Jeju French Film Festival / Busan International Film Festival 2018 - No Return
A desperate killer is sent on an impossible mission which involves his ex-North Korean girl-friend in Seoul, South-Korea.
Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Antoine Coppola
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
I made several short films and documentaries (the most famous on is about Kim Ki-duk, the Korean film director) and three feature films in France before coming to South-Korea. In Seoul I made one feature film about indy bands and punk-rock in the underground places of Hongdae, the famous area in Seoul, and a web-series for a French producer based in Seoul talking about a killer. You can see many trailers and demo reels of those films here. At this point, I was thinking a lot and I made a cine-poem (because I write poetry) with Korean actresses. And then I started to think again.
At the beginning, this short film is based on a real event. I met a man in a bar downtown Seoul (a place I use to go to think). He was very quiet and slow in his movements. I thought he was very cinematographic. We started drinking together all night. Then, he told me a secret: he was a professional killer. I could not believe it. But I always enjoyed John Woo movies about desperate killers. I told him this, and he said, “That's nothing compared to my last mission”. “Oh!” I said, “tell me more!”
And then he started talking about North-Koreans undercover spies, often women who spend ordinary lives in Seoul. When I asked him, "did you kill her?", he left with a smile and a bottle of whiskey. Then I started to imagine his story with a North-Korean female spy, and this is the film I made.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
Because you have no choice when you spend your time doing nothing better than that. Common ideas about professional killers are made to portray common heroes. I did not want that. I thought my "friend" was a very gloomy man, lost in a world he did not understand. So you can watch this film as a portrait of a human being who decide to leave the world by killing anybody he’s told to kill; madness bring madness. You may also want to watch this film because you feel that love and killing have something in common. and then your unclear understanding will be reinforced.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
What is personal is universal because everything we feel and know come through us, our mind, our body. The feeling of love and the troubled mind of the professional killer is a tool of universal acceptance. He feels that if this woman really loved him in the past then he is a part of the nature and of the universe. That is why he is asking her before killing her. For him, it sounds like something between being with this world or already being in another world. And there is this universal feeling of time, the time that flows. He spends his time running, but after what? Losing our lives to win is a universal feeling. That's why he is interested inis the character of the shaman. Something is wrong in the universe but the solution may be inside ourselves.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
I like to write stories. Words are magical. They can bring you anywhere, anytime. They can create a whole world and make it disappear soon after. Words are, first, that is what we we call poetry. But words are good on paper and filming is a living experience, so when I shoot a film I'm experiencing the magic of cinema and how it changes real life. For example, there is a scene that is not in this film, when the killer needs to use an elevator. A delivery man who was not at all involved in the film came in. I did not cut the shooting (from a Gopro camera in the rooftop) and the killer was still acting in the elevator, a gun in his hand, blood on his face, like everything was normal. Fiction enters the reality. That is some part of the magic of cinema which can go beyond the script.
Little by little, more magical things happened and sometimes stay closer to the scenario. The killer had to cross a bridge upon the Han river in Seoul. The script said that it was raining but we were in a middle of a sunny summer afternoon. Suddenly, it rained for twenty minutes, just in time to shoot that miraculous scene.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
Since the shooting, I received many propositions to make other films. Actors – many Koreans – want to join the production and so I'm writing again.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
In some part, yes. I usually know what I have to shoot, what kind of story I would like to see. (Hemingway said that only bad writers need the judgment of an audience. In this specific point of view, he was right.) But watching the wide eyes of spectators and listening to their comments about how the management of time is mesmerizing to them, I started to think more about what I have done and how I can go more deeper in this sensible way.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
Film is my passion and I like to share ideas with people who have the same passion, and wearemovingstories matches that goal. As a professional film-critic and film studies professor, I think that talking freely about film is a great opportunity, as we are unfortunately so much surrounded by infotainment, fake promotions, etc.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
I need them all, of course, as much as they need my films to justify themselves. Distribution is the big challenge today. I can make films (I started making film with 16mm and 35mm negative film, so now with digital equipment, it's less expensive), I can screen them in film festivals (so many today) but a real distribution is rare. And I think the concept itself of distribution needs to be reloaded. I have my ideas about it. If someone is interested, we can talk.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Maybe I'll sound strange but I hope the impact will be very bad. I mean disturbing. I mean bringing something new. Easygoing films exist in a massive quantity, and producers (and some I know) have their office filled with scenarios for entertainment. They just have to ask their assistant to bend and she will find a scenario that’s been waiting there for ten years to entertain the audience. So, yes, I would like my film not to be 99% part of an entertainment company; one which, after watching it, a spectator can say, “It was an enjoyable movie, do you want chicken or pizza for dinner, my dear?”
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
Have you ever dreamed that someone could shoot this amazing brain action film with so little a budget?
Would you like to add anything else?
Cinema is not only about film. It's something related to the old arts (painting, music, sculpture, etc) which promise something about real life. Art is a dream of a quality of life, a real life, that everyone feels inside themselves but don’t know how to express it, how to make it real. At the same time, because cinema belongs to the modern reproduction era and can be copied indefinitely, and the machine is included in the process, and it represents the heart of our civilization (that's why people can escape from it even if many times the new technology producers said that cinema will disappear). Cinema is still alive and stronger than ever. But it means that the promise is growing, waiting, urging to be finally a reality. So don't take cinema lightly just for making a living, for entertainment, for dating your boyfriend, or to diversify your company’s business, because it's a whole civilization that is waiting to express its own reality.
What other projects are the key creative developing or working on now?
Well the concept of a ‘project’ doesn't match with my way of creativity: I just do something. So, first, I'm finishing my first omnibus film (I made three features films before but never an omnibus). I already completed four parts and the last will be done at the end of January 2019. Each part is about 13 to 30 minutes. All the scenes were filmed in South-Korea with an international casting and crew, but mainly French and Korean. The first part starts like a sci-fi movie with time travel in a post-apocalyptic era. The second is a tragic love story of one night which involves chiromancy. The third part is a story of a killer (again) but a very stupid killer surrounded by strange women. The fourth part is about a real dramatic event related to suicide. The last part will be about a North-Korean refugee who needs protection to go through Seoul before flying to America. All the parts are related to the idea of “survival”. Meanwhile, I am writing a historical film between Korea and Japan in the 1920's – some kind of Bonnie and Clyde story – and another action-comedy which will surely be a wonderful film. Just wait.
Interview: November 2018
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No Return
A desperate killer is sent on an impossible mission which involves his ex-North Korean girl-friend in Seoul, South-Korea.
Length: 14 min
Director: Antoine Coppola
Producer: Antoine Coppola, Park Jinseon and Kim Sue-hee
Writer: Antoine Coppola
About the writer, director and producer:
ANTOINE COPPOLA, the writer and director, is a French film-critic (Avant-scene cinema; Asialyst; Esprit; etc), a counselor for film festivals (Cannes international Critic's Week; Sans Sebastian Film Festival, Jeonju film festival, etc), a film studies professor in France and in South-Kore, and a writer.
Key cast: Kang San-he, Bae Jung-hwa, Marco Tessiore, Son DogkiLooking for (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists): filmfestival, distributor.
Youtube: Coppola Antoine
Facebook: No Return
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? Busan International Film Festival (Korea), Fukuoka Film Festival (Japan)