In working with actors, you emphasize physicality; there are elements of dance to this, but your films’ relationship to body and movement is so instinctive and open. With Dogtooth, what do you recall of working with the actors?
We had a long period of rehearsals, and I did those the way I learned from a couple of theater plays before. What I took from that was to focus on physicality, instead of analyzing and intellectualizing. In rehearsals, which enabled them to be free and explore, we basically played games. I have tried to do that since then, as much as I can, during most films. It creates this trust and familiarity between the actors, and it makes them focus on their physicality and on doing things, instead of thinking about them—just doing them, as the main act.
The rest of it is the actors, because how each person perceives that process and makes it their own is very important. You can only instill some kind of philosophy and approach, and it’s on them to take over and make it flourish.
Tell me about supervising the restoration for Dogtooth—how did you approach that process?
I don’t look at my films very often! So that was quite an experience, just looking at the film. Certain things, I had completely forgotten they were there. You do appreciate certain things more when there’s the distance of time.
There wasn’t a very good digital version of Dogtooth, because we made it when cinemas were mostly still showing prints. There were some great prints, but the digital version of it, we cobbled together quickly. It wasn’t the greatest transfer of what the film was supposed to look like.
It was interesting to go through that process again, to try to remember how things were supposed to look. We change over time, and certain things probably look slightly different to what the original print looked like—but I think that’s kind of interesting as well. You have a 2025 version, and it’s not very different to what it was, but there are slight differences, according to how we’ve all evolved, as well as how I evolved and how I see things now. But it’s pretty much loyal to the original.
We tried to do it mostly out of memory, rather than going shot by shot or being too absolute about it. A lot of that is ingrained in the film, because we shot it the way we saw it. For example, we shot it with no light, but once or twice it was nighttime and we had to switch on a light, so a shot looks a particular way. It’s not like you could totally change it.
