Interview With "Firebrand" Director Karim Aïnouz

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[00:01:34] Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. You are listening to the Next Best Picture podcast, and this is my interview with the director for Firebrand. Karim, on news. In a rotten, blood-soaked island kingdom, there once was a queen by the name of Catherine Parr.

[00:01:52] She was the sixth wife of the vengeful King Henry VIII. I won't be patron to heretics. You will kill me like you did my mother. She would never do that to you. Do you hear me? The five wives who came before her all met untimely ends.

[00:02:11] But Catherine's fate was to change the kingdom forever. Karim, thank you so much for joining me here to talk about your latest film, Firebrand. I'm very excited to speak to you about this as it's one of my favorite genres that is out there.

[00:02:31] It's the historical, epic, period costume drama. First of all, how are you? I know you just had another film premiere at Cannes recently. We're talking about your Cannes title from last year. You're very busy.

[00:02:43] I am busy, but I love what I do and I'm very fortunate to be able to be making films, so I'm happy. Good. I'm very happy. That's great to hear. I was at both Cannes Film Festivals these back-to-back years, so I saw... You were!

[00:02:57] Did you go to the premiere of Montel Destino? I did. And then you saw the premiere of Firebrand. I did. All right, cool. Okay, very good to know. And as somebody who loves palace intrigue and high-stakes drama in a Game of Thrones

[00:03:14] sort of style, if you will, I really soaked in everything I could with Firebrand. Oh, that's wonderful. Great, great, great. Thank you. Yeah, not a problem. I want to first start off by asking how did the material find its way over to you?

[00:03:28] This was your first directorial effort in the English language, so tell me a little bit about how this all came to be. Listen, it's a long story. I'll try to make it as short as I can. So this is 2020. I had just finished a movie in Brazil.

[00:03:42] I was prepping another one. I live in Berlin, right? But I mostly work now within the Brazilian sort of context. And with the elections of the extreme right, of the fascists in 2018, every project I had there were canceled. Everything went to shambles. There was no more funding.

[00:04:00] And I was also at an age that I wanted to try something new, so I started to sort of flirt maybe. I mean, I lived in the US most of my life, so it's a place not in England, but English

[00:04:10] has been a language, sort of my second language. And I thought, you know, it's maybe time to turn bad things into good things and to try and do something different. And I met a bunch of producers at the time. I think it was just like 2019, I guess.

[00:04:24] And then I met this wonderful lady called Gabrielle Turner, who was the producer of this film. And I met her in Berlin during the Berlinale of 2020. And she proposed this to me. And I called my agent and I said, I think she probably had the wrong address.

[00:04:39] I mean, I don't think that... Did she think she was talking to me? And then my agent said, yeah, yeah. I mean, she thinks there is something about Catherine Parr that reminds her very much

[00:04:50] of the characters of your latest movie called Invisible Life and a couple of your other movies about these very strong, resilient women. And I said, yeah, but I don't even know who Henry VIII is. I was so out to lunch during that meeting.

[00:05:05] And then what she did, the producer did, which is really, really interesting, it's an act of love. During the pandemic, she kept sending me books about the two of the times and sort of teasing me about this. And I kept understanding that, yeah, there are two things.

[00:05:21] One thing I was right, it had nothing to do with me in terms of context, but it was so interesting to be able to enter this world. It was almost like making a sci-fi, you know?

[00:05:31] And with the possibility that's different than a sci-fi, you don't need to imagine the future, you can actually search the past, but it's so far away in the past. And I agree that she was right.

[00:05:40] I mean, there was something about Catherine Parr that was reminiscent of a lot of women that I've portrayed throughout the years in my other movies. And what was interesting was to see sort of how transnational this was, no matter if they

[00:05:53] were like Brazilian women or if they were women in Algeria, they were women in Germany. There was also women in England, also within the royal family. And I think for me, that was the moment that I decided to jump on and make this film and

[00:06:07] make the portrait of this woman. And I also felt very, I was very surprised, you know, that there were not many movies, almost no movies about Catherine Parr. Yeah. And then it felt like a mission, you know?

[00:06:17] It felt like something that I needed to do because it's such sort of a prevalent historical narrative, you know, like the Tudors, everybody knows about the Tudors. It's funny, I was talking to a Japanese journalist before you and I said, why do you guys love the Tudors?

[00:06:30] Because for me, it was always a mystery. And now I understand why. And I also think that it's so important to shift the narrative into a different place, you know, to sort of start kind of not being so Henry-centric, but looking at these women

[00:06:42] and what they were, you know? And I think there is a whole, you know, there's a lot of that around the character of Elizabeth. There's a lot of narratives around Elizabeth, it's a fascination, but you know, when it's before, there's not a lot there.

[00:06:57] And Catherine was the woman who forged Elizabeth. So for me, there was a lot there that I engaged with. And, you know, as I told you, also, it's fun, you know, like doing these costumes and the

[00:07:09] colors, you know, it's the dream of a filmmaker to sort of imagine, you know, a new world, they create a new world, you know, with so many incredible elements. And the Tudors were very bling-bling, you know, there was something very, woo, you

[00:07:23] know, like gold and blood and red, you know, and like the fabric, there was something very ostentatious about the Tudors, which is also something that for me was fun, you know, it was not like doing a Victorian drama, you know, like with a lot of, you know, Puritanism

[00:07:37] and stuff. But I have the feeling, I don't know why, but when doing them, we had the feeling I was like making a movie about a Latin dynasty. More than about this sort of classic English sort of, you know, understanding, we have almost an English sort of history.

[00:07:52] That makes sense. And I can see that in the final piece of work as well. I love that you compared this to the Tudors. I think the Tudors is such an underrated show that doesn't get discussed as much as it probably should. Oh, I know.

[00:08:06] But your work also, I like that you drew the connection here in that it features this female protagonist. Much like you said, after the success of Invisible Life, you're able to take all these meetings

[00:08:19] and be able to, you know, essentially get this project lifted off the ground here. But there is a connecting theme, you know, and not just stylistically, and I'm also saying this too with Motel Destino, like, I love your choice of color.

[00:08:32] I love the way that your films are very character focused. So I do appreciate hearing all that connective tissue here, but I want to ask one piece here in particular. This was the first time you worked with Helene Louvard? No, I did Invisible Life with her.

[00:08:50] Oh, you did? I did Invisible Life with her. I did Firebrand and then we just did Motel Destino. And Motel Destino. Okay, so, sorry. So Invisible Life was first and now this time around.

[00:09:01] I guess really what I want to ask primarily in your relationship with her, it was going to be the same question anyway, which is, what is it about her style as a DP that has given you this collaboration that now you're working with her continuously? Yeah.

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[00:10:24] I tell you what, I am somebody who's been trained as an architect. I'm somebody who's been trained as a photographer. Like I was not trained as a storyteller or as a filmmaker. So I'm kind of obsessed with images and obsessed with like beauty.

[00:10:37] And I've started to find that really boring. You know, like I found like beauty is like, like we need something else. And I think throughout the years as making, you know, as a filmmaker, I was really becoming

[00:10:48] more and more interested, not in the frame, but in the character and how the character sort of conducts the frame, you know, the body of the character and how the character

[00:10:58] is a sort of central energetic sort of vector that this is what the frame is going to become. And I think with Hélène, that's where we met and that's where we clicked.

[00:11:07] You know, I think Hélène is not like a GOP who was interested in beauty as such. We like beauty, you know, but it's not like why we're doing this. What we're doing this as a way, I think it's, I always think of Velázquez.

[00:11:20] I know this comes from like nowhere for you, but like Velázquez was this painter who was doing these incredible portraits of people, you know, like I think he's one of the first

[00:11:29] painters in history, at least in Western history, that it's like taking off the whole sort of, you know, kind of religious, you know, mystical, you know, he's here. He's looking at you here. Yeah. And I think with Hélène, that's what happened between us.

[00:11:42] You know, I remember when I, when I started shooting Invisible Life, you know, this little cross in the middle of the frame, within the camera. There's a little cross, right? So that cross, it's moving, you know, and it's moving because the character is making it move.

[00:11:55] So I think there's sort of an erasure of the role of the GOP as the GOP who is going to make beautiful images. It's like we're here to be with these characters. We're here to portrait these characters sort of, you know, activity or stillness or, but

[00:12:13] really to sort of make a portrait of them. And I think that that's what really, and I think the last but not least is like, she's very free, you know? And I think it's the only way to make what we do make.

[00:12:24] It's like to take risks, you know, you see Mortelle Deschignes, you know, it was like, we didn't know what the colors were going to be like. We shoot you on 16 millimeter with this really crazy kind of color combinations.

[00:12:34] And I love, you know, to have collaborators who are ready to take that risk, you know, because I think without it, you know, we're just like, you know, executing something. So I think that's what's great about Ellen as well.

[00:12:47] And I think that's why the collaboration has been so fruitful. And then I want to ask you, working with the cast here, there is an assortment of makeup work being done, hair work being done.

[00:13:00] Who of the cast was most excited, would you say, to get into costume and get into character? In full honesty, I think Jude was really excited. I could imagine. He was having a ball, you know, like, because I think for women, it's very constraining.

[00:13:19] You know, you have this and you have like layers of layers of this thing in the head, you know, and I think it's like you went to the set and then you went to live. That matter in a way.

[00:13:30] That's why I wanted so much to have sort of backstage clothes, you know, and the clothes you wear in the bedroom and like, you know, what do they wear? Like I always used to say, like, what's the jumpsuit of the two at the time, you know,

[00:13:39] but I think for, you know, those clothes didn't make them stronger. Those clothes were like constraining them. And I think on the case of the king, it just makes him bigger, you know, it just makes him more powerful.

[00:13:53] So I think there was something there that's not only because he had fun doing it, I think it just allowed him to sort of take on the character and become this sort of bigger than

[00:14:01] life kind of, you know, character, which I think was what Henry was, you know, he was sort of a pop star. And you see that scene that he's singing and playing the virtuos, it is, I mean, for

[00:14:11] me, the inspiration for that scene for me is nothing less than Elton, nothing less than Elton John, you know, I mean, he was sort of this kind of, you know, very flamboyant pop star in his youth.

[00:14:20] So I think for Jude, you know, like all the composition, you know, like the fact that we took on the blue eyes and became black eyes, you know, and the fact dark eyes and

[00:14:28] the fact that, you know, he had, he changed his teeth to be able to do this film, you know, like, so there was a different way of speaking. So there was a lot of work, you know, I remember him before the shoot, he had this sort of weights

[00:14:40] on his legs to be able to walk like Henry, to have the pace of Henry walking, which was very hard. So I think there was a lot of fun on taking this on, you know, and I remember that a lot

[00:14:53] of the costumes they got made throughout the shoot because it was a lot of costumes to be manufactured and so on. And every time there was this new costume, like his eyes were shining, like, oh, wow,

[00:15:01] now this is the white one with this kind of ribbons and this kind of, you know, and I don't know if you noticed, this is very, I never told this in an interview actually, there's the whole embroidery of the costumes.

[00:15:11] They're like eight, it's the number eight, you know, like the whole stitching because of, you know, Henry VIII. So he was really appreciating, you know, a lot of these small details that, you know, people don't see them, but they're there, you know?

[00:15:23] No, I think it always helps with a level of immersion and getting an audience lost in a time period or in the story even as a result of that level of detail. So for me, I think it's all important, even if it doesn't get shot on camera.

[00:15:39] I don't know if producers sometimes feel the same way about that, but as an audience member, I do. No, they do. I think this film for me, you know, the other thing that really bothers me when I see sort

[00:15:48] of historical pieces is the fabrics, you know, and the way the light hits the fabric. It feels like you went to Orchard Street and bought something from Korea, you know? Like, I love Korean fabric, but it's like, it's very contemporary for me. And also the silhouette, you know?

[00:16:04] Like for example, the reason that Catherine has a red undershirt is because red was a therapeutic color. It's not because it's beautiful. So a lot of that was really interesting to understand what's the function of the clothes and how they're manufactured.

[00:16:18] And I think every piece of costume in this film was made for the film. You know, there was nothing that we rented and it was a genius costume designer that did it who was obsessed and really interested in the history of clothing and the history of the Tudors.

[00:16:31] So that was really exciting. You know, that's what's exciting to work in a country that has such a tradition of period films. There's a real big degree of like, you know, labor and like artists that are very good at this.

[00:16:43] So normally I would end an interview by asking you what you have coming up next, but I already know the answer to this and I've seen that film. So it's a, I'll phrase this a little differently.

[00:16:55] Is there a genre that you have not yet explored that you are hoping to explore in your filmography? God, there is a couple. It's not going to be this time around, but I would love to do a comedy and I'd love to do a musical.

[00:17:13] Comedy, like in a contemporary setting or does it not matter? Yeah, no, I think I would love to do something. I don't know if it's a comedy close to a satire, you know, saying that, you know, makes people laugh or makes people laugh.

[00:17:26] Not like explicitly, but at least inside. I've been working so much, you know, I think this was a thriller, like this new movie is like almost like a horror movie, my adaptation of the Belocchio film. And so I'm actually at an age where I like to play around.

[00:17:42] I think it was Scorsese that said that at some point, but I just like to experiment with different genres. But these two genres, like when I see something like the, the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, for example, I think it's such an incredible piece of work, you know, with this.

[00:17:56] And I don't know, man, I think we're going down the pain and the horrible moment in history, you know, and I think it's important to bring some joy. And I think by those two genres, I think we could at least, you know, talk about sadness

[00:18:08] and the moments we live in the world. But at least, you know, that we have some dreaming. Well, Karim, based on your previous work and even your discussion here today, I know that you would bring a colorful vibrancy to either one of those genres.

[00:18:23] I know it would be spectacular and I want to see it. So I hope it happens for you. Thank you. Thank you for the interview. Nice to meet you. You as well. Take care. Joe.

[00:18:35] Hey everyone, thank you so much for listening to my interview with the director for Fire, the next best picture podcast. Firebrand is now currently playing in theaters from roadside attractions. You have been listening to the next best picture podcast.

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