Lucile Hadz­i­halilovic on the evo­lu­tion of Evolution

It’s tak­en 10 years for Lucile Lucile Hadz­i­halilovic to deliv­er her fol­low-up to her strange and seedy break­through fea­ture from 2005, Inno­cence. But see­ing Evo­lu­tion, it’s instant­ly obvi­ous where all that time went – every frame is a dizzy­ing puz­zle-box of obscure mean­ings and impul­sive actions. It’s a film which accom­pa­nies the view­er on a trip to a strange world that seems faint­ly sim­i­lar to our own, but the more time we spend there, there more eerie, per­verse vio­lent it seems.

“I had to find some­one to work with dai­ly for a while, and it hap­pened to be Alan­té Kavaïté, who hap­pens to also be a direc­tor her­self. She real­ly helped me to struc­ture this uni­verse. It was a long process. But what was very, very long, and I nev­er thought it would be so long, was the process of find­ing mon­ey for this project. I thought it would be the same as for Inno­cence, because this one I thought was less abstract – it was more nar­ra­tive. I thought it would be eas­i­er. But peo­ple real­ly did not get the project.”

“It was pret­ty clear that this was a very per­son­al project, so in France they would not dare say that I would need to change things to secure fund­ing. Also, I guess they wouldn’t know how to change it. The ques­tion was, ​‘Maybe we can try to give more expla­na­tions so the view­er can under­stand it?’ But it was a very dan­ger­ous path because if you give an expla­na­tion it kills the film. So we tried to explain that the mys­tery, the ambi­gu­i­ty, was on pur­pose. What it was deal­ing was not meant to be clear. It’s not meant to give answers. It’s not meant to give a mes­sage. It’s not a sci­ence fic­tion film. It’s not talk­ing about soci­ety. It’s not metaphor­i­cal. It’s just an inti­mate sto­ry. So that was a very dif­fi­cult thing.”

“It was a ques­tion of find­ing the right places and loca­tions that could give you that mate­r­i­al. I need­ed to just put the cam­era some­where and it would be amaz­ing. The first time I tried to make the film, we worked with a pro­duc­er who knew the Canary Islands, and thought it was a good place to make the film. So we did some scout­ing there and it was just great. You could see that you didn’t need a lot of mon­ey to enter a dif­fer­ent uni­verse – it was already just there. I real­ly love scout­ing and find­ing loca­tions, it gives you so much food for the story.”

“There were two vil­lages on two dif­fer­ent islands, and I had to choose between them. One was very dif­fer­ent and also very strange. But the one we chose, what I liked was the vol­canic coast which is very dra­mat­ic, but also this white vil­lage. It seems quite famil­iar, quite nor­mal, quite abstract and out of time and place. We need­ed an iso­lat­ed vil­lage or a group of hous­es. We even thought Nor­way would work – this nature back­drop, the sea, starfish, iso­lat­ed hous­es – but it’s a very dif­fer­ent mood. It was very impor­tant to me that the film was in the sun.”

“I think it’s very inspir­ing to film water. It’s very visu­al. You have dif­fer­ent aspects of water. It’s strange because, in this case, at the very begin­ning there were no oceans in the sto­ry. Then at some point I released that it could be by the sea and it was the per­fect sur­round­ing. The dif­fi­cul­ty there was that I knew a bit from Inno­cence, but here it was much more to have the chil­dren in the water. And also it was the ocean. It was not the Mediter­ranean, it was the Atlantic ocean, with a lot of wind and waves. I real­ly love the strength of the water there.”

“I was look­ing for a boy who was frag­ile. I found him at the very end of my search. I want­ed also to find some­one who could express fears. Because we had so lit­tle time to shoot, it was like one shot after anoth­er. It’s not that I could have tak­en to putting him in a sit­u­a­tion where he could be afraid – it’s some­thing deep­er. In the end I thought the best way would be to make things more nat­ur­al. I want­ed him to be con­cen­trat­ed and tense, and it was a hard process get­ting that from him. I don’t like it when chil­dren are too… alive. I pre­fer it when they are a bit stiff.”

“It’s a very auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sto­ry. For instance, when I was 10 years old I went to the hos­pi­tal for the first time, just because I had appen­dici­tis – noth­ing dra­mat­ic or abnor­mal. But it was the first time, as a child, I went to a place where an unknown adult would touch my body. And not only that, they would open my body. This was a very pow­er­ful moment from my child­hood. So I guess the basis of this sto­ry is there, in this devel­op­ment of fear.”