Isabella Eklöf Follows ‘Holiday’ with ‘Potentially Provocative’ ‘Kalak,’ Talks ‘Personal Quest to Have Truth in Filmmaking’
23.09.2023 - 17:05
/ variety.com
Marta Balaga Sweden’s Isabella Eklöf has followed up her acclaimed debut “Holiday” with the Greenland-set “Kalak,” this time around opting for a male protagonist. “He’s a guy, but the story is exactly the same,” she says. “It’s still about sexual assault and ‘restaging’ your trauma, or looking for family and connection, but I have never explored that perspective before.
An artist should be able to make art about anything, but it was strangely difficult. He does become more of a perpetrator. Why? I am not sure.
Just because he has a dick, he becomes more dangerous.” Eklöf, who previously co-wrote Ali Abbasi’s “Border,” based the story on an autobiographical novel by Kim Leine, with both of them writing alongside Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen. Produced by Maria Møller Kjeldgaard (Manna Film), “Kalak’s” production partners take in Mer Film (Norway), Momento Film and Film i Väst (Sweden), MADE (Finland), Dutch outfit Lemming Film and Polarama Greenland. Totem Films handles sales.
In the film, Jan (Emil Johnsen) is working as a nurse in Greenland. He wants to be accepted and become a “Kalak,” a true – or “dirty” – Greenlander. But he also needs to acknowledge a painful secret he has been hiding for years.
“Personally, I am not that drawn to fictional stories. There is enough weird stuff happening so that we don’t have to make things up, at least when it comes to art. Entertainment is a different story,” she adds.
“What drew me to Jan is his curiosity and joy, and his complete lack of borders. He is trying to understand Greenlandic culture, he wants to jump straight in. I just love it when people aren’t afraid.” Despite having a family, Jan enters into sexual relationships with local women, at the same time awakening a memory he
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