Interview MARIA LAFI
Holy Boom: Maria Lafi
Maria posted news on Social Media of the death on 15th April of Czech-born scriptwriter and playwright Milena Jelinek, who had died in New York, another victim of Covid-19. She had taught at Columbia University in New York for many years and written the screenplay for the 1996 Czech drama Forgotten Light (Zapomenuté svetlo), a film regarded as one of the greatest Czech movies of the last three decades and winner of three Czech Lions in 1997. In her tribute, Maria said: "I was lucky enough to work on the Holy Boom script with Mrs. Milena Jelimek on the MFI 2 Film workshop 2011. Farewell Milena, Holy Boom wouldn't be the same without your contribution!" Therefore, this interview article is also dedicated to Milena Jelimek's work and influence.
A film that has since unwittingly drawn allusions to social distancing and involuntary isolation is the Greek film Holy Boom (2018), by director Maria Lafi. Holy Boom is set in Athens and contains parallel storylines, all of which take place within a multicultural neighborhood during the Orthodox Easter period. The lives of these residents, who are initially unknown to each other, changes dramatically when Ige, a Filipino boy, blows up a mailbox just for fun. Unbeknown to him, important documents were destroyed and this dramatically affects the already fragile situation in Greece for a local girl Lena and her Nigerian boyfriend Manou who are subsequently pursued by drug dealers, a letter for an old Greek lady Thalia from her child left behind, and illegal Albanian immigrant Adia’s birth certificate, who is now alone with her baby and forbidden to identify her husband’s body.
Speaking at the 2019 Prishtina International Film Festival in Kosovo, Maria Lafi talks of how it was very difficult to find the money after the script was finished in 2011. This was especially true of the situation in Greece with the economic crisis making it more difficult. However, the film was a co-production with Albania and this was the main reason that it got made in the end. The persistence to complete the film was rewarded as Holy Boom premiered at the Tirana International Film Festival in November of 2018, where it won the Best Film Award in the Balkan section, and played immediately afterwards at Thessaloniki in the Greek Film section afterwards. Since 2019 Maria has taken the film to various festivals including Prishtina in Kosovo last summer, where this interview took place. Here, she talks at length about her career so far, the difficulties in getting funding, working with the actors, and the production process.
Camera Lucida: Did you find that the short films you made gave you the confidence to step up into doing a feature?
Maria Lafi: Yes of course because making a short film you somehow get trained and you can experiment because there is little money in short films and no one expects you to make a commercial film that will make the money back. You can try a lot of things, like how to use the camera, so although I like short films a lot it is also an opportunity to experiment. I have wanted to make a feature film for several years now. I tried a lot and this script was written in 2011 but we couldn't find the money. It is difficult in Greece as you can't find the money easily, and there was the economic crisis so the money was little and then less. Eventually we managed to gather some and thank god we also had the Albanian co-production which was very important for the film, otherwise we couldn't do it. So this helped me a lot and I think, with the little countries, between us we can help each other to produce films because none of us have a lot of money. So if we somehow co-operate we can have a little more and the film can happen. .
Camera Lucida: A lot of your funding came from Greece and Albania but I was wondering if there is a Balkan film trust as well to cover the region?
M.Lafi: Yes and we received this money from the Albanian Film Center after we had pitched the film as a minority co-production and this was very important as it helped us to pay for the camera and the Albanian actors in the film. I was very lucky because Luli Bitri was excellent; she is one of the best actors that I have ever worked with.
Camera Lucida: So you got the funding, but did you have to beat off quite a lot of competition?
M.Lafi: All the projects were really good and I was hoping but thinking that there was going to be a lot of competition here. But they liked it and that was the important thing because I think they only gave money to one project.
Camera Lucida: When did you go into production on the film?
Lafi: In 2017 there was some shooting and also in 2018, but because there are Easter celebrations in the film I had made some shots in 2014 with my DoP (Ilias Adamis) because we always thought it was a good idea to make some shots in Easter as we thought they would be useful if we managed to make the film. We were crazy enough to spend our Easter in the area and for sure it was very useful because I used that footage. I also shot footage in the Easter of 2017 but I had to make shots with my actors. The shots from 2014 were not with my actors so they were the ones that I used.
Camera Lucida: Do you remember how many shooting days or weeks you spent on the film?
M.Lafi: Oh yes (Laughs) because I always thought how I would complete this film. It was only 25 days shooting. It was funny because my DoP was saying how are we going to do this in 25 days, we must cut it down. I pretended to agree and he was expecting a new script with less scenes. My plan for him was to shoot the most important scenes at the beginning and the less important scenes at the end. Therefore, if we didn't have time I would cut scenes out but that didn't need to happen.
Camera Lucida: What was the budget for the film and the total cost?
M.Lafi: The total cost for everything was 210,000 Euros. It was low budget and people didn't get proper money, otherwise I couldn't make the film. This is also why I couldn't shoot more days because in Greece we have to also pay the social services and from a budget of 210,000 Euros I have to pay 45,000 to social services and that is a lot of money because we are not in the film business for real.
