Ruben Östlund honoured in the High Caucasus

The programme was the highlight of the latest edition of this young festival, which took place July 15-21 in the mountainous historical region of the Georgian Caucasus with stunning views. The festival also featured a selection of contemporary short films in its International Competition, restored Georgian classics from the Silent Era, and, through its pitching sidebar, has already established itself as a key gathering for the Georgian film industry. The retrospective’s lineup included Ruben Östlund’s early skiing shorts Free Radicals 1 and 2 (1997-1998), the documentaries Let the Others Deal with Love (Låt dom andra sköta kärleken) (2000), Family Again (Familj igen) (2002), and The Guitar Mongoloid (Gitarrmongot) (2004), together with his later short films featuring contemporary art-like provocations such as Autobiographical Scene Number 6882 (Scen nr. 6882 ur mitt liv) (2005), and Incident by a Bank (Händelse vid bank) (2009). Also included were his first eccentric Cannes Film Festival entry, Involuntary (De ofrivilliga) (2008), and the arthouse hits Force Majeure (Turist) (2014), The Square (2017), and Triangle of Sadness (2022). The last three titles were shown on the festival’s big open-air screen, where Ruben Östlund humorously introduced each film to a large local audience.

The culmination of Östlund's visit was a public talk at a height of over 2,000 metres, with the imposing Caucasian peak Ushba as a backdrop, where he discussed his inspirations, the relationship between ideologies and worldviews in his films, as well as his approach to characters and actors. He also provided detailed insights into his next film, which is still in the making, with the working title The Entertainment System Is Down, unafraid of spoilers, emphasising that the “how” is more important than the “what” in the story.

The talk, moderated by Bacho Odisharia, a film critic and Head of the Production Department at the Georgian Film Center, took a spontaneous turn towards the theme of inspiration after Östlund mentioned that the initial idea of Force Majeure came up after he watched a YouTube clip showing a group of French tourists sitting at an outdoor restaurant in the Alps while an avalanche was approaching. He was stricken by the moment when their excitement shifted to fear, transitioning from enjoying the beautiful scenery to nervous laughter, and decided to integrate it as a key turning point in the script. In addition, Östlund elaborated on various inspirations that influenced the beginning of his filmmaking career: “I fell in love with the video camera as a teenager, when the first affordable models became available, sparking my interest in filmmaking. Initially, I focused on filming skiing and sports, not coming from a filmmaking background or being particularly interested in film history. My passion was more about the technique and its ability to capture reality. Around the time YouTube launched in 2005, I had just made my first feature film. The moving camera's power to capture human behaviour fascinated me, much like candid camera setups that reveal how people act when they think they're unobserved. Namely, this interest in human behaviour, rather than film history, shaped my approach to filmmaking.” Then Odisharia directed the conversation towards the use of ideology in Östlund’s films. “When it comes to ideology, I think it's from my upbringing,” the director said. “I was brought up by a very leftist mother who still considers herself a communist. When I was a kid, I was not very tall. And before going to bed – I think she did this quite many times – my mother was showing me a picture of Lenin, saying: ‘Here's a great man who, like you, was also not so tall. So, you shouldn't be sad, you know.’ That's the kind of upbringing I had. I learned about Marx and sociology from early on.” Östlund also takes into consideration the importance of being brought up during the 1970s and 1980s, when the world was navigating itself from an Eastern or a Western point of view, from a left-wing perspective or a right-wing perspective, while Sweden was in the middle, so he was able to reflect on both worldviews: “When I was making Triangle of Sadness, I thought it would be fun to place an American Marxist captain on a luxury yacht, discussing with a capitalist Russian who sells shit. And I had so much fun looking for the quotes from Reagan and Thatcher used in their dialogue. The West was so much more fun than the East, and that's why they won, right? Reagan always had good anecdotes, while it was harder to get humorous lines coming from the leftist perspective. One of the themes in the film is definitely that your position in the hierarchy changes your behaviour. Very simple, and very much like Marxist theories.” Asked about building his characters, Östlund replied he was more interested in sociology, which might make it seem like he does not empathise with his characters. “It's not that I dislike them, but I approach them as sociology does - with curiosity about how context influences behaviour. It's more about exploring situations where I think, ‘I might have done the same thing’. Also, the setting is more important to me than the characters. For instance, if you take a manly character, it's more interesting if he runs away instead of protecting his family. I choose actors to highlight the setup the best way possible. The character and the actor are picked based on how well they can serve the situation's expectations and make the setup work.”

The highlight of the talk was marked by the details that Östlund revealed regarding his next film The Entertainment System Is Down. It is inspired by an experiment concluding that people prefer doing something negative over doing nothing, so the film's premise explored how modern humans, accustomed to digital distractions, handle boredom when entertainment is removed. “There's a scene I'm particularly proud of, involving a family on a flight with only one iPad between them,” the director explains. “The two kids fight over it, and the father, losing patience, imposes 15-minute turns. I'll shoot this scene in real-time, without cuts, to challenge the audience's patience, reflecting the experiment's idea of restlessness. The father escalates the tension by threatening to restart the 15-minute timer every time the kids complain. I think it will be fascinating to see at what time the audience starts getting frustrated, wondering if the scene will really last 15 minutes. I bet it's going to be the biggest walkout in the history of the Cannes Film Festival. I've joked with distributors that they can decide how long they will keep the scene going, depending on how much they think their audience can handle. It's meant to be a provocative moment,” Östlund concluded.