01 · 28 · 15

Pawel Pawlikowski enchanted with Mexico

Chloe Roddick, programadora

“Well, I’ve just scratched the surface really, but I’m totally enchanted with the surface”, says Pawel Pawlikowski of his time in Mexico. The director, who was nominated for two Oscars for his feature film Ida - the stark, magnetic story of the troubled relationship between a young novitiate nun and her aunt, an ex member of the Communist Party, and a Jew – was in Mexico recently to give a talk to students at the CCC, and for some well-earned rest after a whirlwind Oscar PR campaign.

“I’ve been to several corners already, like Morelia, Guanajuato, San Miguel, now Mexico City... [and] the different layers here are fascinating”. People in Mexico, he says “are so un-cynical, so excited about things, excited about art, excited about making things. I find that so refreshing.” He’s enthusiastic, too, about Mexican cinema: “I feel jealous of young Mexican directors. Mexico is not just picturesque, there are so many layers, there are moral tales to be told and there’s all this wonderful background that you can capture photographically and beautifully... I love their energy. They bring some kind of vitality to whatever they do. [It’s] a mixture of cinephilia, or film erudition, with a spontaneous pleasure in filmmaking, and I think of that as Mexican.”

Ida, which has been nominated for string of awards, including two Oscars, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a British Independent Film Award and seven European Film Awards (it won five, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenwriter, Best Cinematographer and an Audience Award), was screened at the 12th edition of FICM last year, where Pawlikowksi was both a Special Guest and a member of the Mexican Feature Film Competition jury. “I love showing films here [in Mexico] because the audiences are so great – in Morelia they are especially good”. Being on the Jury, he says, “was like another window onto this world, well 12 windows really, because there were 12 films! ... [It was] so enlightening and fresh.”

Pawlikowski, who has made five feature films and four documentaries, insists that the nomination won’t change how he works, or the stories he chooses to tell as a director. “It won’t change much, because once you’ve decided that you don’t want a career – definitely not in Hollywood – and that you just want to make the next film that excites you ... then you kind of go back to the drawing board with each film. Of course there’s going to be more attention paid to my next film and I’ll probably raise the budget with a little more ease... [but] the creative struggle will be the same. Because each film is like re-inventing the wheel - that’s the beauty of it, but it also means despair and moments of loss of faith, and that won’t go away if you make the kind of cinema that I make, which is not industrial. So that’s not going to change, that struggle with the material.”

He hopes, he says, to be able to come back to FICM in the future. “It is my favorite festival. It has the perfect balance between a great film selection, really sharp audiences” and a beautiful location. “It’s very coherent, very recognizable and very strong... You feel that this festival is a labor of love, and I think everyone who’s there feels that too.”