Filmmaker Lisa Rovner and Eva Zvedeniuk from Modern Films spoke to More than Ever director Emily Atef about filmmaking, working with Gaspard Ulliel and Vicky Krieps, the importance of discussing life and death, and on writing the greatest sex scene in recent cinematic history.
Listen to the podcast and take a browse through our notes on More Than Ever below.
VICKY KRIEPS: The movie is as much or even more about life than about death. The way Emily presented the movie to me was a woman who finally starts to live.
EMILY ATEF: This picture by Nan Goldin inspired me a lot… a woman floating in water.
Lisa Rovner: "What are the films that have had a lasting impact on you?"
Emily Atef: "Terms of endearment...with Deborah Winger? I remember coming out of the cinema with my neighbors and their mother and crying so so much...My eyes were puffy from the crying. And funny enough it's about a woman dying. I'll never forget the emotions I felt, especially her engaging on her deathbed with her very young children... And how amazing those children actors were...It's not that it changed something in my life, but I never forgot that."
Emily: “For me a script is a tool… a tool to really get to the core of what we want to say what I want to say. Now if somebody think that this sentence, this word, that this action will help even more to get to where I want to go, then I am taking it big time. Meaning that what it is I try to do is that I try to feed my actors and also my team as much as I can; with talking a lot, with sensations, with why I had these ideas, with films, with books, with thoughts. I feed them, I feed them, I feed them, so that they really understand what I want to say with this film.”
Letter to a young filmmaker, from Emily Atef