- Hi, I'm Joana Vicente executive director
and co-head of TIFF.
Hi everyone and welcome to a special Q & A
recording of The Father.
Florian Zeller's gripping debut film
adapted from his 2012 play. I'm happy to say
this is one of the 50 official selection titles
at the 45th Toronto International Film Festival,
and part of our special presentations.
A big welcome to Florian Zeller
and co-star Sir Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman,
who bring to life the story of a proud
and beloved patriarch's tragic declining to dementia.
I'd also like to congratulate Sir Anthony
will be receiving the tribute ceremony,
tribute award on September 15.
This year, our award ceremony will be televised
on CTV in Canada at 8:00 PM EST
and streams on varieties Facebook live at 8:30 PM EST.
While this year has been challenging for so many reasons.
I'm so happy that we can be together virtually today
and talk about The Father.
So let's jump in.
I'll start with the question for Florian.
So can you talk a little bit about the process,
and the acting, the screenplay from,
from the play that you wrote?
- Yes. So, you're right.
It's, The Father was first a play
and I wrote it something like eight years ago
and it was on stage in Paris and then in many countries.
And it was like a personal story
but I felt, thanks to the stage
that it was also very universal as a story.
Because I remember after every performances,
people were coming to us to tell their own story
about this issue.
So I had the conviction that
something was at stake to share emotions with people.
But I, I really didn't want to, just to film a play.
I wanted it to be very cinematic.
So I worked with Anthony... Christopher Hampton sorry,
who wrote the script with me, to make it very cinematic.
So we kept the, the narrative of the play,
which was basically about playing with the audience,
playing with the experience of, disorientation.
But I wanted to make it even more cinematic.
I thought it would be,
interesting and exciting to play with the set
and to use the set as a character
and to draw it and to think about how we can use it
to push the audience
to experience in a way, a slice of dementia.
So as you can see the,
the main character is, his name is Anthony.
It means that when I wrote the script,
I had Anthony, the real one in mind.
And, so that's the reason why, his name is Anthony.
So it was, I remember when I wrote that
I spoke with my friends and my producers,
and they were a bit laughing at me because, I'm French,
this is my first feature film.
And I was aware that it's like,
not, a dream, not easy to fulfill but,
until someone comes and says, it's not possible,
it means that potentially it is possible.
So I sent the script to Anthony through his agent.
And one day I receive a call,
someone letting me know that Anthony wanted to meet with me.
So I took a plane with Christopher Hampton
to have breakfast with Anthony in Los Angeles.
And it was such a beautiful and joyful and intense moment.
And it was the way everything started for that film.
- Wow.
- Amazing. Can you talk a little bit
since you've mentioned Sir Anthony how,
Olivia got involved and how,
- Yeah. So I said I come from Seattle,
so I knew Olivia from stage.
We could have seen her on stage in London
and also I've known her for many films
and watched her as well.
And I've always adore her.
I'm sorry to say that in front of you.
(laughing)
I think it's not possible not to love her when,
and as soon as you meet her.
And I knew that the film needed someone,
you can feel empathy with immediately.
Because it was not only about being in
the main character's head.
It was also to feel empathy for this dilemma
because I think everyone is concerned by it,
which is basically what do you do with the people you love
when they are starting to suffer from dementia?
So I was so, I'm aware that I'm so lucky
to have Olivia and Anthony in this story.
It's such an amazing thing for me.
- Thank you
- Can you talk a little bit about just,
the process of editing and nonlinear film
and also balancing the different kind of tones of the film?
Sometimes it just feels like a very realistic family drama,
and then it sometimes, it's almost like a
psychological, horror thrillers.
So just wondering how you,
you did such a beautiful job at balancing all those tones.
- I wanted the film to be very realistic
because I want, when you see something on screen,
you don't question it. This is the reality.
And it was useful for me because
then you have another situation
that appears like a contradiction
with what you have just seen.
And I wanted the audience
to have to deal with that contradictions.
And I wanted them, I want the audience
to be in an active position,
not just to sit and to watch a story already told,
I wanted them to be part of the narrative.
So we, at the beginning of the story,
there is this apartment.
No one is questioning what it is.
This is Anthony's apartment.
We recognize his space, his things, his furniture.
There is no doubt about it.
And suddenly there is that man,
pretending that this is his space and he's,
and to be Anne's husband,
whereas we just heard Anne saying
that she was about to leave London to Paris
because she just met a Frenchman.
So it's like you have to go into this maze in a way
to deal with the contradictions
that you do not understand exactly what is going on,
but you are, and in a way, it was a way for me
to make the audience experiencing
what the main character was going through.
And it's like a puzzle in a way.
You can play with all the pieces.
It will never work entirely,
as if a piece will always miss in a way,
but it's done on purpose.
Because the moment will come when
you will not be able to understand everything
and you will have to, in a way to let it go.
Or to understand it on another level,
let's say an emotional level.
And again, this is the same thing
that is happening to the character.
I think in the end of the story,
even though the journey was complicated, sometime chaotic,
I think everyone can say what it was about what it is about,
where we are, what are the emotions and what,
what is the journey of Anthony.
- So, I'll ask now question to Sir Anthony.
So the film does such a great job
of making the audience feel the fear and confusion
of your character struggling with dementia.
And your character is also both charming, very charming,
and also menacing but also lost and confused.
So how did you find the core of,
of this complex character?
- Well, I go back to the meeting with Florian
having read the script,
I met Florian and Christopher.
And I was So knocked out by the script.
Once in a while you know, you get,
you get a script that really grabs hold of you.
And I was so passionate about doing it
than to meet both Florian and Christopher Hampton.
It was, actually I'll tell you it was,
it was easy for me to play him.
I think it was probably
the most fun I've ever had on a film.
I mean, I've been really lucky.
The last five years I've had some wonderful (indistinct)
working with Richard,
Emma Thompson, people like that.
And then to work with Olivia, which is the best.
I had such fun with it because I'm of that age.
And I think, I don't want to get hooked up,
but I, I am at the age where I feel that melancholy.
I understand that.
I can sort of feel it. Those,
but the actual thing that really got me
apart from everything else, the wonderful cast,
Olivia, Florian, and the script,
was the lighting in that little set
in North London, isn't it?
- [Olivia and Florian] Yeah.
- Those awful afternoons of heavy sunlight
in a suburban street.
You hear a car going by,
or you hear children speaking.
God almighty, that hurts so much.
And I think I'm at that age now,
not that I'm scared.
Now I'm fit and strong today.
But it was easy for me to play because
my brain is that old, old enough to understand.
I mean, I just jumped back another one.
I did a year recently and just before The Father and,
that was an easiest part for me to play
at my age than in the eighties.
It's the brain matures.
And one gap is wisdom mind in fact,
I know so little now,
and it was so easy to play and follow.
I don't know.
I can't describe it.
It was just easy.
Getting up in the morning,
going to the studio,
this funny little building in Northwest London
or wherever it was, the back of a warehouse,
a small set, it's extraordinary, no acting required.
It was just get up, learn the lines, show up.
There those moments where like,
I had so many lines at one point
about a chicken I remember.
- Oh yes.
- I couldn't, when someone wants chicken
and I thought,
I didn't know what I'm doing.
I thought I was really getting into dementia
(laughing)
I had to put a word there to remind me,
because I always loved to learn the script.
But you get to a point sometimes when it's
sort of impossible to remember everything.
I've been working with such brilliant actors.
It's a, I don't know, it's easy.
I don't play tennis, I'm not a sports person.
But I guess it's like playing tennis
when you're working with Olivia
and working with Florian
it's like playing tennis.
(laughing)
It is easy.
And my, this happens
when I was watching Olivia's performance.
I did come to her performance
and her break down was self frustration,
frustration and the heartbreak,
how it affect everyone?
Me, the actors or the guy who's dying of dementia.
He's so out of it now.
But there's the people around who really are splinted
and broken that bad.
Her frustration is heartbreaking.
The hopelessness, how do you help someone like this?
And of course it can drive you crazy
because you go crazy with the suffering of dementia.
And, it was the best thing I've,
I think it was a highlight of my life was the last,
I've had some pretty good ones the last few years.
That's a real highlight.
- For sure.
- Olivia, thank you.
- Oh Anthony.
- Thank you, Anthony.
- Amazing.
- It's true.
It's not just act or talk.
It's true.
(laughing)
But I think I'll just say this.
I think when you're working with such brilliant people,
you know you get moments of intensity.
But generally the whole thing was (indistinct)
- Yeah.
- You have to stand outside it.
If you become so embroiled in the part
I don't think you can live like that.
(faintly speaking)
And it's fun, it really is.
If your know your stuff.
- I absolutely agree with you.
- Olivia, would you like to tell us,
like what attracted you to the project?
And also your experience.
It seems that it was a very intimate set,
and we'd love to hear from you.
- It's exactly as Tony says.
I completely agree.
And watching Tony, just feeling everything made it so easy.
The script was so beautiful that it was so easy.
Tony was so completely present that you didn't,
it didn't feel like acting.
It felt, you know, easy.
He's exactly that his word is absolutely right.
And, it was an absolute dream.
I got to work every day.
I got to sit next to Tony.
(laughing)
Who, does hilarious impressions
and tells lots of stories and how,
and it's just joyful to spend time with
and heartbreaking to watch, to watch him play that part.
It was just, I absolutely loved it.
It was a dream. I'd have done it for free,
but my agent says I'm not allowed to say that.
(all laughing)
And Florian, I can't believe
Florian hadn't done a film before.
It was, everyone was just completely overflowing
with what he was doing.
Everyone felt so at ease
that he was in charge of running the ship.
And it was a, it was a compact and,
and everyone, trusted each other.
And it was a small group of people and it was just blissful.
- Florian, this is your first film.
Like how does it feel to get these
incredible words from your actors?
- To tell the truth, it was a joy.
An intense joy from the very beginning.
And true that it was,
because I made the decision to do it in a studio
in order to be able to use the set in many ways.
Sometimes as you probably noticed in the film,
small things are changing on set.
I mean, the apartment is,
has several metamorphosis during the film.
So something, sometime we played with,
we changed the proportions, the paintings, the furniture.
So sometime we were getting a dementia ourselves,
as Anthony just said,
because we didn't recognize from one day to the other
where we were.
But everything has been done in a very small place.
But this is the magic of cinema.
When you are very close to a genius like them,
it's, something is happening and it's called magic.
- Thank you so much. I can't believe 15 minutes went by
and I would have loved to continue
because this feels like magic
to talk to you.
But if there's some last words that you would like to share,
'cause I hate that we have to cut this short.
- Well, I'll just say that it's,
I find it quite hard to believe
that it's Florian's first directing job.
'Cause he did, it was so simple.
He just, he floated through it.
He just came in, said "Okay do this and do that."
- Yeah, yeah.
- And what was great is that
the script is so tight and accurate
that I would asked permission to change a word.
I think there's one because
it didn't quite stand in an English way.
It was in the French.
So you ask permission to do...
But it's, when you have, you don't need to change it
or rewrite or mess about or,
so many actors say, I want to rewrite.
No, that's rubbish.
Actors say, "I want to rewrite it."
Do your job.
(Olivia laughing)
And so it makes it so easy to work with a genius,
like Florian is a genius.
- Thank you.
But you know what, I remember Anthony,
one day you came to me and you said,
"May I change one sentence,
one line in the script?"
And it was, "Which one?"
And you said, "You know in the script
it's written that the character
is drinking coffee and I hate coffee
and is it possible to say I drink tea?"
And I was, "Okay, let's do this."
(laughing)
It's such an honor to work with people very respectful.
Can I say respectful in English? Yes.
- Yes.
- Respectful, with the text.
Because it's obvious that they are serving
something else than themselves.
We are just telling a story for the others.
And we are like a very few people together,
but we are doing it for other people.
It's really about sharing things.
And I think this is what cinema is about.
It's about sharing emotions and making people feel
part of something bigger than themselves.
- Great. Thank you all so much.
- [Olivia, Tony And Florian] Thank you.
- Hope to see you when you're...
- Yes, we do to.
- Hoping that this thing will go away.
(all laughing)
Thank you.
- Bye bye, thank you.
- Bye, thank you so much.
- Bye.