Amygdala
directed by Maria Hatzakou
Greece. 2021. 22 min.
Two sisters challenge their relationship during a hot summer night.
by Jesse Knight
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What inspired the film and why it was important for you to make it for the first film that you directed, because it was the first, right?
Writer/director Maria Hatzakou: It was the first. Yeah. It's a funny story. I had this image of two sisters, and the younger sister says to the older sister, “I wish everybody would die and it was just the two of us in the world.” That's how it started. I thought of writing a script around this idea, and of course because I'm a horror fan, I wanted to include horror elements. And the backstory is that I reached out to Alkis [Papastathopoulos, writer/director of Honeymoon] and I asked them to direct it.
So they were the director in the beginning for the short, and then one day Alkis comes to me and they say, “Listen, you wrote it and I think that you should direct it,” and I said, “No no no, I'm very scared.” And they said, “Okay, I'm dropping out. You do it on your own.” So that was a big push for me, and I never knew that I could direct up until that moment.
I built the script around this image that I had, and I knew that I wanted it to [take place] in a place of my childhood. This place [where we] shot, it's in the suburbs of Athens, and it's a very typical summer house that all of us have spent our summers at one point in our lives. I wanted to place it there and that's how the whole idea started.
So you never intended to be a director?
I think I was afraid. I started as a producer and then I got very annoyed by the directors and all their egos and stuff like that, and I got really tired. I decided to become a director for myself and a producer for myself so I don't have to deal with others. Slowly I started writing first and then I jumped into directing, and now I cannot stop. I'm obsessed with it. Especially the shooting. When you're shooting the film, it's the best thing that there is in the world. I think the editing and the rest is a bit more awkward because then you have to deal with something that's kind of done and then you have to show it to others. But the shooting I love.
Was there a moment while shooting when it clicked for you? Where you realized, ‘Oh, I'm a director now. This is what I want to do.’?
When the shooting finished, because I couldn't believe that I would pull it off, and there were four or five shooting days, so it was very quick. When I finished it, I said, “Okay, now I think I can be a director.” Since then I've done three short films, and actually the fourth one I am editing right now. So I've done them very fast. I've done four in like five years. It's been a great experience so far.
All of your films, or at least the first three, all lean on genre, horror and thriller and sci-fi elements. Why is that important to you to package them that way?
I grew up with ‘80s horror films and David Lynch. The first movie that I remember watching in a cinema thinking, “Wow,” was Wild at Heart by David Lynch. And then I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. Horror films, I think they're stuck in my personality. Whenever I try to write something that has a realism in it, I immediately turn it into something metaphysical, and it gives me the freedom to say what I want to say through a genre that's also fun. Also, there are no limits to this genre, so I think it liberates me. And I don't want to forget the fun part. Especially in Europe, they have a huge problem with genre films. People are very snobbish around genre films. I really want to change that.
There's a snobbishness in the U.S., too. But in your films, the genre element seems secondary to characters and emotions and story. I think a lot of European filmmakers especially strike that balance really well. I don't know if that’s a response to snobbishness or how genre films are perceived, but there's a lot of substance.
It's a little bit of both. For example, I don't like films where there's just violence for fun, that I cannot stand. There has to be some story underneath it that makes me feel something. I think that the genre element is always secondary to the story, for sure. I would never make a horror film just for the sake of violence, let's say, or blood or something like that. So the idea behind it was [to have] a realistic story, and then give it this kind of elevated element. Because I cannot really work in realism. I hate realism. We live every day this horrible life and whatever is happening around us. I need a little bit of magic to elevate the stories.
casting question
I have an obsession with faces. When I did Amygdala, I cast a lot of actresses, and the younger sister, the redhead one, is someone that I knew from a really young age. I've known her since she was 12 or 13. She's the niece of one of my friends. As she was growing up, she became a dancer. One day I saw her and a friend of mine told me, "You have to see her now, how she's becoming." I saw her and thought, "Oh, that's it." The feature film I'm writing now, she's one of the lead actresses. And [Donna Petropoulou], she was not an actress then, but after Amygdala she decided to study. She went to acting school and now she's an actress. She's just starting now. Again, I saw a lot of actresses for [my new short] Starflyer, but then I ended up at the same face. I don't know why, I'm obsessed. I get obsessed with faces.
soundtrack
It's two of us. It's Marilena [Orfanou] who writes the music for all of my films. She's a great composer. We started writing a soundtrack for a feature film that was never used, and while we were writing then we thought we had tons of songs and we said, “Why don't we create a band and just release the songs?” That's how the band [Someone Who Isn’t Me] was born.
Music and cinema for me are very close forms of arts. I really, really love it. I'm not a composer. I only play drums, and now I'm learning the guitar. But Marilena, who's a composer, we always work together. I don't ever want to use any other composer in my life. We have a very close collaboration. We like the same things. We have a studio here in Athens which we share. It's kind of half production office, half studio, where we also practice. That's where we watch films and we create the music and we record everything. So, it's an ongoing process. We really love soundtracks, especially ‘80s ones. Every time we make a film, we discuss beforehand what kind of music we're going to write, and we also like to create pop songs that can exist on their own apart from the movie.
I'm curious what ‘80s soundtracks you both like.
I love Betty Blue, for example. I love Miami Vice. I totally love it. I love everything that David [Lynch] and [Angelo] Badalmenti have done. Badalmenti is a huge inspiration. We also like a lot of John Carpenter's music. I've seen him live as well. He's a huge inspiration. Marilena also studied classical music, so she has a deeper knowledge of music. She incorporates more classical stuff into the soundtracks.
You've worked with a lot of really terrific filmmakers, like Athina Rachel Tsangari and Yorgos Lanthimos. I'm curious what influence working with them had on you as a as a director.
I don't know. You tell me. Listen, we've done a lot of movies and up to a point it was fun, but then I got a little bit tired with the “Greek weird wave.” I really think that there were only a few directors that could handle this “weird wave” and then it started being like a copycat for other films. I didn't want to do that. But I don't know. Am I doing “Greek weird wave”? I don't know. I have no idea if I'm influenced.
The “Greek Weird Wave” label to me is kind of like how shoegaze bands reject the term “shoegaze.” But it does describe a very specific style. Was the “Weird Wave“ something that happened accidentally? Like these filmmakers were labeled without intending to build a movement?
I think that Yorgos Lanthimos kind of created [it] without knowing. When he did Kinetta, his first film, I mean this guy is kind of amazing because they[?] were friends with Athina and Athina was a producer at the time for him and he just went up to her and said, “I want to make a film like a Tsai Ming-liang film,” and she said, “Okay let's go and do it.” So they made it and then it became successful. And after, Dogtooth got the [Prix Un Certain Regard] award in Cannes and he got a[n] Oscar® nomination, which is amazing. I think everybody wanted to have that success, so that became a form that people used for their films.
I loved Attenburg.
It’s amazing. It's the best film I think I've produced. I really, really love it. We went through hell to shoot it. It was so difficult. We had many difficulties, but we managed to make it, and it was a labor of love, really.
Cacophony Film: Yeah. I was going to say that movie is really sweet to me. There's nothing really that weird about it. It's
Maria Hatzakou: I mean yeah maybe the way they play or maybe you know that they way they deliver the lines I don't
Cacophony Film: Sure.
Maria Hatzakou: that's how people I think you know express it when they say a weird way I guess it's a way that the actors play.
Cacophony Film: Right.
Maria Hatzakou: I
Cacophony Film: Right. Yeah,
Maria Hatzakou: think.
Cacophony Film: I think the word quirky was kind of corrupted also and that meant something sort of negative after a while. But yeah, they walk funny and they you know it's
Maria Hatzakou: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.
Cacophony Film: but yeah. Yeah,
Maria Hatzakou: Exactly.
Cacophony Film: that must be I guess I didn't really think about that because because Yorgos to me was always just making movies that he wanted to make. it didn't feel like he was making films that um were like he he wasn't boxing himself in. It was just this is what he was interested in making and it was cool that he was able to make the films that he wanted to make. Um but it must be frustrating to be labeled that way that broad that
Maria Hatzakou: for sure.
Cacophony Film: broadly.
Maria Hatzakou: Sure. It's very frustrating. You mean for him or for the other directors?
Cacophony Film: Well, I mean both,
Maria Hatzakou: Wait.
Cacophony Film: you know, cuz because he was able to kind of transcend it, you know, cuz he is an example of what we're talking about where he's making weird stuff, but they're treated as substantial because they're nominated for Oscars and winning Oscars and things like that.
Cacophony Film: Um, but yeah, then you have filmmakers who are trying to make their films, but they're like labeled as copycats.
The difference with Yorgos's films, I think that he touched the audience, and to me that is the key. I mean, festivals are great and I love them. I was a programmer myself for many years. I lived my whole life in festivals, but at the end of the day I've shifted as I was growing up, and I want to make a film that the audience can really understand and touch. That's I think Yorgos’s success.
I remember that once I talked to a psychotherapist who told me that, “Whatever big changes you make in your life, a massacre has to happen. People have to die inside of you so that you can go on.” So that was the idea behind this film.
Maria Hatzakou bio