Cannes Short Film Corner 2018 - Three Days In The Hole
"3 DAYS IN THE HOLE” is a story about a young Yezidi girl, Luna, who is captured during the Islamic State’s siege of her home town Sinjar, Iraq and sold as a slave. She must learn to survive in a windowless underground dungeon shared with two other captives.
Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Candice Carella
Watch Three Days In The Hole on Vimeo on demand
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
I was surprised at the global platform my last film “Pony” received (50 festivals, 32 festival awards, a cable license deal and VOD distribution on major platforms) I found myself invited to talk about being a female filmmaker on panels so I spent time thinking on what that meant to me. I felt the urge to tell important women’s stories which weren’t being told. I felt pressure to deliver something for my next film project that could also be a story with social impact and resilience of women.
When I read about the girls who had escaped ISIS captivity, and withstood unimaginable crimes against humanity, I couldn’t shake it. Their stories haunted me and their bravery inspired me and the more I researched personal stories of these Yezidi women, the more I knew making a film could help raise awareness about the genocide committed against this marginalized community in need. There became no question this was to be my next film.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
This is a gut wrenching coming of age/self- discovery story that examines and reflects the harsh realities of thousands of persecuted and enslaved Yezidi women who want justice. The film is not just about Luna as a victim, but it’s about her transformation finding strength to survive. The Yezidi people are a peaceful pre-Islamic religious minority, and one of the oldest ethnic communities in the world living in Iraq and Syria who have withstood centuries of persecution and now 74 genocides, the most recent by the Islamic State in 2014. As a humanitarian, I’ve spent time with the Yezidi community in Iraqi Kurdistan. I visited the frontline in Mosul, I’ve stood in mass Yezidi graves and spent time with genocide survivors in the dusty IDP camps in Iraq listening to their stories and grieving with them.
As a filmmaker, it felt important to tell this story for the western world. Two of our producers are Yezidi (once refugees themselves) and I work closely to tell this heartbreaking ethnically specific story in a sensitive and authentic way. This film is based on the true stories of the many resilient Yezidi girls and women who have managed to escape from their ISIS captors which took strength and endurance and they joined female battalions and fought back. There are thousands of Yezidi women who were captured by ISIS and still are missing. This is important for people to know about.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
As an ethnically specific story and unique in its tragic tale, I made every effort to highlight by contrast its universal themes.
I decided to make this story as a narrative film so people in western audiences in the US and Europe could connect to it. The film focuses on the story of one girl's experience and has universal themes of family, young love, mother’s love, and loss thus making her story emotionally tangible and hopefully connecting to a larger audience.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
The script originally followed the story of each family member you see from the flashbacks. The younger brother Rajo, the mother Delal, and the daughter Luna had their own story arcs. As the film progresses and we meet the other girls who share the hole with Luna, we learned the backstory for these women as well. As this became a short film from material dense enough for a feature, I paired it down and focused mainly on the Luna character and her survival story.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
We haven’t gotten a lot of feedback as we are just beginning to submit the film to festivals. Our Yezidi producers really were touched by the finished film and some within the Yezidi community were moved to tears so I am glad to make this film representative.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
We all wait and dread the audience member, critique or review that challenges our intention, but thankfully, I haven’t experienced that with this film
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
With the nature of this film based on real events and being about a real community in need, I hope that this film gets a large platform so it can enlighten and educate more people to the situation of Yezidi genocide survivors. There are still over a thousand people missing.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We’d love festival directors to watch the film and consider screening it at their festivals - the more audiences the better, it would be wonderful to have journalists to review and write about it so people can look for and learn about ‘Three Days in the Hole’. The more press the better, as we wind down the circuit fun, as I did with the last film, I will seek distribution and a cable deal so it can have the furthest possible reach and maximum, continual exposure.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Hopefully people will be more curious about the Yezidi community who truly feel forgotten both by their government and by international organizations. They need to rebuild their villages, homes, and lives and if this film can get more people to care, or take action, then it will be successful.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
I don’t know that this is a film that will start any debates. Certainly within political and regional factions there are disputes which I avoid in the film.
Would you like to add anything else?
Throughout the writing process, it was imperative for me to make sure this film was culturally authentic and told in a sensitive and accurate way. I enlisted Narin Ezidi Ismail and Yurik Mamedov, who are both Yezidi and associate producers on this film to inform me as cultural advisors along the way during the writing and shooting of “Three Days in the Hole”. I collaborated with Grammy Award winning producer MaryAnn Tanedo and Brett Hedlund to produce this ambitious film on a shoestring budget.
I wanted a realistic depiction of life before the genocide with vibrant color palette and ethnically specific set dressing, clothing and props - which took extensive research and time to source. Logistically, this film was complicated. We had exterior location work that needed to look like Iraqi Kurdistan, and I worked with production designer Matthew Holt to convert an old Mexican jail set in Aqua Dulce, CA to look like an Iraqi mudbrick village home.
Matthew built the interior hole set separately on a sound stage in downtown LA. We used green screens for the set opening and Geoff Leavitt did our green screen compositing as well as special effects. It was extremely important for me to find great actors of Middle Eastern origin, with Kurdish accents, who had stunt experience and weapons training, and I was lucky to collaborate with the amazing casting director Kerry Rock (Capote, Spy Games, Wrecked) on finding actors who were just right for the film.
I worked with cinematographer Brad Rushing to come up with a shooting concept for inside the hole and lighting design for the dark interior of the hole using flicker boxes for lanterns and tight claustrophobic framing. We shot the kidnapping and genocide scenes handheld on Arri Alexa and Canon 5D mark III and textured this unnerving war style footage into a nightmarish disjointed memory with edit, sound design filters, color and score.
We used a 4K phantom 4 drone for wide shots as well as Steadicam and dolly work for happier time flashbacks and differentiated this with music and again color grading. Emmy award winning composer Joe Conlan came on board to make the original score for this film. For months, I sent Joe samples of Yezidi music from the internet and he sent me samples back and we had in depth discussions about how to approach the tone of this film with authentic Yezidi sounds laid in over a more traditional score.
We researched ancient Kurdish instrumentation such as the duduk, kaval (wind) and the tambur (string) familiarizing ourselves with arrangement so I could almost hear it in my head when I was shooting particular sequences. Joe brought in a phenomenal Middle Eastern and western vocalist, as well as kaval and guitarviol session players to record the ethnic music which he laid in as brushstrokes over an emotionally based string score composed of sustained notes and simple chord progressions. Emmy Award winning Dave Kitchens and Ben Zarai did sound design for this film and HPA Award winning senior colorist Keith Roush helped color grade this film.
If Three Days in the Hole comes to a festival near you or On Demand platform please see it. It’s an important. timely film and story and the creative collaborators all came together to execute a powerful professional production and a touching visual story which is well worth your time.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
I am currently working on developing a few feature scripts. My producing partner and editor Brett Hedlund is directing his first feature now for ESX entertainment, our line producer MaryAnn Tanedo is producing some cutting edge music videos and securing distribution deal for her last feature, our DP Brad Rushing is lensing a new indie feature and our first AD Luis Felipe Delgado is also currently directing a feature. The actors are all keeping busy with exciting film and stage projects as well and I do my best to stay in touch with them all.
Interview: May 2018
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We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
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Three Days In The Hole
"3 DAYS IN THE HOLE” is a story about a young Yezidi girl, Luna, who is captured during the Islamic State’s siege of her home town Sinjar, Iraq and sold as a slave. She must learn to survive in a windowless underground dungeon shared with two other captives.
Length: 19:57
Director: Candice Carella
Producer: MaryAnn Tanedo, Candice Carella, Brett Hedlund
Writer: Candice Carella
About the writer, director and producer:
Writer/director/producer: Candice Carella is an award winning writer and director living in Los Angeles. Candice studied Fine art and photography at UCLA and later Cinema. She won 32 festival awards for her film “Pony” and is the recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant for “Three Days in the Hole”.
Producer: MaryAnn Tanedo is a Grammy Award Winning line producer known for producing iconic music videos for artists such as Calvin Harris and Rihanna and breakout indie films “Detention” and “Gun”.
Producer/Editor: Brett Hedlund began working at Roger Corman’s Concorde/New Horizons where he learned script coverage, casting and distribution. Brett eagerly transferred to the post production department where he quickly moved up. He has edited over 50 features and ‘Three Days in the Hole’ is his first producing effort.
Key cast: Amelia Rae as “Luna”, Sara Vessal as “Bihar”, Kally Khourshid as “Yala”
Looking for (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists): all of the above- festivals and press are our priority to get the film buzz out there.
Social media handles:
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/threedaysintheholemovie/
Twitter: @3DaysInTheHole @ccarella88
Instagram: @ThreeDaysintheHole
Made in association with: Carella Productions , fiscally sponsored by From the Heart Productions
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? We plan on a domestic premiere in fall 2018 so like us on facebook and follow Instagram and twitter for premiere and future festival details