Anna Eborn has always sought itself away from the city centre. Her headstrong documentaries usually take place in restricted reserves – geographical, mental, or emotional. The heavy regidebuten ”Pine Ridge” was a dark depiction of young desperation in the run-down handbook in South Dakota has AMERICA’s highest suicide statistics.
”Suffer”, she was a severely tested native woman in a retirement home in Gammelsvensk village in eastern Ukraine.
the New movie ”Transnistra” is a dreamy and vardagspoetiskt group portrait of teenagers adrift on the forgotten northeastern indian Transnistria on the border between Ukraine and Moldova.
the charismatic alfatjejen Tanya as omsvärmas of a handful of hormonrusiga guy friends. Despite the existential angst and kärlekstrassel so is ”Transnistra” almost an uplifting feel-good documentary compared to the ”Pine ridge”.
Haha, yes after the ”Pine ridge” and ”Suffer”, I wanted to make a film about young people with a stated theme. ”Suffer” is mostly about death and takes place most in the memory. Filming young people creating a different rhythm and tempo because they are in the more intense ”now”, says Anna Eborn with the black turtleneck to the short, blond pagefrisyren not really manage to cover a Einstürzende Neubauten-tattoo on the neck.
The acclaimed Swedish director is sitting in a hemmabiorum, with two rows of red cinema seats in the Tempofestivalens headquarters in Södermalm, stockholm. Next week the festival is ”Transnistra” which won awards at film festivals in both Rotterdam and Gothenburg.
Read more: Ten filmtips on Tempofestivalen
Anna Eborn caught the eye of the small northeastern indian Transnistria in connection with the work of ”Suffer”. She was fascinated by the peripheral country still suffering from the post-Soviet hangover, and where the elderly clinging to their Lenin statues and flags with the hammer and sickle.
After having declared their independence from Moldova in 1990, the country has its own currency, parliament, police and border control. The country receives financial aid from Russia but has never been recognized by the rest of the world.
” I wanted to investigate how it is to be young in a country where the older generation upholds a conservative lifestyle and an outdated rule that the world has rejected. Transnistrier are proud patriots, but also influenced by modern Russia. They also want pop culture, celebrities, bling-bling and luxury, ” says Eborn.
admittedly in the background as a blurred fondtapet, but as usual, it is the emotions she wants to. Therefore, she must try to rollbesätta their documentaries with the same care as if it were an actor in a motion picture.
After some half-successful castingförsök dropped everything on the spot when she from a car window, and suddenly glimpsed a cluster of young people at a dimmed petrol station in the village of Kaminka in the north of Transnistria. When she and photographer Virginie Surdej (”Insyriated”) stopped and entered a 16-year-old girl came up as a charismatic character out of a movie.
the Guys was still hanging in the gloom, but Tanya went straight up to us and asked if she could get a lift to the capital, Tiraspol. I loved her immediately, but also realized that she could be both demanding and a little unruly. She is not the obvious filmstjärnetjejen, but has some other quality that is more reminiscent of titelrollsfiguren in the brothers Dardennes ”Rosetta”, says Anna Eborn and aimed at the socialrealistiska belgian guldpalmsvinnaren with the Translation of Dequenne.
”Transnistra” Photo: Momento movie
the film appears to be the Tanya as a sensitive but tough tomboy who hangs out with his guy friends at the abandoned factories and at the riverbed.
” Six, seven guys who swarm around this strong girl – it was just the kind of group dynamics that I have been looking for. I could not wish for anything better, ” says Anna Eborn.
With an analog 16mm-camera, she followed the young people over four seasons of the year where the group dynamic is constantly shifting.
– One of the film’s premise was that they could never do wrong in front of the camera. Even if I, as a 35-year-old know that a tonårsförälskelse never going to keep for life so I have to try to believe in every words they say. And if Tanya say to the girls ”take the life of for the that guys do in the end,” so is the film’s emotional truth, ” says Anna Eborn.
a documentary filmmaker who is always on the lookout for recognition was Tanya is also a bargain.
– I could reflect my 17-year-old I in her on an emotional plan. In the aged is very much about being seen and taken seriously. I was convinced that ”Transnistra” was a film about love, but in the end I realized that it became more focused on friendship. You will not always be seen in a relationship even if you may think that when you are in love, ” says Anna Eborn.
Anna Eborn had no thoughts on to be the director when she was small. Photo: Adam Daver
the main protagonist is she grew up in a distinct place in the periphery. More specifically, the Skaftö in Bohuslän. Her father was an artist, but as little, she had never any thoughts of becoming a director.
” We didn’t even have any tv, it was a bit halvkyrklig atmosphere at home. I blängde wide-eyed when I happened to see the Report on the tv at the home of a friend. So there was very little skärmtid, haha. However, I read a lot of books, played the piano and was interested in painting, ” she says.
As the 17-year-old, she moved to the capital and volunteered as a volunteer at Stockholm international film festival, to get friends. The meeting with the festival’s asian section changed her life. In particular, the display of one of the guldpalmsregissören Based Kore-Edas earliest films, the ”Illusions” (1995), in which a young mother to the end of the break up of grief since her husband has taken their lives without warning.
” I was absolutely knocked out by the film. It depicted the grief and loss that rhymed with my life even if it was not about the suicide – my mother died when I was 9. Igenkänningsfaktorn was so high that it convinced me that we all share the same emotions no matter where we are in the world, ” says Eborn.
another cinematic revelation was the Harmony Korines the cult film ”Gummo”, which depicts the odd existences that are trying to kill time in the most bizarre way in a småstadshåla in the midwest.
” I was completely shocked, had never seen anything like it: ”Can you do this?”. I was in love with all the characters and can still quote every reply.
The only thing that matters is the movie experience, the emotional truth.
Yet she has never had any serious plans to make feature films. As a filmmaker, she has always been more high on the reality than to lie together things in his chamber. During the film festival in Rotterdam was Sergei Loznitsa deeply impressed by the ”Transnistra” but dismissed the film as ”pure fiction”. Anna Eborn could not care less about what label you put on her videos.
– The only thing that means anything is the movie experience, the emotional truth. The documentary storytelling is freer, there is not the same preconceptions about what and how it should be. So far I have always been more inspired by the meeting with real people. And I would never be able to write a kind of dialogue. If I had written Tanyas replica ”There is no love in world anymore…” was the only allowed lökigt, ” she says.
Her documentaries have also been compared with the Russian auteurs such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Sukorov and the Hungarian Béla Tarr. Often with the addition of ”filmpoet” – a word she feels the love-hate relationship to the word.
”Filmpoet”, mmm, she smiles and tastes on the word.
“It sounds pretentious, but if you compare with how a poem works so it can sue – looking at a detail that it magnifies up to get to a special feeling,” she says, and adds:
although I do not think that I make difficult films, on the contrary. ”Roma” has been classified as an artistic and hard – wired for me is a straight Hollywoodberättelse which is almost filmed as a documentary, ” she says.
Anna Eborn have got hungry and want to make a sequel to ”Transnistra”.
Haha, yes, though this time I want to film the outside of Transnistria borders – unless any of them have taken out. To film where it was too tangled and cumbersome. In addition to all the logistical problems, gave the authorities a watchful eye on us during the recording. This time I want to make it easier for me – even if you never know where a documentary will take the way…