h. nazan ışık—

23 March 2014—

Ana Lily Amirpour’s film “ A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”, an Iranian vampire movie opened the New Directors/New Films 2014 festival. I had a chance to chat with her and one of the producers of film Sina Sayyah after the “New Directors Brunch’ at Rosa Mexicano.

© h. nazan ışık

Producer Sina Sayyah (L), and director Ana Lily Amirpour.

h. nazan ışık: The woman, the vampire meets Arash, in a way she helps him, instead of biting him. Arash’s heroin addicted father is found dead, even though Arash senses the woman has something to do with it, he does nothing. Is it love or is he lonely?

Ana Lily Amirpour: You ask me if it was really love, or he is lonely? My answer is I don’t know what the difference is.

HNI: I hope there is. Your movie was the opening night movie of the festival, how was the reception, the questions. Did you get the same questions you expected?

ALA: Wonderful, the reception was wonderful. I think this is the best audience for art-house films, and difficult, different films, films that unusual, new voices. This was like the dream audience.

HNI: I’ll ask the obvious question; why did you make a vampire film?

Sina Sayyah: She wrote the script, I said let’s go and make it. We started a Kickstarter campaign and in eight months we shot the film.

HNI: Tell me about the movie; is it- the place, the city- in Iran?

ALA: It is not in Iran. It is a fantasy fairytale, a dark fantasy. If you think of a place in David Lynch film, it is not real real, but somehow it is real, like a fairytale. So this is an Iranian fairytale. It doesn’t have to be true to anything in the world. This is cinema. The beauty of it is the imagination is your limit. It can be anything.

HNI: The woman let go some people. Was she not really hungry for blood, or was she looking for BAD guys, like drug dealer to bite?

ALA: A vampire by the design must have some blood. So, one way or another she needs some blood. So she is trying to decide whom to choose for dinner. I think it is very tricky business to try to decide who deserves to die.

HNI: Are we going to see the second part of the film? Follow the woman and Arash to see if they are still together?

ALA: The second part will be the origin of the story; how she became a vampire.

SS: When Ana Lily was creating this story, telling the actors what these characters were. I remember in her apartment there were wall-to-wall drawings of back-stories of each of these characters, like she created a graphic-novel.

Ana Lily Amirpour interrupted: But this is what graphic-novel is. We can go back to stories.

SS: I think it is a perfect way to expand, describe this universe. Really, limitless stories, histories of the back of these characters, it can go back to hundred years, it can go back to 2000 years…It is all in her head.

ALA: How she became a girl. She was in Morocco, she was in Istanbul, in Romania, then she went to Iran, then to the desert. She tried to kill herself, but she couldn’t.

HNI: Have you had all these written, or are you writing them now? Are you just thinking out loud now?

© h. nazan ışık

ALA: She didn’t answer, smiled and continued: And she found the city…

HNI: This time I interrupted: And she found love?

ALA: Ahhh…maybe…We’ll see, but she found something!

HNI: If you were a journalist what would you ask Ana Lily Amirpour?

ALA: Who are your most favorite, or most inspirational directors whom you love and love their work for who they are?

HNI: And your answer?

ALA: David Lynch, Lars Von Trier, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino.

HNI: And you Sina Sayyah, if you were a journalist what would you ask Sina Sayyah?

SS: I would ask….very, very hard question, no one asked me that. I would ask why did you make this movie? My answer from the producer standpoint is this movie is black and white and a piece of art, so I knew it would get an attention. But in general I like to produce movies. First I was a lawyer, but now I love making film, I love producing. This film is our first feature film. What this one was ‘do something awesome’ so we can go out and make another one.

ALA: It is mad love. It is mad passion. Making a film is surely an insane person’s undertaking. Honestly this is the answer, to some degree functioning of insane people.

HNI: Have you seen Jim Jarmusch’s film “ Only Lovers left Alive”? “It is all about love” he says.

ALA: Love is the shit. Love it is. That’s it!

SS: And music!

ALA: And music! It goes hand-in-hand. Songs about music!

And she smiled again.

HNI: Thank you.

ALA: Thank you. We said it all.

That was a very pleasant chat, I say.