LET'S TALK won Best Drama award in our LCF’s First Edition.
Interview with director Elad Mukades.
(credit photo: Alon Porat)
How did you come to write and make this film?
The script for LET’S TALK started from a personal conversation I had with my student in yeshiva while walking in the settlement. Suddenly we saw 3 women returning from a wedding and stuck with a flat tire, and a car of 2 men stopped to help them. There was a big mess, the spare tire was also punctured, bolts broke there, and I left this evening with a clear thought - a puncture is a cool dramatic blocker!
Since then, for almost a year, various drafts of scripts have gone up and down, draining into a single moment of puncture, until I formulated this final plot about a stormy relationship between two brothers, on a religious and family background, which forces them to acknowledge their mutual pain on Shabbat evening.
About your cast & crew: had you already worked with some of them? And how did you meet the new recruits?
This is Avner and David's first professional film as actors, and I got to them through an actors' agency called 'Shalash' - actors for actors, which is committed to promoting new actors. I personally really like working with beginner players, because I also wanted them to give me a chance at the beginning and not only turn to the experienced people.
Working with them was one great pleasure, and since then we have been in a long relationship and have already done several other things together.
There is another voice actress - Yael Cohen, whom I knew as a student who took courses with me at the Jewish Film School. Yael plays the mother of the two brothers, who burdens the older brother with her own secret.
When & where was LET’S TALK shot, and how much time in total did you have to shoot?
We shot the film over two very intense days with a gap in between, in July 2022.
Most of the filming took place in eastern Israel, in the desert, near Nabi Musa, on a road known as 'Nabi Musahwood' because many films looking for a desert and a road in Israel shoot there.
The second location was the Mediterranean Sea, on the beach in Ashdod, which is 90 kilometers away...
We did serious preparation so that in the end, despite delays, such as a traffic jam on the road, or the photographer's car key being lost, and for two hours we stopped filming to find him so that he wouldn't disappear in the darkness of the desert, - despite all of this, in the end, we managed to wrap up the filming in two days. My fear was the whole time that we wouldn't have to add another expensive shooting day.
Your two actors in the film are quite impressive; how did you work with them on-set? (and perhaps before?)
First of all thanks. It is gratifying and fun to hear this feedback. Certainly Avner and David brought with them a lot of talent, love and friendship.
The work on the set is the edge in my eyes. The main thing is getting to know each other, making contact and holding deep rehearsals in the period before the filming.
There was a filmed audition, followed by a physical audition, then rehearsals in a workshop room, more rehearsals on location, and only then the filming days.
This deep plowing produced a very high level of connection of the actors to the characters, actions and text, and also to the connection between them.
There was a scene that we had to shoot again on the second day because the sun had already set on the first day - and in the editing room I saw that the shooting and the acting were the same one for each of the two days. It's crazy!
I am attaching a link to 2 episodes of behind the scenes that I produced, with interviews I held with the actors about the stages of preparation (There are English subtitles)
At the Little Croco Festival, we’re fond of anecdotes. What was the shoot’s most difficult scene? And on the contrary: was there a magical moment, a sequence or a shot that everyone loved to do?
For me, the most difficult scene to photograph was actually the static scene inside the car, when 'Shalev' the soldier (David) discovers that his older brother Ori (Avner) did not drive him home, but 'kidnapped' him to spend time at sea.
The shot where he stood up inside the car and looked out the window at the sea was challenging in several aspects: First of all, it was hot inside the car, and there was no air conditioning for the sound. But in terms of playing, I looked at the monitor and got scared, it didn't seem to me to be in a state of sleep, but much more finished than that, I suddenly saw death and got really scared.
I moved away from the monitor and asked Avner to give action and cut to this frame.
(Picture from the difficult moment when I let Avner announce cut & action when David looked asleep in the frame)
A particularly magical moment for me during the filming was when my brother came to visit and help on set. In the end, this movie tells about a bond between brothers, and it also has inspiration from our real life relationship. In general, it's fun when contact circles meet, friends, family and work - it creates coordination between the parts of the personality, instead of showing different faces everywhere.
Tell us about the postproduction?
The editing phase was very challenging.
In the first version of the film, the editor almost deleted the character of the big brother, and built the film around the soldier who will be religious. It was a challenging moment. I trusted him with my eyes closed due to previous work together, and I only arrived when the rough cut was ready. So we had a conversation and began the process of entering into the essence of the story between the brothers, and in the end we came to the understanding that it was neither me nor him, something third, new, that created a complex film, which begins with a dramatic lead by the soldier brother, until the scene at sea, where the weight goes to Ori (Avner) the older brother.
Where can people watch LET’S TALK? And if it’s not available yet: do you know how it might be soon?
The two upcoming screenings will be in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the Qatsa Festival, on May 27, 2024 night, in the Canada Cinema complex.
Another screening will take place in Athens, Cinergo International Film Festival in Greece, on 22-29/6.
You can follow the events and updates on the film's Facebook page, or contact me by email
About yourself: what got you into filmmaking? your studies...?
For years I thought about different motives that led me to hold a camera from the age of 10, to record, direct and specialize further along the way in diploma and master's studies, and to make films. In recent times following the connection of ends of the soul, it is becoming clearer to me that in addition to the pleasure of creating and the art of storytelling, I also found in film a protection from reality, after a trauma that I experienced, and which was almost erased from my memory.
The ability to grasp memories, to choose how to tell a story, to voice the voices of the mute through a visual point of view, and perhaps most of all - to be like an outsider to reality, all of these are re-coloring my artistic work in the last few weeks.
Any projects you made before or after this one, past or future, that you would like to share?
Since LET’S TALK I have mainly made documentaries with the support of film funds, and a short independent feature film. Although I have written several short feature films, for them I have not yet received budgetary support from film funds.
In the last two months, I wrote almost consecutively a full-length feature film, about a relationship between an American Jewish father and his two sons, in light of the post-trauma he carries from the Yom Kippur War, which erupts again with force after the massacre of the October 7.
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