Kristof Hoornaert, born in 1980, is a Belgian filmmaker. After studying Audiovisual Arts in Ghent and Brussels, he shot the short film Kaïn, which premiered in 2009 edition of Berlin International Film Festival. He later realized the no-budget short The Fall, selected in more than 40 film festivals worldwide, and Empire, premiered in 2015 Montreal World Film Festival and selected also for the BFI London Film Festival later that year. In 2017 has been released his first feature film, Resurrection, which premiered in Tallinn Film Festival and was later screened in Rotterdam International Film Festival; among the prizes the movie received there are the Capri Breakout Director Award, the Prix de la Critique at the Festival International de Cinéma d’Auteur de Rabat 2018 and a SIGNIS Award Special Mention Award at Religion Today Film Festival 2018.

Thanks to Laura Nartoon for having edited this text.
Resurrection is available on Amazon Prime

Your first short movie Kaïn already featured the premise for Resurrection: two young men fighting to death inside a forest, with no dialogues nor explanations of what is happening; after one them falls death on the ground, the other wanders in the forest, expiating. Can you tell us more about your first effort in filmmaking and its festival reception?

I wrote the script for Resurrection in 2003, when I was 23 years old. It was always my plan to make feature films. I had no interest in short films. Of course, a young director has to start with short films in order to gain trust by film funds. So my producer at the time proposed to make a test for the feature and shoot the first 3 pages of Resurrection. With this test we would go to the funders and present the first few moments of Resurrection, if you want to see the rest of the film give us the money. That was the plan. I shot this test in about 3 days. Very simple. I knew how I wanted to do it. I had made my shotlist, scouted locations, chose my actors, my cameraman, sound guy...  In 2009 this test was selected for the Berlinale Shorts Competition. My first short film Kaïn, but I still saw it as a test for the Resurrection. Kaïn did very well at festivals, mainly because it premiered at the Berlinale first and a lot of festivals are happy to select shorts that were selected at A-festivals. So, I was very lucky. So after a successful test/short film Kaïn I wanted to move ahead to make Resurrection. The problem was that many funds started to think that Resurrection was written after the success of Kaïn. That I wanted to make a longer version out of Kaïn. That wasn’t the case at all. Kaïn was always just a test for the feature Resurrection. That is why it took years to get the funding together to make Resurrection. Only in 2016 I received the funds. 7 years after Kaïn.

Also, The Fall and Empire dealt with the theme of a sudden and somewhat inexplicable evil taking possess of the life of their characters. These short movies’ minimalism perfectly fits with the story they tell and most of all with the themes you touch. Your whole filmography is interlinked by a reflection about evil in the world whose conclusion, especially in Resurrection, is not obvious at all. What drives you towards these ethical themes?

Yes, the evil in the world is something that gets my attention. The cruelty of mankind, how it works. I guess it is my subject. I read a lot about it: Erich Fromm, Jacques Ellul, Dostoevsky, Elie Wiesel,… so many more. Also filmmakers: Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky,… This theme touches me very deep. How it infects people and civilization. Why people commit cruel acts… I guess I am very sensitive about it. Cruelty and evil are part of our existence, of who we are as human beings. It is inside us: our instincts, the way we think, the way our whole civilization is constructed. Kaïn was about the origin of evil: man killing his fellow man without explanation. It is only about the act of violence, nature, guilt, suffering and awakening. The Fall is about how thin the layer of veneer is of our civilization, Empire reflects on our modern way of life. In Resurrection, an old man who has withdrawn himself from civilization takes a murderer into his house. What will he do with him? The question of evil. What do we do with it? There is so much cruelty in the world and as human beings we reject this, but at the same time it is part of who we are. To answer the question of what to do with this evil is a very difficult one. The first thing we can do is try to understand how it works, how it is a part of who we are. All I can do as a filmmaker is ask questions by showing things. It is my job to let the audience think about these questions.

Let’s talk about Resurrection now. The young killer already seen in Kaïn kills his brother in a forest and is hosted by an aged man, who has been living in the forest as an eremite for the past twenty years. This meeting would eventually change both men, the younger and the older. Where did you find inspiration for this double story of redemption and how long did it take to produce this movie?

It all started with this good and sensitive person. Someone who has a bond with nature, life, animals, trees,… A simple man. Someone who has trouble dealing with the cruelty in the world. Immediately he appeared to me as some kind of Christ-figure. A man filled with compassion and sensitivity for the cruelty around him. How could such a man find redemption? By confronting him with the worst thing that could happen to him: without him knowing it, he takes a murderer into his house. He has to find a way to deal with this. He can’t escape evil, something he already did a long time ago. Now he has to respond to it. These two people change each other just by being there for one another. This human love is in contact with evil and cruelty… Putting evil in jail is just too easy… it’s a simple solution that doesn’t solve anything really. Only a person who is there for another can change things: human love. Nobody is born wicked. That is why I also wanted to have scenes with police and jail… We are all used to seeing this: the police are the good guys and solve cases, the bad guy is the problem. Put the criminal in jail and we have a happy ending. Everybody is happy. But life is not so simple. The police system can’t solve anything. They can’t solve the problem of evil. And you certainly can’t put evil in jail to solve this problem. By thinking about all these questions the story kept evolving. Not a lot of words are spoken in Resurrection, but I touch a lot of questions by just showing things. 
When in 2016 I got the funding, I shot the film in about 20 days. But for me it was very important to communicate my themes through carefully composed images. It is a certain way of looking at the world. A meditation or reflection where the audience has to invest (if he is willing to do this). For me that was the only way to make this film. It is very much an interactive film really. The audience has to work and think on their own. The images express the themes and pose the questions, the plot is just the backbone. If people only look at the plot they will get lost.

The eremite of Resurrection is played by  Johan Leysen, one of the finest Belgian actors, known for his roles in movies such as Godard’s Je vous salue, Marie and Ozon’s Jeune and Jolie, and his frequent collaborations with stage director Milo Rau. In which moment of the creative process Leysen was involved in the project? Which directorial indications did you give him in order to build the character of the eremite with his painful backstory? How did it work instead of the collaboration with younger Gilles De Schryver, who in the film plays the young killer?

Johan Leysen is an amazing actor. He also plays a small role in A hidden life by Malick. I wanted to have an actor who could express everything without opening his mouth. Just by looking at him, you could see what he is thinking. Johan is a master at this. He was the only actor who could play this part. I emailed him, send him the script and we had a coffee. Because it was my first feature film I was not sure he would do it, but we just talked about the script, about the character, the themes, how I wanted to do it. And he said yes after the end of our meeting. Johan is a very nice and sensitive guy. He has become a very good friend. 
My directions were mainly talking about what everything meant, what was going on in every scene, every moment… and he projected this in body language and acting. He was always spot on. Every time. I didn’t have any dialogue written in the script, and Johan would even cut another 50% of the dialogue out. That was a very important lesson: sometimes even one word is enough, or not even a word, a look, a glance, a trembling of a hand. Cut the dialogue. You know, I later learned that Malick also works this way: he lets his actors play the scene with the dialogue first and then he asks them to play the scene again without the dialogue. It is pretty fascinating. So much can be expressed through the body and the face… Not everything has to be said. Of course, this is the most difficult way of acting. As an actor, you don’t have the safety net that is dialogue. Every moment has to be real and true. Johan always said this was his way of working: as an actor, you have to think what the character is going through and the audience will see what I am thinking.

With Gilles it was the same. We also talked a lot about every moment, every scene. What he should feel, what he thinks. For Gilles it was very hard to play a role without dialogue. Sometimes he was off, he played too small, too big… then I said: a little less, a little more… But the intentions of every scene were always clear. In the end he always pulled it off. To play such a part the concentration must always be 100%. The actors were always exhausted at the end of every day because they have to invest so much. They both said it was the hardest part to play, because there is no dialogue to hide yourself and every moment must be true.

The shot of the movie that has fascinated me the most is at the end of the first act. The young man turns on a stereo spreading the air of an opera; camera moves towards the window showing some flowerpots, and, sitting outside among the nature, the eremite. This brilliant shot seemed to me mixing up Tarkovsky’s imaginary together with Antonioni’s The Passengers’ ending. Who was the movie’s cinematographer? Which camera did you use and how did you set the work with him for this shot and for the movie as a whole?

The director of photography is Rimvydas Leipus from Lithuania. I admired his work on some Sharunas Bartas films and also khadak by Brosens & Woodworth. I never thought he would say yes to a first time director like me. I was searching a natural beauty in the images. Pure and precise. Cinematographic expression was key for Resurrection. It is a visual film; a contemplative experience. The images had to be right because there lies the meaning, the expression. I shotlisted the whole film beforehand. I drew the whole film into ground plans based on the real locations and next to that I had a very precise shotlist that was longer than my script. Every shot, size of the images, any movement, what shot came before and after, everything was prepared beforehand. Only after that, Rimvyadas came on board and we visited the main location (the house) and I explained what I wanted to do and went over my shotlist. From that moment on it was trying to make it the best possible movie together. Every shot had to be right. He would always propose how to make the shots even better. There was only one rule: what these images are expressing is key and is more important than beautiful images. We shot on a Arri Alexa mini, because the house was very small and I didn’t want to use a big camera inside. Cooke Speed Panchro SII & III lenses. But to be honest, it was the magic of Rimvydas that gave the images such beauty. He is a guy who doesn’t talk much. He is someone who looks at things. Perfect for Resurrection. As for the shot where the camera goes towards the window I wrote this in the script and shotlisted it. After that we just laid down a journey and shot it on the music. But again, the expression is what counts: for me it was a reaction to the crisis and despair of the main character before that scene. I wanted to express the beauty as an answer to this despair and cruelty in the world. Open up the perspective also by showing the beauty of nature outside.

In the dynamics between the two characters, in the first shot showing a burning bus, in the behavior of Johan Leysen’s character and in several directorial choices your movie resembled me Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice. There is also an explicit homage to the movie in the scene where the eremite retires in his bedroom and prays the Father prayer. What are the directors and the movies which had influenced you the most as a director?

Tarkovsky was certainly one of them. Mainly because his films are contemplative meditations. It is not about the plot or story. He expresses himself through the cinematic language: images and sounds. The meaning of his films are in the cinematographic expression. That is also something I wanted to do from very early on. I was a real film buff when I was a kid, but only when I saw the films of Tarkovsky I knew that these were the kind of cinema for me. A filmmaker expresses himself through images and sounds, the plot is just the backbone for this. So I felt very connected with Tarkovsky, also in terms of subject, especially The Sacrifice. That is why  I wanted to have some references to his last film. After that came Terrence Malick, although he shoots with a lot of freedom. Always finding things. Looking for moments. But we all know Malick is also very connected to Tarkovsky. Both are contemplative filmmakers. It is always about the meaning of images I feel very connected to both directors, but I have to say that I still want to stay true to my own voice: my own themes, but also my own visual style. A style that is contemplative, but not subjective or dreamlike like Tarkovsky. I also couldn’t shoot like Malick does. He figures out his editing afterwards, after the shooting. I am very much prepared. I know what I want and 90% I will shoot what I have thought out beforehand. Another filmmaker is Robert Bresson. I like his purity, he brings things to their essence. A kind of simplicity that is very powerful, but that is very hard to achieve. I also wanted to do that with Resurrection. Carlos Reygadas is also a filmmaker I admire. Especially Silent Light and Our Time. Again contemplative films, meditations, reflections that express so much about mankind and life. I have no idea why these type of films touch me the most. Plot doesn’t do much for me. It limits the expression and interpretation of the viewer. As a human being, I am very much an image thinker and someone who looks at the world around me.

Resurrection starting from its title pays also huge debt to Christian imaginary. It is actually a fusion of the parable of the Prodigal Son and the parable of the Good Samaritan, together with a sensation of a violated Eden Garden; the character played by Johan Leysen will eventually reveal to deeply Christological with references to Cain and Abel; the title ‘Resurrection’ could however be referred to both the eremite and the young killer; the brilliant and overly unrealistic ending of the movie is quite a Christian one, apparently very distant from modern sensibility about guilt and punishment. Also your shots  deal with the same imaginary, starting from Kaïn which is the Flemish name for Cain. Can you tell us more about the Christian roots of your movies?

I grew up in a very small village in Flanders with one church in the middle. I am not a believer and I don’t go to church, but I grew up with these stories: Kaïn and Abel, the Good Samaritan, Adam and Eve, Christ’s sacrifice, the Prodigal Son,… It was very much part of my upbringing and the small world around me. This community. Very simple life, farmers, friendly people. Only when I studied art in Brussels I was confronted with another world. A modern world. In my films there is always a contrast between nature and civilization. But somehow when you are in the natural world you tend to see things much more clear. Because the contrast is bigger. When a highway runs through the middle of a field, it is pretty clear I think. But to come back to the Christian themes: you can also find it in literature (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky,…) and paintings (Breughel, Da Vinci,…) So I feel very connected with these arts and images. These stories talk about universal themes, about mankind, that is why I am so interested in them. And indeed, the ending is not meant to be real. The whole film is a poetic expression. It doesn’t have anything to do with realism. It is an expression of themes and images. Feelings, thoughts,… By deforming reality I can express myself much better. Almost every painting and sculpting is a deformation of reality really. A lot of filmmakers are not interested in making realistic films: Kubrick, Von Trier, Tarkovsky, Pasolini, Bresson,… Each filmmaker has his own way of expression: his own poetic/cinematic world. You can express yourself more universal and clearer by deforming reality. 

In Resurrection as well as in your short movies both the silence and the dialectic between what is on-screen and what is off-screen have a great importance: just to give an example, in The Fall the boy is hit off-screen by the car, and even his body is only barely seen when the two characters try to hide it in the forest. This reminds me that Bresson’s quote according to which ‘Sound film invented the silence’. What are your references in the use of silence and of off-screen actions in your movies? Have you ever self-imposed you some rules in filmmaking?

For me these things are a part of the cinematographic language. How am I going to shoot this? What will I show? What will I not show? When do I cut? Do I show a close-up or do I shoot the whole scene from a distance? One shot or do I cut it up in several shots? Who is important in this scene? There are so many more questions I ask every time I think about how I am going to direct this in the most efficient way. Going to the essence like Bresson indeed. I always had a passion for the cinematic language. I spent a long time finding out what I wanted in terms of language. What effect it has on the audience. What it expresses. So I watched a lot of films to see how the different types of cinematic languages work only to find my own language. As a filmmaker you should always think about the cinematic language. It is the language of filmmakers. Just shooting things because it is cool or because it looks beautiful is often not the most powerful way to express yourself. I studied all kinds of filmmakers: Hitchcock, Bresson, Haneke, Von Trier, Scorsese, Tarr, Antonioni,… I find it very interesting to explore the cinematic languages. There are endless ways to express yourself through this language. You just have to find a language that fits your way of thinking/looking and that serves the film you want to make. With Resurrection I spent a lot of time on the sound. Everything had to be very precise. I wanted to get the audience into this meditation through pace and sound. Not a sound could be too loud or too silent. It also had to be the right sounds. Everything to serve the meditation. To transport the audience into another world. A poetic world.

What are your upcoming projects? How are you living the Covid emergency?

I am currently writing a treatment for a new feature film, I tackle the same themes again or rather explore them further. But this time I want to shoot handheld. I want to make a different type of film. Something raw, physical, but at the same time contemplative. The imagery is always very important, because the images tell the real story. The narrative is always just a backbone. The main character is a female cop who lives and works by the sea and who starts to question her job after being confronted with some cruel acts of violence. When my treatment is finished I will look for a producer. Will see how that goes. Artistic projects are not easy to finance nowadays.
Life during Covid…. Well, sometimes it is not so easy. I have two kids at home. 3 years and 11 years and they can’t go to school. And my wife has to work from home. I also do as much work as I can, but as you can imagine the combination of kids at home and working from home is difficult to combine. It is very hard on the kids also: they miss school and their friends… But we do what we have to do to get through this. 

www.kristofhoornaert.com

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