See above for audio, excerpts below
On the film
“The film is about a young college Professor whose wife leaves him and he falls into a pit of alcoholism, drug addiction and sex addiction. He runs out of booze one night and goes to a pub where he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to be an old high school friend and this old high school friend is now homeless and the Professor brings this homeless friend back to his place and they develop this odd relationship where they each build one another up and then suddenly the Professor’s wife shows up and things get very complicated.”
On two of the film’s very shocking moments
“That was one of the intentions – I wanted to lull people into a false sense of security so they thought they knew what was going to happen and then basically punch them in the face, shock them to get them off balance. I love keeping viewers off balance and not doing what you’d expect.”
On the film’s emphatic, quieter moments
“I’m a big fan of silence in real life and in film, I suppose it’s never really silence, there’s always something there, it’s just like not talking. I think when people don’t talk and when they’re in the same room together so much is revealed even without dialogue and just with looks and twitches and things like that so I tried to have an all-encompassing human experience and not be overly reliant on dialogue.
“I wanted to hone in on this hermetic atmosphere because it’s just three characters essentially in one house for the majority of the film. I thought, there’s nowhere to hide, it was a challenge to delve as deeply into these characters and be as true to their fictional human experience as possible.”
On writing, directing and starring in the film
“It was fun, I enjoyed it so much – the other two actors are really good friends of mine so it was just like we were a bunch of kids having fun, making crazy chemistry experiments, seeing what would happen. The film has a lot of people being really bad to one another and it was kind of fun because as we were all good friends we kind of felt we had permission to be as bad as we wanted to be – there was no guilt or anything like that, it didn’t feel like we were stepping on anyone’s toes or had to apologise, we just kind of went for things and would see what would happen.”
On the penultimate scene
“I’ve travelled the world now to quite a few Festivals and basically everyone’s spoken about that scene, it really warms my heart because throughout the writing process many things changed or adapted for various reasons but that final scene was always the way it was, from the beginning of the writing process to the end it never really changed and I’m just so happy that people are finding it quite tense and enjoyable.”
On premiering at the Sydney Film Festival
“I’m just so happy to be here, Nashen Moodley and I, we’ve known each other for about six years now, my first film debuted at the Durban International Film Festival where he was the head at the time and we’ve been close ever since. He was also one of the first people to see Cuckold – he said he wanted this film in Sydney and he was true to his word and I’m just so happy to be here, the program is fantastic.”
Cuckold is screening as part of the Sydney Film Festival, for more information head to the Festival website
On 2ser
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