Dinner with Nachtschade
An interview with Shady El-Hamus, director of Nachtschade
Why did you want to focus a film on an illegal immigrants transporter?
It all started with some CCTV footage I saw online of a minivan on a European highway – suddenly it flips 180 degrees and then comes to a halt. The driver gets out and runs off and then from the back of the van about 30 people get out, including many children. I realised that with the refugee crisis going, there’s so many different stories and tragedies, and that I hadn’t ever seen anything about the people who drive those vans. The driver that ran off stuck with me – I was interested to see what his story could be.
Why did you choose to portray a transporter who could himself be identified as an immigrant?
In research, we found people smugglers often use drivers who can speak multiple languages, Arabic or Turkish for example. This makes the communication between smuggler/driver and driver/refugees a lot easier. I especially found this interesting because it shows that we live in a world now, and even more so in the near future, where every single person has certain roots somewhere. The driver in my film may be born in Holland but his parents have immigrated from Turkey once. The focus on someone’s background or nationality will become less important I hope. Everything is shifting.
How much are you interested on father-son relationship and do you have further projects on this theme?
This is my main thematic interest. Nearly all the films I’ve done so far deal with this. I’m planning to write a feature film in which I can explore my take on this classic theme in more depth.
Did you write this special night as some sort of a ritual for Tarik? I thought it wasn’t his first transport night with his father, but sill is there some kind of initation in Nachtschade?
Me and the writer Jeroen Scholten van Aschat always approached the story as a dark coming of age. Nachtschade (Nightshade) is a family of plants that only grows in the night. The boy comes of age in this night – he is finally acknowledged by his father at the end of the film, which was all he longed for, but pays a high price for it. The film is a tragedy – every kid looks up to it’s parent, but often fail to see who their parents really are.
How did you work on the lights and sound ? In particular for the truck cab’s atmosphere?
We shot all the driving scenes on a low-loader so we had quite some freedom with lightning. The apporach of the film was to tell the story subjectively from the boy’s perspective. In lightning we wanted to work with color as we felt that for the boy this was like a night out. It’s quite a grim world that we portray but not for him. To him the road, the streetlights, it’s an adventure. In sounds we spend quite some time recording people in the back of the van to get what we needed. I directed them without camera – just sound. There’s a long sequence in which a lot of the drama is told in sound so it took us a while to get that right.
Did you research the real illegal immigrants transport accidents resulting in death and laws surrounding these cases?
We definitely did research. It believe that you need to in order to truthfully portray a world which is not yours. But at some point I do think you have to let go of the reality and just go ahead and tell your story. The most important thing in developing this was that we never wanted to be sentimental in any way. To have an honest storytelling approach towards the drama. I hope that stands out.
What sort of freedom would you say the short format allows?
I think shorts are so important for young filmmakers to experiment and find your voice. But then again, I’ve also found myself feeling limited by the short form as there’s only so much that you can explore within it. I’m looking forward to be able to make a feature to find more depth in storytelling.
Nachtschade is being shown in International Competition I14.
