EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW 2024
FILM
MIKA
GUSTAFSON
PARADISE IS
BURNING
Co-writer / Director
UK Release 30 Aug, 2024
Aug 28, 2024
Three sisters aged 7 to 16, live alone after their mother vanishes for whole swathes of time. When the social services demand a family meeting, oldest sister Laura plans to find a stand in for their mother.
Hello Mika, thanks for talking to The New Current. Once a film has gone through all the festivals, it's gained all sorts of recognition and awards. What does it feel like to be able to see your debut feature being released in cinemas?
I don't know. I think it's everyday life, you imagine someone is going about their business, it’s a rainy Sunday or something and they’re with a friend and they don’t know what they want to do with their day. Maybe they’ve heard about Paradise is Burning and then you imagine someone on the other side of the world going to watch your film. I think that is quite amazing to think about. That's maybe more amazing than the big awards and the big festivals, of course they are cool. But imagine that the film has its own life, that’s very exciting to think about. And also I get some messages on Instagram and such when people write like ‘I saw your film…’, or ‘I was there on a date and this happened.’ I think everyday life maybe a small cinema somewhere, you know?
What did it mean to you to premiere at Venice and then win two major awards at the festival. What was that experience like for you?
It's amazing. We really aim for that, if you can say that. It was a goal. Actually to come there and to not only be in competition, but also to, to win a prize. It was something that me and my co-screenwriter Alexander Öhrstrand (Alex), who is my creative partner and also my partner when I are always talking about this and making this goal up. You talk about your creative goals, but at the same time, it's also fun to talk about the festivals or where you want to screen your film, you can have these two thoughts at the same time. It's always about making the film that you want to make and push borders or create new images. That comes first, but I think it's also fun to talk about festival goals.
How much did your previous work influence how you approached this film?
I think everything you do is linked. I work with the same subjects or I'm interested in the same themes as a director or as a creative person. You have some things that you are interested in, but you change and your life changes and you get interested in other things. But I think there is some things that you come back to.
And because of the relationship between the three main characters and the intimacy of being sisters how did you go about casting for these roles? Did you have very strict guidelines of who you were looking for during the casting process?
I'm always very involved. I always do some of the casting myself. And I'm very involved in the casting process, from the start to finish. And Alex was also involved and there's always a lot of energy put into the casting. It took a long time and we were looking in different places. We tried different things, I was like ‘…this is what I want and this is what I'm looking for.’ I have a clear idea, it's also a process. So it can also be very open. Sometimes, for example small characters, like Steffe, the youngest sister, meets a friend and we tried both boys and girls for that character. So it could be very clear or an energy that I'm looking for, but like gender wise or it can be very open. So it depends a lot of energy and of course a lot of money, I think that's a core script and costing.
Did you get a lot of time to rehearse?
For both Alex and myself, we talked a lot, but he's an important person, because we work together and we wrote the script together. And he's also an actor. So as an actor and director, we put it together like a program for the girls because they were first-time actors. So we made a program three months before filming. How do we get them comfortable? And how do we teach them? How do we get them to understand what acting is? And that could be everything from just hanging out. We went to jujitsu to just play around, being physical together. But it could also be all the states fighting. I wanted the state fighting course to be the first thing we did because then you get to know each other and we talk about where the boundary is.
When I talk to young people who're first-time actors, I use the metaphor of boxing. This is the ring. And when the clock is ringing, then we start, then you give everything, you don't tickle each other or laugh or fool around. Then you're going to do this, and it's going to be hard and it's going to be tough, and you're going to be sweaty, maybe bloody, and then it rings again, and then it's over and you don't knock someone under the belt. I think you should be very clear. This is when we started this, when it ends, and what are we, what are we going to do? What's going to happen, and what am I looking for? And I try to be as honest and clear as possible and put everything on the table, but at the same time, I don't want to rehearsal a scene too much because then you get nothing to work with when you're on set. Then you board yourself as a director, and you board the actors, etc. You have to keep some things for when you shoot. So it's planning a lot. And work together around a scene. But then I want the scene to be quite fresh when we do it.
Do does that make sense?
It does.
I think it's important to always have certain levels of flexibility as well that you might have in your head, something that you want, but when the day comes at that particular moment, something can change and it gives you a different perspective.
And does this flexibilities that you might need with some scenes allow you to keep it fresh on on set?
There is a Swedish film director who used to say, “We'll see if we can translate it so that the unexpected can happen.” That's quite beautiful. And you have to be playful because sometimes more interesting things that you could not have imagined might happen. And you always have to be creative. It's not just doing what you need to do on paper. It has to be alive and creative. But equally in Paradise is Burning, everything is scripted. So we work with improvisation around how we work with the texts.
Sometimes it's more improvised, or sometimes we find something about how they move around in a room. So it depends, but you always need to be on your toes when you are making a scene. And it has to be a little bit of a jam. I think you have to find this jam together with an actor, the director, and the cinematographer, who also needs to be a little bit flexible. Otherwise, you don't. I think the jam between these three is really necessary.
I wanted to adapt on that as well, the creative collaboration between you, Alex and your actors as well as your cinematographer Sine Vadstrup Brooker, there is an important relationship that is formed in order to bring your vision to life. When you're working on a project like this, how important is that creative collaboration between your team and yourself and sort of the aim towards the, the vision that you've got?
Super. It's super important, and I also think it is so important because it's collaboration and it’s also not a art house film. It is something that the director is the only one who really has the map. And it's quite complicated sometimes because you just want to print it and give it to people, but you can't, you can explain things and you can try, but it's, it is actually only the director who's having some things like in their brain. Sometimes it's like I have it on my tongue, and people are like, okay, okay, we tried … You're like, Hmm. And you just have a feeling that you have to go after. So I think that the collaboration and the patience from a team is everything that allows a director work strongly with the actors. So you have to have the team, that collaboration is really necessary for you as a director to be free and how you have the possibility to work with the actors.
What makes that sort of creative partnership so successful and what makes that way of working collaboration between you both so rewarding.
It is because we are very different and very similar at the same time. We work a little bit as a director and an actor when we work together. When we write together we are both very interested in how to make a script workable for an actor. We have this idea that you can’t make a bad script good. If it's a bad script, if the lines are weirdly written or not written as a person should have said them you can’t save it. So we have the same idea about how you write something to sound non-written? Non-Written in the mouth of an actor, it should sound like everything just came up just now.
And I think that it is very easy because it also comes from the inside. When you know how it feels in your body when you get bad text, and so I think that's one of the major important things, how we write the scenes and the text and dialogue. But then I think also how we work together is also as a director and and actor in case of an actor's always coming up with different ideas or Alex can come up with ten ideas or being very creative and as a director I’m more like no, no, no. Yes. I have a vision, I have an idea about this, but it's not clear what could be around and then Alex is always working with material. I think it's very playful. I think the playfulness between us is what's make it fun.
Finally, what message you hope your audiences will take away from paradise is burning?
I think when people say I haven't seen these kind of girls before, that makes me really happy. I think it's more about trying to capture how life can feel. It it hard to say. Yeah. What do you think you, you have seen the film, what was most important for you?
I think it’s. I think there is a difficulty in how female relationships, female stories and narratives are showcased. Sometimes it’s a challenge. Different countries have different cultures. And I think that it’s, nice to see something that is organic. It seems real. And I think it is one of those things that you don't necessarily always get a chance to see because sometimes filmmakers try to say or do too much, rather than just allow their characters to find their own space and their own journey. And I think that's what I think that's particularly within female led stories there's very few opportunities to see something like that. I think that's what I think that really stands out with your film.
I think that was beautiful. Said