Interview Greg Zglinski (Tiere)

Greg Zglinski was in Amsterdam in April 2018 on the occasion of the screening of his special feature film ‘Tiere’ at the Imagine Film Festival. However, anyone who has seen the film may wonder whether the Polish/Swiss director was really present at the festival… Just to be sure, we put the question to him. Is he here in the Eye Film Museum or is he in the hospital after all?

The Matrix

Greg laughs. “Yes, what is ‘here’ indeed. There are times when I think, ‘this isn’t real’. Anyone who knows ‘The Matrix’ will recognize that. “What if all this isn’t real?” In fact, we are all just bundles of energy. An atom is compressed energy and that is what the universe is all about. Everything is energy, including your thoughts. So it makes sense that you can also influence matter with energy from thoughts. That should be possible. From that perspective, I sometimes think about what is real and what it means to be ‘real’.” Greg continues: “I know I have my limits. Everyone has that. But sometimes it is possible to break through those boundaries, for example in dreams. Or if you have a déjà vue. That is what I wanted to achieve with ‘Tiere’: to cross the boundaries of perception.”

He admits: “Some people are more limited in that than others. I think consciousness plays a big part in this. Our consciousness has different layers. Everything has a consciousness, even a stone. We have the opportunity to push our limits, to grow in them, to increase our consciousness. It’s a lot of work, but I think it’s the only reason we’re here.”

Evolution and love

Or does the director think that we – as humanity – will eventually evolve? He nods in agreement. “For this to happen, it is vital that we feel love and compassion. This changes everything. The more I observe life, the more I realize that this is so. Life is constantly in motion.” Greg makes waves with his hand to illustrate this: “It’s going in the healthy direction, or we’re destructive. We have to lead that, by using our energy.” Shyly he adds: “It does sound a bit new age-ish, this…” But once spurred on, he continues. “I myself have indeed evolved through love. Even though my marriage didn’t work out, and the relationship couldn’t actually work from the start, it did change both of us. In a good way. We are still good friends and we raised a child together. The love I feel for my son is so immense. When I look back on my life, I never think about the films I made, but I do think about the emotions, of myself, of others. I compare them and make connections. The relationships give me the most comfort and make me more aware of life and our existence here.”

tiere

Greg first came into contact with the ‘Tiere’ screenplay about ten to eleven years ago. Jörg Kalt, the writer of ‘Tiere’, already had plans to make a film of it, but before that happened, he committed suicide (in 2007, ed.). “When I spoke to my Swiss producer about it four years ago, it turned out that Jörg’s brother had the rights and was overjoyed that someone wanted to make it into a film.” Greg continues: “I’ve rewritten about twenty percent of the story. With Jörg it was more about the form, I was more interested in the psychology, the conflict and the connection between the characters. The screenplay has been simplified, I have deleted about thirty pages.” During the rewrite, no characters were dropped, but many repetitions. “It was too much, a bit over the top. Jörg probably saw it himself in the editing phase that it had to come out, but I preferred to remove it in the script.”

No mainstream

‘Tiere’ can have a confusing effect on the viewer. What is real, what is fantasy? Did Greg realize that when he first read the screenplay? “When I first read the script, I thought whoever wrote it had a distorted view of reality. Almost schizophrenic. But also: he sees more than we see. He can see beyond our borders. It made me feel like I had glimpsed the mystery of life and death. I had to work hard to find my interpretation,” he admits. “I made it a bit clearer for my audience. I’m not sure it was enough. Had I explained more, it would have been a completely different film. It is now hermetically sealed. You go for it or not. I doubt. It’s not a mainstream movie. The Swiss release was not really good. It ran in October 2017, in fourteen movie theaters, for just one week. Thousands of tickets have been sold. That does tell me something. We analyzed it with the distributor. The audience for these kinds of films is difficult to reach. Look, at a festival like this it’s easy. People come here for these kinds of movies. But in the regular cinema it is difficult. You need a different strategy for that. There are plenty of ways to promote films, but the film was simply not present in the Swiss social media. That got me thinking. Actually, the producer should already set up the promotion of the film. Maybe I’ll do it differently in the future.”

After the premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, ‘Tiere’ was already bought by Contact Film. “They were the first!” beams Greg. “After that, the film was sold to China, Australia and New Zealand.”

Previous movies

Greg’s earlier films are very different from ‘Tiere’. ‘Tout un hiver sans feu’ (2004) (only received a DVD release in the Netherlands) is a psychological drama about a couple in their forties. They lost their only child in a fire. The film is about how the man and the woman move on with their lives. “There’s no mystery in it, like ‘Tiere’,” explains Greg. “My second film, ‘Wymyk’ (2011) (not shown in the Netherlands yet), is about two brothers, where one is thrown from a train and the other does nothing to help him. Through a video on the internet he not only has to face his true nature, his family also discovers the truth.”

Emotional involvement

The fact that ‘Tiere’ is nothing like his previous films has also influenced the process of making the film itself. “I had to rely a lot more on my intuition here. It has no dramaturgical structure. I needed points to give the film a certain kind of rhythm. There were times when I thought I needed to make it all clearer, but once I did in the screenplay, it lost all mystery. It didn’t work to put more logic into it. This made it necessary to work differently. I concentrated on the emotional development, and tried to find connections in it. You can lose the sense of time and logic, but the emotional involvement must remain. That’s the trick to holding the audience.”

Greg explains: “’Tiere’ is about subjective reality, about love, relationship, about perception. Everyone interprets reality in their own way. This is especially clear in the scene where they (Anna and Nick, ed.) talk. She says she’s going to leave him and he starts talking about a cat. They are completely different worlds. There is only one moment when they are in the same reality and that is when they make love. Love is the common point of all living beings.”

Insecure

To put his actors at ease, Greg has strict rules for himself. “I mainly want to rest on the set. The atmosphere must be good, I refuse conflict situations. I want to be able to focus on the creation, not on any conflict.” Greg admits that he works quickly. “I do give my cast enough time. I know the actors are the most insecure people. After all, they don’t see themselves, they have to trust me. I am, as it were, their mirror.” It’s especially that time on set that Greg thinks about afterwards. “These are often very intensive days that you spend together. I like to think back to that. The film itself is separate from that.”

Cat or kangaroo?

Despite the efficient filming and the overall atmosphere of trust on set, there came a point in the filming process when Greg had his doubts as to whether ‘Tiere’ would succeed. “After the first installation, I didn’t like it at all. We then decided to strip the film all the way down to the bone. We then had a film of only an hour left, we had thrown everything out so that only the story remained. There was a certain flow to it, but it was so mechanical, so devoid of magic… Then we started putting things back into the film, but it took me a while to regain the confidence that it was going to be what I envisioned. ” Greg continues on a lighter note. “And that cat. That was also a complication. He was a pain in the ass. He just didn’t want to sit still.” The cat was found by the producer. “He looked really creepy, it’s a cross between a cat and a kangaroo, but there’s also something human about him.”

Blade Runner: 2049 instead of Tiere

The rest of the casting for ‘Tiere’ was different from what Greg was used to. “I don’t know many Austrian actors. Lisa Olah, the casting director, sent me tapes of fifteen actors for the four main roles and I immediately saw who should play Anna and Nick (Birgit Minichmayr and Philipp Hochmair, respectively). I just knew they would match. Coincidentally, they turned out to have played a couple three times before. Mischa’s role was a bit more difficult to fill. In the script, she was a college student. I really wanted Carla Juri in the movie, but she got a part in ‘Blade Runner: 2049’. No idea why she chose that now,” Greg grins. He continues: “But that got me thinking. Why does she have to be a student? It’s much better when she’s older, then she’s more of Anna’s alter ego. Mona Petri was definitely number 1 on my wish list.”

Music

Although Greg switches between making movies and TV series in his career, he doesn’t have an immediate preference. “Having freedom is the best. And that can differ in both media. Sometimes I have to strictly adhere to the requirements of a producer for a feature film, while you would expect a director to have more input for a film. There are also TV series I’ve worked on where I can focus entirely on the characters and not have the need to push the story forward.” His face lights up when he talks about his other love: music. “Movies and music are the same for me. They are related to each other. Both are about building tension, you go for the emotion.” He also plays on the soundtrack of ‘Tiere’ (as a guitarist, ed.). “I miss playing in a band. But lately I’ve been able to focus more on music. My next film will be a music film, a simple love story but with a lot of music.”

Text: Monica Meijer