There is no lack of color or style. I hope retailers take note. Instead of the same brands in every store, try something different.
A somber Milan Mens Fashion Week. Stay tuned for all my coverage and Before Tacky Podcast.
I will tell you all about it.
For actress, comedian and model Eugenia Kuzmina Paris is a set. During her time in the City of Lights while performing on stage Eugenia showed off a few couture pieces with famed photographer Vladimir Sichov.
Eugenia can be see in the upcoming films OPERATION FORTUNE and ASSASSIN with Bruce Willis.
Ringing in the New Year, there is always a bit of bubbly around. I may try this little packet around 10pm evening. According to the team it works. Would a drunk Swede lie?
Legendary fashion designer Vivienne Westwood passed away December 29th. Known for bringing punk elegance to high fashion Westwood never followed trends, instead setting them with avant-garde pieces and silhouettes. A TRUE ORIGINAL in the fashion world.
