AZOR, Whatever My Grandpa Didn’t Write
For Andreas Fontana’s full-length feature debut as a director, Azor, he’s chosen to plunge straight into a time of dirty politics and the dictatorship in 1980 Argentina, where wealth insulates the elite. Talking in-depth with Hamed Sarrafi, the Argentine writer-director says he loves collaborating with friends like co-writer Mariano Llinas and using a mix of seasoned and non-professional actors – and he was pragmatic enough to get Swiss funding and place a Geneva banker at the center of the plot – but he also admits he’s something of a control freak. He deliberately interviewed some of the worst people imaginable when building the characters, and says the research process was very disturbing. For Fontana, the characters and locations are more important than the plot of his thriller, and every location is a character in itself, as he aims to create something holistic. The audience is the final, vital part of this creation in working out the deliberate labyrinth of Azor. “It is for you to decide what your relationship with different parts of it is. Some parts are obvious; some need to be decoded. You are the detective that needs to solve the mystery, by any means necessary.”
Hamed Sasafi: Where does your interest in cinema come from? Take us back to the beginning, please. Andreas Fontana: My interest and connection with cinema started before I began making movies. I’m part of a generation that has a special connection with the moving image because of the way we grew up with Television and films. My parents also played a big role in my infatuation with cinema. I remember my mother would take me to the cinema to watch Hitchcock’s films. My father also loved to watch the 70’s New Hollywood movies and he was a big fan of Sam Peckinpah. Even my stepfather was very much into cinema and he took me to films like the Seven Samurai when was 16. Undoubtfully, my family environment set me up to become a filmmaker. Just like if you live in a household with a lot of books, you are more likely to read more.
