Emilie Verhamme Director of "Cockaigne"

Congratulations, your film is part of Official Short Film Competition. Can you talk about your Cannes experience so far? How does it feel that your film is one of the 10 films selected among 4500 applications? It was crazy because I didn’t expect it at all. I sent my film to a lot of international film festivals just to see what would have happened. No international film festival was interested, I thought let’s move on to the next movie. Then Cannes called me and I was like wow, I couldn’t breathe. I’ve met lots of people here; it’s been really great.

Did you make any professional contacts from different parts of the world? I’ve met a lot of interesting people here. I was not expecting to meet with specific people. I’m still a student. I want to make short films for now. I didn’t come here with a goal.

Immigration is maybe the biggest problem in Europe, all over the world. What was your motivation to tell a story about immigrants? I’ve met lots of Ukrainian immigrants and listened to their stories. There are a lot of films about immigrants told from one point of view, but a story set amongst the immigrants was never told. I found that really fascinating. The film is not really about immigration or political themes. It’s more about human relations and I thought it would be something instinctive when you immigrate to another country in Europe. I had to tell this story.

I really liked how you used the camera. It just felt like we were looking closer. It was shaky and dynamic. Why did you choose to use the camera like that? I certainly wanted to keep a documentary aspect and we used a handheld camera. We decided not to dig focus puller. We don’t really say the viewer “look at that”; we wanted them to look at wherever they want. We tried to be eyes of the viewer. Maybe it was a little bit too shaky sometimes, I think. We shot with a photo camera; it was so handy and light. We could have moved it everywhere easily.

How big was your crew? I don’t work with a big crew; I think there were around 10 people.

Basically it’s a foreign language film for you. So, how was the shooting process when you think about this? I first wrote the screenplay in Flemish and then I had it translated into Ukrainian. On the set the actors also spoke a little bit Flemish, I could have communicated with them. I trusted them 100% but I couldn’t check if what they said what was on script. It was funny; in postproduction I had someone who knew Ukrainian next to me saying “They don’t say what’s on the script”. There was some improvisation in acting. But I worked with them really well and in the end everything was ok.

There are many films that deal with immigration problems. Was there any film or director that inspired you when you were writing or shooting the film? I didn’t really have an inspiration. I am always scared copying things, that is why I can’t say that a film or a director inspired me.

Why Cockaigne? Because it is a promised land of milk and honey. It’s a medieval term. I saw a short film of James Dean, The Bells of Cockaigne. At that moment I was writing my story and I thought it would be a great title for the film.

Do you see yourself as a short film director or have plans for feature films? Yes, of course. I think a lot of people are shooting short films to make long feature films. But it depends on the story. If the story tells you to make it a short movie than you do it. If it is a script for long feature, you make a long feature film. It totally depends on the story. Do you want to continue telling stories like this? I want to tell stories, fiction stories. I don’t really like to put labels. It really depends on the story, it could be about anything. I don’t look for any political themes.

by Ali Deniz