What was the starting point for the film?
SJ: The starting point was an image I had in my head of two people lying peacefully in the woods. The image was inspired by a case in Sweden where someone had killed a person who was just left on top of the earth. From there I starting thinking...why do we find it repulsive? I also thought of photographer Sally Man and her project ‘What remains' featuring bodies melting with nature. From these pictures I started to think of the connections between man and nature, the way we become nature when we die.
I am afraid of dying. But the thoughts that when you die you don't carry the meaning of human life anymore but go on carrying the meaning of nature gave me comfort.
This is your third film and it feels familiar to those who have seen your previous works. There are recurrent themes such as family ties, love, feelings of guilt, loss, but here your film takes a new mythical and biblical dimension with references to Paradise lost, Cain and Abel, Moses. Why did you choose to explore those themes?
SJ: When I was a child I didn't grow up in a very Christian family but I had a very Christian grandmother so I was read the Bible quite young and those stories somehow stayed very close to my visual fantasy, referring to specific things. For instance if I see someone who is jealous, it is a short way for me to think of Cain who is the carrier for jealousy. So for me the film is much more a way to explain human emotions than to explain God.
Also I think that I wanted the story to be primarily told with the visual language, not the spoken language, unlike Upperdog (the director's previous film) that is very dialogue driven. Images can carry much more than spoken or written words and I have learnt at film school to use them to understand my own emotions.
The film is a drama with a lot of thriller elements. Did you think while you were writing the script of how you should define the film in terms of genre?
SJ: In my films I tend to work with mysteries and plots. In Kissed by Winter I used a plot to reveal the drama. With All That Matters is Past I didn't think of it as a thriller but more as a drama and love story.
Tell us about the casting. Were the three main actors Marie Bonnevie, Kristoffer Joner and David Dencik already in your mind when you wrote the script?
SJ: It was a long casting process because of the way we portray the characters at so many different ages. But Kristoffer was always in my mind. He has a strange way of being both humble and strong at the same time and that's what I wanted for his character of William. With David Dencik, I had seen him in a TV series and I felt he was amazing as an actor, I thought he could be very scary when he wanted. As for Maria, I had seen her in so many movies where she is often very beautiful and feminine. I wanted her character of Janne to feel the aging process. Maria is very intense; she has a strong inner-life and was able to carry this animal-life performance.
Some scenes are extremely raw like the birth of Janne's baby. How did you shoot this scene and why did you choose to be so confrontational visually?
SJ: The photographer (John Andreas Andersen) and I decided that we wanted to film a real birth to stay close to the connection between man and nature. I personally gave birth twice and felt in an odd sort of way intruded by nature. So we asked our producers to find a woman who would give birth in front of our camera, and we found one! My photographer had to have stand-by extra camera sets and one night they were called. The crew went to the hospital; a midwife put up the lights and we put a green screen under the woman. So the whole thing is 100% real.
Nature plays a quintessential role here. It is at times soft and comforting and then menacing. How did you work on the visual style with your DoP John Andreas Andersen? Were you inspired by Terrence Malick?
SJ: My DoP and I have worked in the past so we know each other very well. He is a great intuitive person and also very brave. When we shot the scene of Ruut (David Dencik) taking the beak off the black bird, there he was suddenly, filming up in a tree! The great thing about him is that nothing is impossible; he is always determined to fulfil the director's vision. Regarding Terrence Malick, no he wasn't really an inspiration, but Tarkovsky was, with the way he uses the camera movement, from a tree down to a person. We looked also at the American photographer Gregory Crewdson.