ISA award-winning Nicolas Van Ruychevelt: “I want to talk about the deep failure of the human being”

Belgian film director Nicolas Van Ruychevelt brought to Independent Shorts Awards one of the most challenging films of July season. “Far Away”, a complex emotional story of a couple who have to take a radical decision in the hope of saving their relationship, was a recipient of two Platinum Awards for Best Drama Short and Best Acting Duo and one Gold Award for Best Original Score.

Nicolas Van Ruychevelt

ISA: What made you decide to make this film?

Nicolas Van Ruychevelt: It came from a story that a friend of mine lived. A friend of his father asked him if he could have a relationship with his wife. And I asked myself: in which situation, someone could be forced to ask that? I wanted to tell a love story in another way. It was a very interesting reflexion for me, more mature than my precedent works.

ISA: What did you want to tell to the audience with this film?

NVR: With “Far Away”, I want to talk about the deep failure of the human being. A failure that can be hidden behind masks, but they always came back to the surface. Also, in this failure, instead of facing them, my characters prefer to find another solution, a bad one, because I think their reality is blurred.

ISA: How difficult is to to make the audience believe in the characters and feel emotionally linked with a so short film?

NVR: It was a very interesting reflexion that we had with Amélie (Remacle) and Mickaël (Pinelli), the two main actors (awarded Platinum for Best Acting Duo). They had their own perception of the characters, and together we built them. It was long and difficult, but in the end, I think we could be proud of the result. I guess that these two characters are really convincing.

On the set of “Far Away”

ISA: Are you happy with the final result or would you change something?

NVR: I’m very proud of the final result. It was teamwork and everyone can find himself in it. I want to thank them all for their devotion! My only regret is that it was very low budget, so I have not been able to explore my staging as wanted to. It gonna be for the next time, and with the same team, I hope!

ISA: So, what’s next?

NVR: I’m currently working on another short film, a strange story about dying dogs, with a co-author. Besides this short, we are also developing a feature film. So these next years I hope to be able to develop my cinema and show it to the world! But I’m far from it, and I have a lot of work to do.

Photos courtesy of Laure Winants.