"Aftersun" Director Charlotte Wells Every work is personal to the person who directs it [Director's Interview Vol.315]

Creating a personal story

Q: This film is also a personal story for you, and recently there has been a lot of attention on films with personal themes, such as Steven Spielberg's " The Fabelmans " (22) and Kenneth Branagh's " Belfast " (21). Both of these films had autobiographical elements.

Wells: I recently found myself in a similar position to Spielberg in telling stories, but the comparison seems meaningless to me. I think the pandemic has made people more isolated and introspective than ever before. This has resulted in a lot of personal work about people's lives, even autobiographical films. I see my work as a story that just happened to emerge, unrelated to these trends.

I think that for the writer and director of a film, every film is actually very personal. How personal it is depends on the film. Is it an easier way for a creator to make a film? At least for me, it's definitely a more clear way to create a character. I think film is self-expression. What do you prioritize? It all starts from there.

“Aftersun” © Turkish Riviera Run Club Limited, British Broadcasting Corporation, The British Film Institute & Tango 2022

Q: I heard that one of your personal favorite directors is the British director Terence Davies, who depicted his own family life in films such as " The Great Passage " (1988).

Wells: In his films, the montage is not ordinary, and I thought the way the time progressed was unique. He is certainly one of my favorite directors. I like the interesting way he combines images and sound.

Q: Another talented female director from Scotland is Lynne Ramsay ( You Were Never Really Here (2017)). What do you think of her work?

Wells: I think she's a great director. I'd like to meet her someday.

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Directed and written by: Charlotte Wells

Born in Scotland in 1987, he is a New York-based filmmaker. He studied Classics at King's College London and then earned an MA at Oxford University. He then worked in finance while running a film crew agency in London with a friend. He then enrolled in a joint MFA/MBA program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. While there, he was supported by the BAFTA New York and Los Angeles Media Studies Scholarship Program to write and direct three short films. His first short film, Tuesday (2016), premiered at Encounters Short Film Festival in 2016 and was nominated for the Scottish BAFTA New Talent Award. His second film, Laps (2017), won the Special Jury Prize for Short Film Editing at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and the Special Jury Prize for Narrative Shorts at the SXSW Film Festival in 2017. His graduation project, Blue Christmas (2017), will premiere at TIFF in September of the same year. In 2018, he was selected as one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, and was a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters and Directors Lab in 2020. Aftersun(2022) is his directorial debut.

Interview and text: Sawako Omori

Movie journalist. His books include "Lost Cinema" (Kawade Shobo Shinsha) and other books, and his translations include "Woody" (by D. Evanier, Kinema Junposha). Contributes to magazines such as ``Music Magazine'' and ``Kinema Junpo.'' A research book based on the web series, ``Mini Theater Revisited,'' is also scheduled to be published.

"Aftersun"

Friday, May 26th: Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho, Shinjuku Piccadilly and other locations nationwide

Distribution: Happinet Phantom Studio

© Turkish Riviera Run Club Limited, British Broadcasting Corporation, The British Film Institute & Tango 2022