Pierre-François Sauter

Calabria, Pierre-François Sauter (2016)

Pierre-François Sauter is a Swiss screenwriter, cinematographer, and film director, with training in the fine arts. Having worked in engraving ateliers in Lausanne, Lisbon and Milan, and having written and directed numerous projects for the Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), Sauter's first documentary, Face au juge, premiered at Solothurner Filmtage and Visions du Réel. Calabria, his second documentary, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Documenta Madrid; Doclisboa, where it won the City of Lisbon Award for Best Competition Film; and Visions du Réel, where it won a Special Mention from the Jury.

In an exclusive interview for Filmatique, Pierre-François Sauter discusses the melancholy feeling of emigration, making a film about death that simultaneously celebrates life, finding inspiration in Kiarostami, Kelly Reichardt, Monte Hellman, and John Ford, and filming life in the most truthful way possible.

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FILMATIQUE: Could you please tell us about what led you to make this film and, particularly, the feeling of having a personal life experience split between different countries? Did your feeling of displacement influence your gaze and was it ultimately responsible for making the film?

PIERRE-FRANÇOIS SAUTER: It is clear that this film has its roots in my background. Despite having Swiss parents, I grew up in Mozambique and only arrived in Europe in my adolescence. Arriving in Switzerland was a shock, I was coming out of a Mozambican public school after decolonization and the independence in which my parents had participated. Suddenly, I was pushed into a Swiss middle school. I was forced to adapt to a universe I was completely unaware of until then. I had to put a lot of effort into finding myself in Europe. It wasn't easy! I had what emigrants describe as "a heart broken in two." Part of me was still in the country of my childhood. As time went by, I saw that my memories, my friends, the context under which I had lived was inevitably drifting away. One way or another, I had to adapt and turn the page, but that rupture is still here. I carry it in me, deep in myself, although I don't feel it as much as I did in the years following my departure from Mozambique. Later, I lived and worked in different places in Europe without settling down anywhere for too long. Ultimately, by adapting and going through changes, I feel at home in many places, but I'm also a bit of a stranger everywhere.

FLMTQ: Calabria, the title, is about a man's destiny: an immigrant who comes back to his native region only after his death. The film is inhabited by the melancholic feeling of immigration: not being able to live in the country where one was born. Were you interested in pursuing this feeling in this trip and in what way did it influence your direction?

PFS: In the film's pre-production, I met with a lot of older immigrants who had that melancholic feeling you mention. These older people would say: "we came to Switzerland for 6 months, we were carefree young adults, and we came here to make a bit of money because we couldn't find work at home. We were certain we'd go back 6 months later. But it turned out that we never went back, and we've been here for 60 years now." All through their lives, these people constantly delayed going back to their country because of the contingencies of daily life—making a living, having children, then grandchildren, etc. But in the back of their minds, they were still hoping to go back home, dreaming of returning to the country of their childhood. But this country only existed in their minds, for their native village and friends had also changed with time.

Repatriation after death is therefore more of a trip though time rather than a geographical one, it is the fantasy of going back to the memories of one's childhood. This imaginary dimension interested me a lot. There is a universal range to it, it forges who we are deep within ourselves. It also evokes the inevitable passage of time. Therefore, I directed Calabria by beginning with this reflection on the passage of time that, for each one of us, ends in death. But rather than directing a film about death, I thought it was more important to show that, when facing the emptiness that awaits us, we should enjoy life while we're living it.

I went through the shoot following this idea. I forced myself to trust in the most absolute way what life would give us in the exact moment we were shooting it. We filmed a trip and never knew what was going to happen, not even where we would stop. When filming, it was really about having the right point of view and the camera placed at the right spot to be ready to film all of life's surprises. We had to pay close attention to observe and capture all of life's surprises in the exact moment they were happening. So we constantly had to adapt to every situation but still maintain my point of view.

In Calabria, rather than a mise-en-scène, I was following the will—rather, the obsession—of filming life in the most truthful way at the very moment it was happening. It is a documentary film that lies entirely in the confidence one must show in life's richness.  In order to achieve this, I chose to follow simplicity and restraint. I eliminated the picturesque and exotic aspects of the trip, I erased anything that might seem useless to focus the film on the events that both protagonists were living. Choosing José and Jovan was essential, as both bring a presence and depth that is enough to hold up the film. But the film also rests on the fact that I am constantly with them throughout the trip. I am lying inside the hearse between the coffin and both of them. I'm controlling the cameras and hoping, in particular, that the situation doesn't disperse.

When editing, I followed the same direction. We tried to make the audience's imagination work by focusing on the off-screen space, so dear to Robert Bresson. I wanted the audience to be involved in the film. We worked a lot on the editing's rhythm and the audio track. Actually, whether during the shooting or post-production, I tried to make the hearse a sort of capsule that runs through time and space, making this trip a suspended moment where two men meet. To me, this trip is like a metaphor of our passage through life but also the passage from life to death.    

Calabria, Pierre-François Sauter (2016)

FLMTQ: How did you organize the pre-production and casting stages of the film and find two men with very different profiles? Were you trying to show that immigration doesn't fit into a particular kind of profile?  

PFS: Directing Calabria took a long time. Shooting was just a few weeks, but preparing it took several years. During this long process, choosing both protagonists was essential. I did location scouting for a long time in many funeral home companies, during which I met more than 80 morticians. I then followed those who interested me for a long time while they were working. By the end of this long process, I chose José Russo and Jovan Nikolic for several reasons: first of all, they had "cinematic" qualities, each in their own way, and a lot of presence on-screen. In my opinion, they showed a kind of depth that touched me, even in their most simple gestures. And they also had particularly dynamic interactions between them. Even though they have very different personalities, even opposite ones at certain points, their relationship is made of mutual understanding and intelligence. Another very important aspect to me was that they were both immigrants, of course, but didn't fit the typical profile of an immigrant. A few spectators actually believed José and Jovan were actors playing a role, since they were so distant from the usual immigrant cliché. Jovan and José are not actors, of course, they're two real undertakers who are still working in funeral homes every day. Ultimately, who really fits the immigrant cliché? Not a lot of people, really, if we make the effort to observe and listen to these people.

FLMTQ: Most of the film is made not with two but three men. Was the coffin's presence inside the hearse, between these two living men, a conscious decision to show the influence of a dead man in the unlikely meeting of these other two?

PFS: Yes, the dead man's presence is crucial in this film. Without him, there wouldn't be one. I absolutely wanted to show death's presence since the beginning of the film, and for many reasons. Firstly, because I wanted to show exactly what José and Jovan's work was, a difficult and gruelling job we generally can't witness because it goes on behind the walls of funerary homes. We had to find the right distance and the right point of view to film the dead people that José and Jovan take care of because I wanted to show what we were talking about, but I also really didn't want to be voyeuristic or spectacular about it.

In order to shoot inside the hearse, it was more complicated than what one might think: we needed several months to settle on a technical apparatus that gave me precisely what I wanted to shoot. We filmed with real cameras stuck to the windshield with suction cups attached to the inside of the passenger compartment. We didn't use GoPros or photo cameras. Mostly for technical reasons, but also because of my point of view. I knew exactly how the frame should be, and we had to invent the technical means to attain it. I wanted to shoot José and Jovan in a frontal position with the coffin behind them containing the dead man that they were transporting. I wanted this third man to be present throughout the whole trip. I wanted to frame José and Jovan in this way to evoke the constant presence of death, just like in real life, where death always hangs over us and we forget about it, thankfully, but know it's always there and may come at any time. But also because the dead man that José and Jovan are transporting through the trip is also the person who brought them together.

FLMTQ: Calabria is a film about a Portuguese man and a gypsy from Belgrade travelling with a dead Italian man between Switzerland and the village where he was born. Were you conscious that you were also shooting a film about European identity and an idea of Europe that is threatened, nowadays, by movements that oppose its open borders?

PFS: From the moment I decided to shoot an immigrant worker's repatriation trip, it was clear to me that I was going to address immigration in a Europe that is becoming more and more fixated on local identities. In Europe, as elsewhere, questions pertaining to immigration are increasingly being exploited for electoral purposes. It is a very worrying phenomenon. But when making the film, I wanted to consider this question in a different way, by avoiding going into a debate that would be undermined from the beginning. I wanted to look for a way to address the question of immigration from a larger perspective. I wanted to show that these emigrants/immigrants, who are the talk of the world, are, first of all, specific individuals, all of which with unique paths. It seems important to offer a place of dignity to these people, to let their voices be heard in a world where clichés spread at great speed.

But I chose to film Jovan and José most of all because of their human and cinematic qualities. Calabria is a documentary, so I always had to start with reality to direct this film. It would have been impossible to film foreign undertakers without meeting them. In funeral houses, where I casted for a long time, the vast majority of employers are Swiss. Consequently, I couldn't chose different nationalities between undertakers. I did meet other undertakers with foreign roots, but being an immigrant or a foreigner didn't make them good protagonists for the film. It just happened that the two workers I was most interested in were Jovan, a gypsy from Serbia, and José, a Portuguese man. It's a very specific choice. It was only after showing the film that I was told that they came from two countries in two different edges of Europe, that they had both chosen to come live in Switzerland, and that they were coming together to take a dead man to Southern Italy, in Calabria. And that the film, consequently, points to the European identity. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't something I had planned, but it's something in the film that makes me very happy! Especially because I think the audience is free to see whatever they want in a film. The film plays, ultimately, in their mind. The audience is "the last member of the film crew," as Monte Hellman said.

Calabria, Pierre-François Sauter (2016)

FLMTQ: Despite the constant presence of death, Calabria is also a film about life: what lives on after death, music and songs, conversations about love. We're in a car with two workers playing a role: a job, with suits, that demands that they not show their emotions. Were you also interested in capturing the weight of fiction in the reality of their lives? I am thinking, for instance, of the touching moment where one of the men tells the story of a woman who has lost her husband after fifty years of marriage.

PFS: When preparing for this film, I quickly understood that I had to begin with death to direct a film that was about life moving on. But the difficult situations these funeral home workers face every day forces them to protect themselves in order to remain emotionally protected. It is gruelling work and, due to its circumstances, they learn how to shield themselves. In the beginning of my casting, undertakers would often play the role that's expected of them, the one they play in funerals with words that are meant to console, with compassionate gestures, a kind of humor, too. It's what we all see in funeral parlors. So I needed time to go beyond these expected words. I had to show my credentials to them. I immersed myself in the milieu. I was dressed like them, I took part in their work in ceremonies, I carried coffins, I did repatriation trips to Southern Italy, always as an undertaker, but never hiding from the families that I was a director preparing for a film.

With time, I earned their trust, and José and Jovan opened up. More personal things came up, like the story of the old couple that overwhelmed Jovan. He told me about it long before the shoot. It clearly interested me right away, because this story showed something very deep about Jovan, a universal fear of death: how will we bear the disappearance of people who are closest to us? Whether we are undertakers or not, one cannot escape that. At that moment, Jovan is simply himself. But it's true that I like the idea that Jovan and José could evolve in different ways throughout the film. Depending on the circumstances, their meetings, but also their humor. They play a "role of circumstance" in the dead man's close circle, at the funeral, in the cemetery and public places. But when they're alone inside the hearse, they let go and are truly themselves.

FLMTQ: These two men's work unfolds in silence—words only arise during their trip. In film history, cars have often played a role of freedom and confession between people who don't know each other. I'm thinking of Kiarostami's films, of course. Did you have other films and references in mind, when preparing for the film, before you started making it?

PFS: It is hard for me to give a precise reference; it's rather a group of different films that come to mind. I see films all the time, mostly fiction, which nourish me. And I guess Calabria was also born out of this interest for different forms of cinema that may seem different or even opposite. When directing this film, I thought of Kiarostami, of course. But also road movies from the 70s, particularly Two-Lane Blacktop by Monte Hellman, but also more recent films such as Old Joy by Kelly Reichardt or older ones like Stagecoach by John Ford.

There is an exhilarating feeling of freedom behind the idea of a trip, of escaping towards an unknown place where surprises happen, of unlikely encounters and the possibility of suspended time outside of routine. It's also true that, as Kiarostami said—I quote him from memory—the car is a particular place where we are not sitting face to face but side by side, looking at the road ahead and talking while driving and thinking as if immersed in ourselves. In Calabria, I wanted to explore this but also the feeling of different time scales that the road movie gives us. We are inside a hearse racing quickly through Europe but, inside the passenger compartment, both protagonists follow their own rhythm, sometimes influenced by what is happening outside, sometimes not.

FLMTQ: Why did you choose to include archival images of immigrants in the opening scene of the film (and why Il rovescio della medaglia in particular)?

PFS: In Il roverscio della medaglia (1974), Alvaro Bizzari filmed, from within, the lives of immigrants coming from Southern Europe to work in Switzerland, mostly in the 1960s. The men we see in those images are contemporaries of the dead man that José and Jovan are repatriating to his village in Calabria. In 1974, these men were young, they thought they were coming to work for a few months in Switzerland before going back home. Many ended up staying in Switzerland until their death.

Using these archival images in the film's prologue seemed necessary to show the context in which these immigrants had arrived—they place the film in a historical reality. These men came by the tens of thousands from Southern Europe and built the infrastructure of a comfortable Switzerland. But they generally received little recognition and were often poorly welcomed, became victims of racism, and were pursued by xenophobic political parties. By making Calabria, I wanted to pay homage to these immigrants, and all the men and women who came after.

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Interview by Francisco Valente

Guest Curator, Filmatique