OLMO E A GAIVOTA_Working in pairs: Lea Glob & Petra Costa

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WORKING IN PAIRS: LEA GLOB & PETRA COSTA

Lea Glob Petra Costa

Working in pairs: Lea Glob & Petra Costa, the winning duo behind “Olmo & the Seagull”

By Pamela Pianezza Two years ago, Petra Costa and Lea Glob didn’t know each other. They didn’t even live on the same continent.

That was until the CPH:LAB team thought they would make a perfect pair and invited them to Copenhagen to develop a film they weren’t even thinking of making… Obviously a smart intuition: from their reunion was born a (splendid) movie, OLMO & THE SEAGULL, which just received the Nordic:Dox award for the best Nordic documentary.

OLMO… is the true story of a real woman, Olivia, a stage actress who enjoys her bohemian life a lot, until she realises that she is pregnant. How to be a woman, an artist, a mother and a lover at the same time? Considering that pregnancy is “one of the last rites of passage for women” and using Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway” as a story line, Lea & Petra followed very closely the physical and mental transformation of Olivia, but also of her companion, Serge, both of them being amazing performers.

Obviously the strongest film of the Nordic:Dox competition, OLMO & THE SEAGULL also seduced the Jury – consisting of Emilie Bujès, Maria Bonsanti, James Lattimer, Jonas Poher Rasmussen and Cindy Zeng Xin – according to which this “portrait of a couple at a turning point in their private and professional lives opens out into a formally adept metacommentary on acting. This films finds a specific cinematic language to reflect upon the difficulties of juggling family and career”.

I had to understand how the Danish-Brazilian duo captured so smartly and gracefully the life journey of the French-Italian …

It was the CPH:LAB’s idea to pair the two of you. What was your first reaction, knowing that you would have to work together?

PETRA: It felt kind of obvious actually. Both of us had already made a very personal film about our family. Lea had directed MEETING MY FATHER KASPER TOPHAT, about her father whom she never met and who committed suicide in prison. I had directed ELENA, about my older sister who was an actress and who also committed suicide. It was a strong link to start with…

Now that you’ve worked together, how do you think you complete each other?

LEA: I have the probably well-deserved reputation of being very stubborn while Petra has a lot of endurance.

Sometimes I feel like she is the elegant Arabian thoroughbred of the team while I behave like the go-ahead Jutland horse.

PETRA: Lea taught me how to be “the fly on the soup”: it’s ok to feel uncomfortable. It’s good not to be afraid of conflicts and to dare being direct and expressing exactly what you want.

Not knowing each other, you had to spend a week in Copenhagen to find out what small budget film you could do together… and do it! How did you deal with all those constraints?

LEA: Well, it was a huge challenge! It’s true we got along together right away, but we also come from very different backgrounds and have very different methods. My first idea was to go to Brazil to shoot a low-key documentary in the forest, while Petra’s plan was to stay in Denmark to make a film about a Danish actress…

Hopefully we finally found some common interests.

Does it mean you never had to work so closely with someone before?

PETRA: No! Of course we’re used to teamwork, but this is another kind of collaboration. Those constraints forced us to take decisions. When you don’t live on the same continent, you can’t procrastinate. It gives you a frame of work, but also a time limit.

You met several experts at the Lab. What was the best advice you received?

PETRA: I really wanted to use Virginia Woolf’s book, “Mrs Dalloway”, as a story line. But that story takes place in 24 hours while our Olivia was pregnant, which means a 9 months journey… One of our advisors, Franz Rodenkirchen, suggested us to give Olivia a diary where she would record her thoughts concerning her pregnancy. This would be our tool to enter into her stream of consciousness… I loved it.

LEA: Me too! Coming from a very classic and strong documentary tradition, I was really amazed to see how you could use the formalism of a book to make a movie that remains very cinematic.

PETRA: This advise helped us reconcile are methods – fiction versus reality – and in the end, it enriched the film a lot.

In the end, what’s the most important thing you learned during your CPH:LAB experience?

Lea: To get out of your comfort zone! This is something I was really bad at. Look, I’ve been living in Denmark

forever and in Copenhagen for years! Working fast with a tiny budget forces you to go out of this comfy zone.

Especially when it leads you to work abroad, in another language, with someone like Petra who definitely shakes you up.

PETRA: Working with Lea and talking to other filmmakers here, I got the confirmation that classifications are boring. You can’t strictly oppose documentary to fiction, it’s pointless. CPH:DOX is one of the most open festivals I know. It was a perfect place for a hybrid film like ours.

26/11/14