TALES THE O
FROM
THER SIDE A FILM BY CHINO MOYA
OPENING The Stories Those who have gone farther seldom returned, and even when they have, they have been either silent or quite mad.
H.P. LOVECRAFT
K and Z, corpse collectors, roam the barren streets of the Other Side chatting humorously about their lives while looking for bodies to fill their truck. Ron and Ruth, a dull, conventional couple, find a blood-covered corpse at their apartment door, an event that will expose Ruth’s contempt for her fearful husband. Ezquiel, a dubious hypnotherapist, induces nightmares into the patients he is supposed to heal, some never able to return back to normal again.
A darkly entertaining blend of thriller, science fiction and fantasy drama, Tales From the Other Side takes us on a relentless trip through the crushing fears and anxieties of modern day living and some of our society’s recurrent nightmares. The film is a collection of stories set in and between a series of contemporary middle class environments and the Other Side, a bleak parallel reality.
Hans, an unscrupulous businessman, has his daughter kidnapped by a mysterious foreigner that he double-crossed, prompting him on a mission to find her. Sam, after 15 years of enslavement on the Other Side, returns to reclaim his family, bringing tragedy to their suburban lives.
Echoing anthology films like the Twilight Zone, but closer in tone to thrillers like Funny Games and mixed-genre gambols like Holy Motors, Tales From The Other Side will be a visual and emotional journey through an eclectic collection of unusual characters and otherworldly events. Each story metamorphoses into the next through the conversations, dreams and dimensional crossings of its characters as we follow a series of flawed men who see their families disintegrate through an extraordinary incident. Fear, dissatisfaction, anxiety and guilt are our heroes’ inner demons that materialise in physical form to take them over to the harrowing realms of the Other Side. Yet, it is in this desolate, war-torn place that the film finds humanity and humour as we occasionally visit the mundane lives of its extravagant inhabitants.
2
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I decided to write Tales from The Other Side as a way of combining the different worlds I’ve already explored in my previous work. I wanted to expand on those realities in a longer form and to create a character-driven drama within a dark fantasy setting, a story made out of stories where the pain, guilt and frustrations of the protagonists are the driving force behind its narratives. In these fantasy tales, we follow a series of men who see their seemingly comfortable lives shattered by an otherworldly event. At the centre of the main narratives is family disintegration as well as the fear, anxiety and guilt that each of the male characters feels whilst struggling to find his role within the world and his family. Marriages breaking apart, divorced parents struggling to raise single children, these are some of the conflicts at the core of the film, experiences not that far from my childhood ones and the anxieties that I felt about my own role as an adult as I left my youth behind. Tales From The Other Side is an exploration of the male figure and the void left by the disintegration of traditional family structures in our modern society. The shattering events in each story are the cracks on our apparent middle-class normality. They bring to the surface the unresolved conflicts of the male characters, their fears and weaknesses, as well as their failures as fathers and husbands.
The protagonists’ inner traumas adopt a material form that comes to take them over to the Other Side. This place is a dark reflection of our own society, the Hades where the film’s antiheroes are condemned for their failures. This parallel reality is a feudal, industrial nightmare ruled by indexes and numbers where our cherished concepts of security, comfort, leisure and freedom of choice don’t exist. Yet, it is here where we find a more hopeful and resilient set of characters and where life seems less stagnant. Through this collection of tales, I want to raise questions about our collective sins of selfishness and greed and its effects on a system that breeds dysfunctional characters and families like the ones of the film. As much as the Other Side mirrors our own reality, it is also a warning against the consequences of our society’s obsession with economic growth and individuality. Our blind faith on the utopian idea of progress could turn into a nightmare what began as a dream. Is Our Side that different from the Other? Or maybe is only just a glittery and shinier version of it?
3
CHARACTERS Other Side K and Z Brutal, comical, violent‌ These two corpse collectors from the Other Side are the only recurrent characters in the film. As they patrol the barren streets of their apocalyptic city in search of bodies or anything else they can trade for money, they talk humorously about, life, death, and their most frequent nightmares. K and Z love chatting, drinking cheap alcohol, cruising the streets of the Other Side in their dumper truck and would not hesitate at killing if their business required it.
4
CHARACTERS Ron The perfect example of an anonymous man, the figure that will never stand out in a crowd, Ron has lead an eventful existence up until now, filling his married life with routine and tedium. When he finds a dead body outside his flat, an opportunity is presented for Ron to finally prove himself as a man in front of Ruth, his scornful wife. To complete this task, he will have to step out from the security of his apartment to face the dangers outside; but he will soon find that the unresolved conflicts of his marriage are the biggest threat to his life.
Ron and Ruth Ruth Cheerless and depressive, she married Ron as a last resort. After twenty years of boredom, she despises her husband more than ever. Lacking any enthusiasm about life, her only joy is winding up her husband to contemplate his reactions. The discovery of the dead body seems like a perfect chance to bring one of these games to a further level, but her feelings of loneliness will catch up with her and eventually will have terrible consequences for her husband.
Harry Harry is the unsettling neighbour of Ron and Ruth. While Ron looks for help in the building, he will come across Harry who clearly has some connection with the dead body he has found. Cunning and persuasive, Harry will disarm Ron and will force him to confront his marital problems; but while Ron tries to settle things with his wife, Harry will have an unexpected, violent reaction.
5
CHARACTERS Ezequiel Ezequiel He is a dubious hypnotherapist that treats his patients with contempt. As people come to visit him to seek a miraculous cure for their fears and unhappiness, Ezequiel will, in turn, open the door of their inner hells and expose them to terrifying nightmares from which they will return damaged. Like a dark shaman, he is a character with a human appearance, but with an eerie and otherworldly aura.
Martin Weak and rather naive, he visits the hypnotherapist as a way of overcoming his fears. Ezequiel will put him to sleep and, as he journeys into his inner world, he will come across Ron. He will wake up at the therapist office feeling confused and disorientated, to be shortly after dispatched by Ezequiel.
Sebastian An arrogant, good-looking man, he comes to see Ezequiel seeking permanent happiness. He sees himself as a socially successful person who just needs a little extra boost to achieve perfection in life; but the hypnotherapist’s shocking treatment will expose him to his own hidden traumas, taking him on an inner trip from which he will return scarred.
Octavius and Horace
Octavius One of Ezequiel neighbours, Octavius is financially broke, recently divorced and is struggling to raise his son, Horace, on his own. He is the only truly good-hearted male character in the film and the only one that doesn’t lie to himself or to the external world. Wanting to please his son, he tries to make up to his poor skills as a cook with his gift as a storyteller. Horace Curious and inquisitive, as any other seven year-old, he is demanding with his father as he slowly adapts to the absence of his mother. He wants to know more about life and he is eager to learn about its darker sides. As he asks his father to tell him a bedtime story, he will trigger the beginning of the tale of Hans.
6
CHARACTERS Hans and Maria Hans A self-made businessman, he has seen his two marriages fall apart because of his obsession with money, but still he hasn’t learnt the lesson. The only thing he loves more than amassing wealth is his beautiful young daughter, Maria. He will unwittingly put her in danger when he decides to steal a business idea from a foreign man. When the foreigner kidnaps Maria in revenge, Hans must embark on a mission to find her. During this ordeal, he will initially show courage and determination, but the severity of the situation will soon reveal the selfish and ruthless side of him – a sin that won’t come without a punishment.
Maria Young and beautiful, it’s hard to believe that she is the daughter of Hans. She is wiser and has all the moral values that his father lacks. Growing up without a mother and with a father spending all his time at work, she has been forced to look for love and affection outside her family, collecting boyfriends and lovers since a very early age.
Johann The boyfriend of Maria, he will help Hans to find his missing daughter, proclaiming his love for Maria as he tries to show courage in front of his potential father in law. Yet as soon as they are confronted with real dangers, he will try to turn back. Hans, who secretly despises him will force him to stay, dragging him into the realms of the Other Side where they will both meet a terrible fate. The Foreigner A mysterious and sinister man with a thick foreign accent, he visits Hans and offers him a lucrative business deal that he claims is his lifetime project. Hans, not wanting to let go such a profitable investment but unwilling to establish a business partnership with such a somber character, steals his idea. However, the foreigner will be more dangerous than Hans had imagined and will kidnap Maria, entangling her father in a perverse hide and seek game.
7
CHARACTERS Sam and Rachel Sam Once a loving husband and father, Sam is now a ghost, a shadow of a man. He vanished without a trace just a few months after the birth of his son and now returns to his family speechless and deeply traumatised. Unbeknownst to his wife, Sam had passed through the door to the Other Side, from where hardly anyone returns, but after 15 years’ enslavement in a factory, he has won a lottery game and been sent back to his former life. Despite his ex wife’s efforts to help him, Sam cannot fit any more into his old suburban environment and becomes an uncomfortable presence in the family home. The brutality of his enslavement has left him a time bomb waiting to explode…
Rachel She has never forgotten Sam but has married again out of necessity, in need of support to raise her son, Will. She has found stability with Dominic, her new husband, but not the love and passion she once experienced with Sam. The return of her former husband will re-awake some of those feelings and, against the will of her son and her husband, she will delude herself thinking that she can bring Sam back to normal again… a decision that will prove fatal.
Will Sam and Rachel’s teenage son, he has grown up without a father and the sudden return of Sam will prove challenging to him. He despises Sam from the beginning, chastising him for not being the idealised image he has built of him since his childhood. There is something about his father that inspires mistrust, something dark and disturbing about this man that, in the end, he will have to confront in order to save his life. Dominic A system´s engineer at a modern factory, Dominic is the rather dull and unremarkable husband. The arrival of Sam in the house will force him to take a more prominent role as a head of the family whilst he tries to disguise the fear that his rival instils in him. Having never bonded with Will, and with Rachel being more inclined towards healing Sam than to saving their marriage, Dominic will find himself not wanted in the family. He will go out to get drunk to forget his misery and will come back home and insult Rachel in front of Sam, precipitating the film’s climactic end.
8
SUGGESTED CASTING HANS / Stellan Skarsgård
SAM / Elias Koteas
EZEQUIEL / Tim Roth
K / Robert Carlyle
Z / Denis Lavant
MARIA / Déborah François
9
VISUAL STYLE Most of my previous work as a director has a lot to do with generating imaginary worlds and recreating different periods of the twentieth century. I put a lot of emphasis into art direction and costume design and I often alter the architecture of my exterior locations in postproduction. My first film will be no exception. Every environment of the film will have a very distinctive look, each reflecting the microcosms of the characters that live within them.
10
THE OTHER SIDE
VISUAL STYLE
The most challenging of these worlds will be the Other Side, a place that could be described as a 1940s Stalinist take on Dante’s Inferno. The sovietinspired architecture and the interior spaces are all rather bare, functional and lacking in any ornamental decoration. Everything is built to last. I see it as a devastated urban environment, a concrete and iron industrial wasteland that may remind us of the landscape of Stalingrad after the Second World War, and some of the horrors from the concentration camps. As to film references, I could mention the post-war bleakness in Rosellini’s Germany Year Zero but also the Milanese slums and its miserable, yet colourful, inhabitants in De Sica’s Miracle in Milan, and the soviet science-fiction setting of Tarkovsky’s Stalker.
11
RON & RUTH
VISUAL STYLE The story in which a married couple find a dead body outside their door will be set in a clean and newly built apartment block, one of those flats that look like millions other around the world. Mass-produced furniture and decor, laminated floors... It is a clinical and sterile environment, an alienating space that gives a false sense of comfort a security. This place could come out of a J.G. Ballard novel or an early Cronenberg film like They Came From Within, but is also connected, in tone, to the bleak suburban setting of Ulrich Seidl’s Dog Days and.
12
HANS & MARIA
VISUAL STYLE The tale of the man whose daughter gets kidnapped starts as a bedtime story told by a father to his son and I want to give it a modern fairy-tale feel. There will be a Central-European flavour to it, without having a specific context like in Zulawski’s Possesion. All the interiors will have a 1960s/1970s decadent bourgeois setting reminiscent of Passolini’s Teorema and of some Fassbinder melodramas like Chinese Roulette.
13
EZEQUIEL
VISUAL STYLE In the segment of the hypnotherapist, the inner worlds of his patients will have a surreal feel, a non-sensical reality where the only logic is that of nightmares and dreams. I want to draw inspiration from the disturbing beauty of Bacon’s and Goya’s, paintings, the unsettling photography of Roger Ballen and the hallucinatory worlds of Lynch’s Eraserhead and Quay Brother’s Institute Benjamenta; but, as with everything else, those references will be just starting points. For each of the chapters, we are going to create an original and genuine look, all of them connected with a common thread that will give the film its distinctive and unique texture.
14
SAM & RACHEL
VISUAL STYLE The final story, where a father and husband comes back to his family after being enslaved in the Other Side for fifteen years, will take place in a more familiar and realistic territory: our contemporary world. This will be a time and place that the audience can identify with, allowing them to perceive Sam’s return to his old home as their own return to a more well-known reality, or the return to the real world after a long dream, a real world that will soon turn back into a nightmare.
15
CONCEPT BOARD 1
16
CONCEPT BOARD 2
17
CONCEPT BOARD 3
18
CONCEPT BOARD 4
19
CONCEPT BOARD 5
20
CONCEPT BOARD 6
21
BIOGRAPHIES Chino MOYA
Sophie VENNER
Spanish born director, Chino MOYA worked as an editor, writer, director of photography and producer on his road to becoming a director. In 2006, Chino moved to London to further his career in film. Already a successful director of commercials and music videos in Spain since 2003, Chino’s career has flourished in London and he has worked with some of the top advertising agencies, as well as record labels, around the world.
Sophie VENNER is the producer of the 2014 BAFTA winning film, ROOM 8, directed by James W. Griffiths. When released online in April 2014, the short went quickly viral and prior to its BAFTA nomination had already received over a million hits. ROOM 8 was awarded Best Short Film at Shots Awards 2013 and is recent winner of a WEBBY 2014.
Intent on pursuing his ambitions in film, Chino has continued to work on a number of original feature scripts at a range of budget levels. In 2009, Chino wrote and directed his first short film, OUT OF HERE, which was officially selected at over 40 festivals worldwide including Kinofest, Skopje, Bucharest, Helsinki, Arizona. Chino’s visual flair in his commercials and music video work has been widely recognised around the world with a huge following. Chino is the director of the surreal cult commercial, DRAMBUIE EXTRAORDINARY BAR, one of the most memorable ads of the last few years which was featured and praised on platforms worldwide. His SCI-FI CHANNEL INVISIBLE MAN commercial was nominated for at Cannes Lions and won him a Bronze Pencil at the One Show, U.S. DIGITAL WITNESS, his futuristic music video for U.S. artist Saint Vincent was made Music Video of the Week by Time Magazine and was featured in Rolling Stone as well as in numerous publications across Europe and the U.S. His previous music video, SUPERSUBMARINA, set in an anonymous soviet city plagued by supernatural events, was selected for festivals around the world, including Soho Rushes, UK, Interfilm, Germany and Cinemad, Spain. chinomoya.com
Sophie’s first short film, K, directed by Piers Thompson, was nominated for the GOLDEN BEAR and was officially selected at over 25 festivals worldwide including Edinburgh International and winning at Signes de Nuit, Syracuse and London Short Film Festival. In 2010, VENNERFILM produced THAT THING YOU DREW, directed by Kerri Davenport-Burton, which was also nominated at multiple festivals around the world including BFI London, Brest, Dresden and Oberhausen, taking the prizes at LA International, Warsaw, Kinemastic and London Short Film Festival. TTYD was picked up by Canal Plus and Shorts International. That same year VENNERFILM produced its first feature BURIED LAND, directed by Steven Eastwood and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, which was listed in the UK’s Sight and Sound magazine’s Best Films of 2010 and enjoyed an independent theatrical release in the UK. The art house feature premiered in competition at Tribeca Film Festival and won critical acclaim at festivals worldwide. It was also selected for LUFF, the breakthrough UK export event to promote film and talent to the international market. Sophie is one of the producers of the short film, CROCODILE, directed by Gaëlle Denis, which is in competition at Semaine de la Critique this year. vennerfilm.com