MODRA written and directed by Ingrid Veninger, with Hallie Switzer, Alexander Gammal, Branislav Dugovic and Elena Dugovicova. A Mongrel Media release. 80 minutes. Opens Friday (February 11). For venues, trailers and times, see Listings.
Usually when you set up an interview with a director, you do it through a publicist, a distributor or a studio. I ran into Ingrid Veninger on the College streetcar a couple of weeks ago she’d been walking through Little Italy on a frigid January afternoon, making sure the restaurants and shops were properly stocked with posters and postcards for her new film, Modra.
We arranged to meet, and a few days later we’re sitting down for coffee at the Green Grind. It’s still freezing, and she’s still postering.
“I actually love this part of it,” she says, nursing a decaf latte. “It’s a little bit awkward, because I’m the director as well as the producer, so sometimes I’m conscious of people thinking I should just back off. But the director side of me is already working on the next project, whereas the producer feels a total responsibility to do my absolute best – and you can never do enough to try to get bums in seats.”
An actor since her teens, Veninger has also built up a considerable resumé of credits behind the camera. She produced Peter Mettler’s documentaries Picture Of Light and Gambling, Gods And LSD, and co-wrote Charles Officer’s Nurse. Fighter. Boy. She moved into directing in 2008, collaborating with Simon Reynolds on Only. Modra is her impressive solo debut.
It’s about as personal as a movie can get. Not only is the script based on Veninger’s own teenage experience returning to her native Slovakia, but she also cast most of her own family as versions of themselves. Her own daughter, Hallie Switzer, plays one of the two leads.
Neither Switzer nor her co-star, Alexander Gammal, had ever done anything like this before, but that was exactly what Veninger wanted for her story of two Canadian teens trying to get along on an awkward trip to Slovakia.
“Hallie trusting me the way she does kind of set the bar for Alexander,” Veninger says, “because she let herself be vulnerable. If she was crying or miserable, she would just be that way because she’s not a trained actor, she doesn’t hide all those emotions – she brings them with her. And that allowed him to have a sense of compassion for her just as a human being. They started to trust and respect each other, and then out of that came some great work onscreen.”
Veninger’s pursuit of emotional authenticity and intimacy resulted in an unorthodox shoot, with the cast and crew essentially living together in Slovakia for the five weeks of production.
“A normal film is scheduled,” she says. “It’s shot between this time and that time, and people live their real lives and then show up on set and are working, and then they go back to their real lives. But I want the real-life stuff in the film. I want all the lines blurred. Life/art, art/life – it is a very fine line, and one affects the other. I’m not only making a film that’s very personal to me, but I’m making it with my family.
“There’s not even a degree of separation,” she says. “It’s there, in my heart, totally and completely.”
Veninger’s goal was to capture the experience of discovering oneself in foreign surroundings, with all of the emotional highs and lows of adolescence.
“[Cinematographer] Ian Anderson and I discussed this idea of perspective,” she says. “I wanted there to be the innocence and the kind of naïveté I had going there for the first time as a 17-year-old, and how idyllic this village was to me. It almost seemed like a fairy tale, because I’d imagined it. And I wanted it recreated the way I saw it from the coffee-table books and photo albums, which has little to do with how it really is. Maybe there’s some darkness and some other things going on, but when I was 17 I didn’t see that.”
Now, after debuting at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival and landing on Canada’s prestigious Top Ten list, Veninger can finally nudge her film into release. She’s doing everything she can to get people to the Royal to see it.
“If there’s nobody there, the film’s kinda dead,” she admits. “It only exists, it only comes alive, when people respond and react to it. So I don’t mind if there’s only one person – no matter what, I’ll be there with Hallie, and we’ll have a good time.”
She’s also planning to make things interesting during the film’s first week.
“[For] the very first night, February 11, I got an LCBO licence and I’m gonna have a little reception with Slovak beer and wine, and I’m hoping the Slovaks will come out and bring their friends. On the 16th, I’ll give away posters, and on the final day I’ll give away buttons – my mom handmade 500 little Modra buttons.
“For the Valentine’s Day screening, I’m still hoping we’ll set up a kissing booth. But Hallie isn’t totally sold on that idea.”
Interview Clips
Ingrid Veninger on her filmmaking strategy:
Veninger on shooting in a small Slovakian village:
Veninger on the value of casting actual teenagers:
