Video Interview: Mona Fastvold & Brady Corbet (The Sleepwalker)

Among 2014’s class of best new voices in the film landscape (which includes Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love), Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night), Miroslav Slaboshpitsky (The Tribe) and Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler), we easily include writer-director Norwegian important Mona Fastvold. Described as a “moody and mysterious in a Lynchian sense and Bergmanesque in design,” the Sundance preemed The Sleepwalker left quite the impression on us. Prior to her debut, the Scnadi-born, American based filmmaker learned her craft via acting gigs and music video directing, and it is somewhere in that timeline she met up with creative partner in actor turned writer-director Brady Corbet. Having worked with the likes Haneke, von Trier and Campos, a film history savant Corbet has been stepping into the creative process since his Sundance preemd 2009 short, Protect You + Me.

This past January, I had the chance to sit down with the pair to discuss such items as the behavioral comportments of her character-set, this notion of how unconscious plays into desires and the finely tuned sleepwalk theme of the film, Fastvold’s voyeuresque visual strategy and finally, how working on a first feature film project compliments their follow up film, 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader. To go along with my interviews this past January of supporting player Stephanie Ellis (here), and lead players Gitte Witt and Christopher Abbott (here), here is my interview with the creative duo. The Sleepwalker received a VOD and limited theatrical release as of last Friday via the Sundance Selects folks.