Over the coming weeks, I’m going to begin breaking down our program film by film. Hopefully, this will make you wild with enthusiasm which will lead you to buy advance tickets immediately for yourself and all your friends. Fingers crossed, anyway.
I first became aware of Australian filmmaker Ariel Kleiman when I saw his short Young Love on Wholphin No. 11. It features a man being berated by a woman in another language in the middle of a field of llamas. It reminded me very much of a skit we used to perform in my church youth group where we literally spoke gibberish for the whole thing. Incredibly funny to me, not so much for the audience. It’s interesting that for Deeper Than Yesterday he also chose to work in a foreign language. This time, we’re among a group of Russian submariners who have been at sea maybe a little too long.
Deeper Than Yesterday was the 26-year-old director’s graduation film from the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. The film has had a tremendous festival run, playing at Karlovy Vary and the Semaine de la critiques at Cannes in 2010 and at Sundance in 2011, and winning awards at all three.
On where he got the idea for the film:
I think the idea came from living in a shared house with my girlfriend Sarah and our business partner Ben. The three of us were all best friends who worked and lived together for a couple of years. After a while, I began to fear we were all losing our tempers and our minds. This was the beginning of Deeper than Yesterday. The shoot itself was, to date, the most eye-opening and traumatic undertaking of my life. From the bottom of my heart, I do not recommend shooting on a submarine.