I say my concern even if it is not close to my father’s world

Charso Press: These days, the film “Golden Night” made jointly by Hatamikiai, father and son (the former as a producer and the latter as a director) is on the cinema screen. A multi-layered mystery drama about a family that gathers together to throw a birthday party for their grandmother, but an unwanted tension arises between them, which gradually becomes more complex and wide-ranging. It might seem that Yusuf Hatamikia also has a desire to make war films, but in his first film, he dealt with the complexity of human relationships and the challenges faced by people in everyday life. He says: I have learned to say something that concerns me even if it has nothing in common with my father’s world. We had an interview with this young director on the pretext of the release of the Golden Night movie that you are reading.

If you agree, let’s start the discussion from “Golden Night” itself, which is your first feature film. You said somewhere that you were so disappointed when you were writing the script for “Golden Night” that you tried to turn it into a novel after finishing it, to the point where you even described “Golden Night” as your sad story. Why?
I had this condition before I started writing the screenplay, and the reason was because I was disappointed with the production of my screenplays. Before the Golden Night screenplay, I had written four other screenplays, each of which was a few steps away from being made, and remained silent due to the investor’s withdrawal. I felt empty and saw my younger years locking myself in a place, not having fun, and putting myself under extreme financial pressure to make my film.
For this reason, I no longer had any hope of making a film, and after writing the Golden Night plan, I decided to turn it into a novel so that it would at least become a marketable product, because the script itself is not a commodity to market, and when it is converted into an image It doesn’t work and you as a writer feel like you have spent your life for nothing.
It happened that I had described Golden Night as my sad story, and even when we entered the serious pre-production, I was worried that this work would not be completed.
You chose your first film as a multi-layered mystery drama that tries to deal with the complexity of human relationships and the challenges people face in everyday life. Basically, dealing with human relations and the contradictions and differences of people seems to be a very important issue, provided that it does not fall into the abyss of mass repetition of social movies. Was this a concern for you? What concerns did you go into making this film?
My starting point for any story is what I can say through writing. In the following, I will look for a suitable form for that word to describe it in the best way. For me, cinema is the art of entertainment, and if I can’t entertain my audience for the time and money they have spent, they won’t be able to listen to me even for a moment. So maintaining the rhythm and tempo are two key factors for me to be able to penetrate into my audience. My concern and speech in Golden Night was an internal factor that I had to externalize in any way, and my tool was the members of that family and the relationships between them. In this story, everything was average for me. I didn’t want the family to be from the lower or upper classes of the society. I had neither too much nor too little desire for violence. I was looking for a kind grandmother, but I was running away from the stereotype of a house with a pond and an old woman always smiling. I looked at the script of the Golden Night from every side, and shivers fell on my body. I was on the side of a lot of characters that if I reduced their number, I would lose the atmosphere of a large and colorful family. On the other hand, I had a limited time to introduce each of them to the audience, that too in only one house.
You mentioned that when I looked at the Golden Night script from any angle, I felt shivers. What made you have the courage to take the job?
The only thing that gave me the strength to be bold was the word I felt I had to say. Of course, each of these challenges made the target more difficult for me, but I saw myself as a shooter who only has one bullet to prove himself. So, the more difficult the goal, the more compensation for the lost years and the risk of destruction and saying goodbye to the field. I took aim, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and released the arrow.
Human relations have a broad concept that includes love, hatred, reconciliation and violence. Sincere conversations as well as verbal conflicts are also forms of human relationship that happen between people in the family, work and society. We see examples of these human relationships in the Golden Night movie. Lies, concealment, tension, conflict and the revelation of Mago’s secrets. Was your goal in telling the narrative of the Golden Night involving human relationships?
My concern was precisely for these human relationships that I felt were losing color in today’s society. I thought I had found the point that caused these events. So, to show the light source, I had to darken the space a little so that the audience can find the light line and follow it. I wasn’t looking for blackness, but I had to be a little bitter and reduce the ambient light so as not to give a wrong sign.
I tried to choose my characters in a variety of ways so that any audience with any type of life can identify with the grandmother’s family and find themselves or a familiar person in it.
The most important point in the film is about people who seem to love each other, but in different situations, their views of each other appear contradictory and sometimes hateful. I want to know how much such a narrative is based on your life experience and when you are faced with the people you see in the society?
No human being is black and white, and anyone who has lived long enough in their society realizes that humans are gray. When we see people as gray, we can identify with them. If we consider the film Golden Night about a family whose constituents are humans, then in order to get closer to the audience, we must show their whiteness and blackness at the same time.
At the same time, the film makes good use of the element of “suspense”, which is the most important element of consistency and advancement in mystery dramas, and it can be said that it is one of the strengths of the work. Classification of these strengths ((suspensions) in a closed space, the work seemed problematic because the work might overlap with the apartment films. What did you do to avoid stereotypes?
The genre of the Golden Night movie was a mystery, and naturally, suspense is the basic element of this genre, but from another angle, it had a conceptual affinity with the film’s message.
I believe that when we start writing any screenplay, we step into the plain of darkness. The only lantern we can hold in this dark plain to reach our destination from the darkness is storytelling. The more eloquent we can tell the story, the more the audience will come with us and will not let go of our hand until the end of the journey.
Beyond what I wanted to say, I tried to tell a pleasant story to my audience and hope that he will not let go of my hand at the end of the path.
We are faced with a huge amount of actors in the film, it seems that it was a difficult task for you to control and play among them, but you managed to manage them well. You also chose a different arrangement. This selection seems to be due to the mastery of acting, not because you thought about their role when writing the script. do you agree?
Each and every one of my actors was amazing and we formed a family behind the scenes in the first step and I only recorded a part of it with the camera.
At the time of writing the script, the only actor I had in mind for one of the roles and I had somehow written his character based on his characteristics was Mr. Majjuni, who was lucky and I found the chance to accompany him by my side.
The rest of the cast (you read my family) was determined during pre-production. It is necessary to mention that we sought to put faces together that are not a familiar combination for the audience.
Mrs. Saadat’s arrival at the peak of despair was like a miracle for me and they created a lasting grandmother. Mrs. Nasser, Mr. Karamati, Behnaz Jafari, Sogul Khaliq, Nasser Hashemi, Amir Mohammadi, etc. were fighting and they were quickly in their right shape. The number of my family members is so large that I can write pages about them, how we formed this family through interaction. I was a small member of them and I was proud to have them by my side.
But the point is that whether we like it or not, Yusuf Hatamikia’s name is under the shadow of his father’s name. Although Mr. Ebrahim Hatamikia has drama films in his career, he is more known as a war filmmaker. Although you had previously made a documentary film and perhaps part of the impression was that Yusuf has a tendency to make documentary films, but contrary to this impression, you made a family melodrama with a good rhythm and balance. Of course, some people have not considered the tense atmosphere of the Golden Night movie to be similar to the films Low Height and Glass Agency by Ebrahim Hatamikia, which can be a symbol of an unbalanced society. What do you think though?
There is no such thing as denial and concealment in cinema and the silver screen reveals everything. I am the son of a filmmaker who has a big name and still makes films with strength and portrays his words in the best possible way. Can I not be influenced by him when I live next to him? On the other hand, the most important lesson I learned from my father is to say what you want and say something that comes from your own world. With these words, can I be like them? I have learned to say something that concerns me even if it has nothing in common with my father’s world. There is no meter and standard for me with these descriptions, how close I am or not to a certain filmmaker, because if I care a bit about it, I will lose my way. The artist has an individuality that is revealed both in the choice of subjects and in the way of expressing them.
Every work is a living being and answers the questions of its audience, and whatever the creator adds to it is considered to distort the work itself.
Considering that the father was the producer of this film, did they have any direct guidance during the film?
It was thanks to them that they trusted me and gave me the opportunity to do my own experience. Maybe they took a big risk, but I thank God that they are happy with this trust.