Interview: Guy Nattiv, Carrie Coon & Lily James – The Liberation

Guy Nattiv has repeatedly explored the ways private lives become entangled with larger histories of violence, trauma and identity. The Israeli-born Academy Award winning filmmaker has been living this new feature for some time now. Digging deep into his own family trauma, his own grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who disappeared into an all-female commune in the 1980s, The Liberation sees Carrie Coon as Rita, and Lily James as the charismatic woman who draws her into the group, and Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young as her daughters, the film complicates the familiar narrative of cult manipulation by asking what happens when the promise of liberation becomes inseparable from the need to escape a painful past. With cinematography by Tudor Vladimir Panduru and Fabian Gamper, Nattiv builds a psychological family drama around the uneasy boundary between freedom and control. A project long in development and naturally especially close to filmmaker (he did a lot of groundwork to prepare), originally titled Harmonia with Naomi Watts and Vicky Krieps once attached, it was at the London BFI Film Festival press junket I had chance to speak to Nattiv on camera, and during a press roundtable. Having its world premiere at Telluride, Bleecker release the film for a limited theatrical release in November, with a wide release in January.