Eleven-year-old Sophie and her 30-year-old father Karam, who lives far away from her, come to a resort in Turkey for their summer vacation. Under the dazzling sun, Sophie and Karam spend intimate moments with a video camera pointed at each other. Twenty years later, when Sophie is the same age as Karam, she looks back on the footage and thinks: "If only I had known your heart at that moment".
PROFILE
Born in 1987 in , Scotland. He is currently a filmmaker based in New York City. After studying at the Classics Department of King's College, University of London , he received an MA from Oxford University. . He then worked in finance and ran a film crew agency in London with a friend. He then enrolled in a graduate program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he earned both an MFA and an MBA. While in school, with the support of a national program, he wrote and directed three short films, "Tuesday" (16), "Laps" (17), and "Blue Christmas" (17) In 2018, Filmmaker Magazine named him an "Independent 25 New Faces of Film" and was named a 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriter and Director Lab Fellow. This film, "aftersun/Aftersun" (22), is his first feature film.
As I delved deeper into the periphery of "grief," I realized that there was also love and hope there.
I am the same age as the director, so the music and culture in the film, such as Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure" and the low-pixel hand-held video camera, evoked small memories of that time. . It was a wonderful film, not saying much, and I felt very comfortable with the time in the margins.
Wells: Thank you very much.
I read in the press materials that the idea for the film came from "flipping through old photo albums while conceiving the idea, and looking back at my own adolescence and memories of my parents, especially my father". What kind of memories drove you to make the film?
Wells: I did not piece together any one particular memory, but built the script on a foundation of smaller memories. . When I was thinking of ideas that could be made into a movie as my final project, I was flipping through old photo albums. Looking back on my memories in this way, I recalled conversations we had back then and places we had visited, and created the seven days of the film. . I naturally wanted to portray my own personal side, especially the relationship between me and my father when I was a girl, on the screen. Although it is a fiction, I wanted to capture the feelings and sensations of those days - the memories of the sun gradually rising and the sky becoming brighter and brighter - and this was the beginning of my motivation for the film.
. . the original idea was the short film "Tuesday," which was your graduation project during your graduate school days, wasn't it?
Wells: When I was shooting "After Sun," I was not aware of the similarities with "Tuesday. . However, as I talked about this work in various places, people around me pointed this out, and I became aware of it. I feel that I shot this film because I wanted to pursue "sadness," which remained unclear in the previous film, more in my mind, and to get my own answer.
I imagine that you did not dwell on the "sadness" of the work, but rather found a glimmer of light and hope in it.
Wells: . I am glad you interpreted it that way. . I also gradually began to feel a sense of hope while creating this work. Although "Tuesday" focuses on "death," as I delved deeper into the periphery of "grief," which is derived from "death," I realized that there is love and hope in this work. Because of this realization, I actually revised the last part of the story as well.
