Interviews

Audio Interview: Jens Assur – Ravens

Published on April 9, 2018

Moving from photo journalism to the short form with sobering portraits in The Last Dog in Rwanda (2006) and one of the best shorts films this decade in Killing the Chickens to Scare the Monkeys (2011), Swedish helmer Jens Assur paints an alluringly stubborn miserablist portrait with his debut feature, Ravens.

Shackled to a way of life handed down from generations past, tending to the land, the animals and wrath of every single weather forecast imaginable, the antagonistic forces display the hardships of a family of three blistered souls best personified by the guilt-ridden character played by Reine Brynolfsson, and burden carrying wife (Maria Heiskanen) and young son (Jacob Nordström). Still being presented on the film festival circuit, I had the chance to speak with Assur at the 2017 Toronto Intl. Film Festival and discussed the choice in title, the use of the long take, and working with Brynolfsson.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).