Interview with Toomas Husser Writer and director of ’Mushrooming’

Mushrooming portrays politician Aadu and his wife as they leave the city to go picking mushrooms in the woods. They stumble into weary local rockstar Zäk and the three of them will face an unexpected struggle to survive, as they get lost in the forest. Half thriller, half absurdist comedy with social satire ambition, Estonian writer and director Toomas Husser’s debut feature film is presented in the East of the West competition at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.

Sebastiano Pucciarelli : Your film is about the ability (or inability) to survive. Your characters are urban people, how important was the natural setting for your story ?

Toomas Husser : In the forest survival is a much more obvious and direct matter, compared to urban society…

SP : Then why mushrooming, which apparently is such an inoffensive activity ? Why not hunting ?

TH : Hunting for me is more boring actually. This very subtle action of picking mushrooms is more intriguing. I myself am a mushroom picker…

SP : Your film is a crossover between social satire and thriller, with strong interest in the portrayal of characters. Don’t you fear that this mix of genres could weaken the story and the representation of your protagonists ?

TH : If I should stick to one very precise genre I would feel locked up. I focus on the story I want to tell, trying to follow the inner logic of the story itself, not the genre logic. Which genre is my film ? It’s for the producer to tell, for me it’s kind of a “post-production issue”. And I’m pretty convinced that nowadays cinema has no clear genres anymore. When the genre is very clear the film is often very boring.

SP : The film is largely based on the characterization of the three protagonists and some of the most enjoyable scenes depend on their comic interaction. How did you work with them ? Did you cast a lot ?

TH : We didn’t cast at all, the story was written having the two male actors in mind, we were just wondering about the woman… Estonia is a small country and I’ve worked in theatre, so I knew them in advance. Both Juhan Ulfsak, playing the rocker Zäk, and Raivo E. Tamm, playing the politician Aadu [who by the way is the perfect double of Spanish former prime minister Zapatero] are leading actors in Estonia.

SP : You’ve also been working for television and in this film you repeatedly slap TV for its silliness and absurdity. Don’t you feel that the representation of TV in films is often stereotyped and a bit snobbish ?

TH : The level of the entertainment section in television is so low that it actually humiliates the audience, at least in our country. I’ve been directing a reality series called Jürgensons, bringing 7 prominent personalities together (politicians, comedians, writers, directors) in an abandoned house in the countryside, to survive with minimum wage for a week. They had such big quarrels and conflicts… on the first day they had a big drinking session and they basically drank all the money. The next day they were begging in the village.

SP : What about the relationship between politics and media ? In Mushrooming they appear to happily exploit each other, with the politician’s final press conference as his best manipulation.

TH : I hate two words that politicians are rhetorically using all the time, one is “caring” and the other is “love”, because in their speeches these words have no connection with real life and real problems. They don’t care and they don’t love, but they always use these words.

By Sebastiano Pucciarelli

Thanks to Noor for the picture of Toomas Husser and to Piret Tibbo-Hudgins for the translation