The Malik Bendjelloul Memorial Foundation

In 2016, the Malik Fund gave ”early stage grants” to two talented filmmakers, who are now busy working on their projects. Here you can read the grantees Jacob Frössén’s and Anastasia Kirillova’s own words about receiving the grants.

Anastasia Kirillova

What did the grant mean for you and the work with this project?
– The grant from the Malik Bendjelloul Memorial Foundation has been an enormous boost for my project. This was actually the first set of funding the project received, which in itself, not only kickstarted the actual production of the film, but also turned out to be the trigger in setting off a real domino effect, that’s been gathering more and more momentum, ever since. We’ve been back to Tokyo, where we spent one month with a small but amazing crew; spent proper time with our characters and their story, experimented with the form and came back with material, which I dare say is truly exciting. In the meantime, other sources of funding have fallen into place, which I suspect have something to do with getting past the classic catch 22 of film financing. Last but not least, thanks to The Malik Fund, I spent the last month inside Ingmar Bergman’s quarters on the magical Fårö, bringing to life the first scenes of the film, in an improvised edit suite inside Hammars. The last time I arrived for my appointment with Malik’s brother, Johar Bendjelloul, to show him those very first scenes, after coming back från Fårö, I noticed a rainbow in the grey sky outside. And that rainbow somehow feels very relevant now as I’m writing this, in summing up what the grant has meant for our film so far. It’s been nothing less then a small pot of gold full of hope and magic.

What is going on with the project right now?

– Our film, “Bar Answer: the shadows of love” is about a curious place in Tokyo, Japan, where the lovesick end up, as a last resort and later taken care of by a group of progressive private detectives offering morally challenging solutions to their problems. It’s a story about the secrets we hide, the emotions we cannot control and the lines we, human beings, are sometimes prepared to cross, in the name of love. The project is now at the very end of its development stage, thanks to this development grant. The next time we return to Japan, we will be in full production. We’ve completed our first proper shoot, established our characters, gone deep into the subject matter and worked out the form for telling this story which is full of challenges in terms of confidentiality. Before receiving the grant we had a simple trailer, presenting the idea on a very shallow level. Now we’re working on a more elaborate trailer with real production value to it and have several film scenes to support it, which is required from film commissioners to even start considering funding the final film.

Jacob Frössén

About the project Motorik: A film about the drum beat often called ”Motorik” that was invented by the drummer Klaus Dinger in the German band NEU!, which was active in Düsseldorf during the early 70s. By making very long pieces of music where the drum beat goes on and on in the same way, the idea was to give the listener a sense of endlessness. But behind the drum beat was also a love story.

What did the grant mean for you and the work with this project?
It helped me develop the film further and also gave me time to concentrate on the artistic side of this film.

What is going on with the project right now?
Right now I’m editing the film and I’m also filming the last bits and interviews for it, and then I will edit some more. Then it’s ready I hope!

Interviews in Filmarbetaren

Read Magnus Aronson’s interviews with Jacob and Anastasia in Swedish film magazine Filmarbetaren: