COVER STORY
Desert Mystery A
Andrei Liimets talks to director Kadri Kõusaar about her new feature Deserted that had its world premiere in Busan International Film Festival. By Andrei Liimets Photos by Kadri Kõusaar
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he film career of Kadri Kõusaar started with a bang after her debut feature Magnus was chosen as part of the Un Certain Regard program at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2007. She has since gone on to further international success, with her films picked for Tribeca and Karlovy Vary festivals. This year, Kõusaar returns with Deserted, a drama about kidnapping and love in the solitude of the desert. An Estonian-Swedish-Finnish co-production, the film stars Frida Westerdahl as Ingrid, a journalist working in the Middle East who gets taken hostage by a group of Palestinian freedom fighters, and Ali Suliman as Ali, the most gentle of the captors with whom Frida develops a increasingly warm relationship. We are meeting only a few days before the world premiere of Deserted at the Busan International Film Festival. How are you feeling – anxious, excited, at peace with the film finally finished?
It is a mixture of anxiety and excitement. This is the first time the film reaches anyone not part of the production. It feels somewhat surreal. After each film you forget this feeling and then it comes back, although it is always a little bit different. On the other hand, the premiere also feels different. In my mind, a premiere includes the production team and the actors, but due to the COVID-restrictions, only one person per project is allowed to attend per film. Even media from numerous countries is forbidden. This is not ideal, but we are looking forward to having larger premieres in
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ESTONIAN FILM
Europe and America. In a way it is nice that we get three premieres instead of one. You hit a real jackpot with your debut feature Magnus, making it all the way to the official selection of Cannes film festival. Does it feel like a step back, not making it to say, Berlin, Venice or Cannes this time around?
We made it to the final shortlist for Cannes! It was rather chaotic and there was a lot of competition with around 20 films making it all the way to the last round. Thanks to my first film I have maintained contact with the festival. It gives me the benefit of knowing that whenever I finish a film, they will really watch it, even if the answer is “no”. With some festivals, you don’t even know who, or if anyone, even watched your film, so it is a lottery without any personal contacts beforehand. This is also an existential milestone for me because I have been a bit naïve until now. I have always thought that if you just make a good film it will find an audience. But it’s not as simple as that. There’s an array of other players involved – agents, A-list actors, the sheer money pumped into production and distribution. Especially if you make an English language film, then you are competing in a different league. Once you’ve won the Golden Palm for example, no one will even wait to see the film, but will put it on the program. But there are very few such directors around. For the rest, it’s a wild competition, and like I mentioned before, there might be other factors or even political decisions involved.
