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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free
Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on
their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can
get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find
our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling
author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning
Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs
and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Welcome back to Live Free, Ride Free,
where we talk to people who are living
and have lived and still are living and
will keep living self actualized lives.
What does that mean?
Lives where they are living.
on their own terms, through their
own interests, through their
imaginations what we would really
call the definition of success.
It has nothing to do with money.
It has nothing to do with fame.
Some of the people that we are
interviewing are public figures.
Some of them are people
you've never heard of.
Some of them are people who are at
home looking after elderly parents.
Some of them are people who are changing
the world very publicly in different ways.
It doesn't matter how you do it.
What matters is, are you living on
your own terms, or do you want to?
And of course, would you like to be
mentored because This is always helpful.
So I've got a great mentor on this week.
This is Diana Elbaum.
She's amazing.
She's an independent film producer.
She's based in Belgium, but
she works all over the world.
She's done all sorts of things.
And those of you who've always thought,
Oh yeah, I'd quite like to make a
movie, you know, I'd quite like to
be a independent, you know, film.
person.
I can make a documentary.
Well, she's the person who has sort
of done that and has done that in a
very quiet but very effective way.
She wouldn't be, most producers
are people you haven't heard of.
You hear about directors, you
hear about actors, but you don't
hear about producers, and you
don't hear about screenwriters.
But they are the people who
actually get films done and made.
And the reason why you don't hear about
them is because that's how they like it.
They want to be the
people behind the scenes.
They want to be what you call in French,
the Eminence Grise, which was the, the
name for the Cardinal Richelieu, who was
the power behind the throne of Louis XIII.
They want the director and
the actors to be out front.
Meanwhile, they, they are always not only.
Brewing up the witch's potion of the
film that you're seeing now, but they're
usually working on about 10 different
ones and They often are working on things
that you don't even know that they were
working on Music producers are like this
too So if you really read the sleeve notes
of an album, you might say oh my gosh
This person pops up here and here and
here and here and here across all these
different genres It's a little bit the
same and Diana is one of these people.
So We're going to ask her how it's done.
We're going to ask her how she got
there, but more than that, we're going
to ask her why this work is, is so
fulfilling and what can we learn from it?
So Diana, thank you so much for coming on.
Who are you?
Diana Elbaum: Oh, thanks Rupert.
I don't know if I can live
up to what you just said.
So yeah, I'm Diana.
I'm based in Belgium,
born in Belgium, lived
in the U.
S.
for a long time, lived in the
Middle East for a long time.
I think from the get go I'm a
person who's always been really
fascinated by storytelling.
And I can remember for a long, long time
when I was a teenage and I was totally
a bookworm and by the chance, by the
chance of meeting a great teacher in
high school, she opened up the door
to an amazing, um, storytelling world.
Starting with, believe it or not,
Dutch literature, and then moving on
to American literature with the like of
Faulkner, who then led me on to the magic
realism of South American literature.
And I think it opened in me as a
teenager, a vision of a world so
much bigger than I thought it was.
And also it also open capacity of touch
me emotionally, I was quite lonely.
I was a very not reserved because
I'm not, but I was a loner and
I'm still am, but those spaces.
That a book allows you and then after
that, of course, that films allows you for
me, I think it was always a trigger into
what's so amazing about the connection
we have with stories and how much it's
needed for connecting for a stranger
in an airport, in a train a friend.
Or and I think that was my connection.
And the first start and who I am really
started, I mean, there is a lot of other
things about me, but I think in regarding
what I am today, I think as far as I
can remember where those this curiosity,
it triggered in me into the others.
So literature was really my
the door that opened my life.
And and then I went on to study
literature, South American
literature, more precisely.
And then of course, when I
came out of school was the
question, so what do I do now?
And then that's yet another story,
but which I will tell, but I think
it also triggers something even
deeper than just reach out to emotion
and the capacity to travel within.
Somebody's writing.
It was also a huge curiosity.
I didn't have.
I didn't know I have.
I had.
I still have.
So that's the second element about me.
I'm extremely curious and very versatile.
I'm absolutely not one street
of I like only this or that.
Every, everything that I read or
see or people that I meet immediately
trigger in me zillion of questions.
It's quite unbearable, actually,
but that's the way it is.
So, and then, uh, when I was thinking
about what I was going to do to to make
money after university, It just so
happened that the advantage of going
into South American literature is
that I came out at 24 from university
with a, a baggage in languages.
You know, Spanish, and of course
my native language is French.
I studied in the U.
S., so English was an asset.
And I also speak from home.
I speak Hebrew and there were
other languages spoken around me.
And I think the capacity of speaking
those languages is also something
that really very, very early on
told me that there was no border.
So I could go wherever I wanted.
So after leaving New York, I went to
Israel and of course, there's very little
work in South American literature in
Israel, but then by the chance encounter
of some friends in the bar, somebody told
me, Oh, you speak all those languages.
You know, there's this film that's
coming and, you know, they need
kind of people who speak languages,
French production, and they are
looking for a production assistant.
I had no idea what film was.
I had no idea what it was all
about, but I knew there was a
check at the end of the day.
So, you know, it's better
than a lot of other jobs.
So I went and I discovered a world that
I literally fell in love with, which is
the set and the set had this energy of
a whole unit working towards a vision.
I don't have exactly the same feeling
about it today, but at the time was
this collective effort to create
something and something that is not
what I read because it became a film.
And I found that energy
totally incredible.
And from there on, I was hooked.
So I've been hooked now for
more years than I can count.
And I slowly started to move into,
bigger production because that was an
era in Israel between around the end
of the Lebanese war in the eighties,
where the weirdly the Lloyd insurance
was insurance production coming to
Israel, which is stopped afterwards.
But I mean, all the
American production came.
So back to back, I did like 10 production
and of course there were crews coming
from all over the world coming to shoot,
whether they were the stuntmen, horse
stuntmen from Spain or the American
actors or French crews or whatever.
Name it.
And the languages was always what
allowed me to keep on working in the job.
I don't think I was really good,
but at least I spoke languages
that a lot of people didn't.
So it really triggered more work for me
and more curiosity about what is it to.
Put a film together, but of course
at that time was only I was, you
know, a little mouse on the set.
So, you know, I started from being the
the person that was distributing water
because that was something that we needed
to do for the insurance and make sure
that people wouldn't go dehydrated.
But that allowed me to go from department
to department and actually speak with the
people and learn what they were doing.
I was never interested in
anything else in production.
I have to say though.
You know, the art was interesting.
Wardrobe was interesting.
The DP camera, all the
camera was interesting.
It feels like so much out of my reach.
And and then arrived 88.
And 88 was the first Intifada in Israel.
There was no more work.
The situation politically
was unbearable for me.
And I had just
Rupert Isaacson: What
arrived in Israel in 88?
Because a lot of listeners will not know.
Tell us about it.
In
Diana Elbaum: Israel in 88.
It started the first uprising
of the Palestinian against the
Israeli authorities and the
occupation and everything shut down.
It was almost war zone, though it wasn't
really, but for the insurance, it was
enough not to insure any more films, hence
the it was December, I think November
or December 88, everything shut down.
And so I had no more work.
But besides having no more work, I think
I've always been linked politically
and on a very wide, um, when I say
politically on a very wide sense of it.
One of the reasons why I left the U.
S.
I could have stayed after my study was
because it was Grenada stories, it was
Regan, there was Regan then president,
and those, and, and you know, they were...
so many social injustices
that I can't stand.
And I think that's probably another
factor of the films that I've
done afterwards as a producer.
The notion of the I know it sounds maybe
a little tacky, the notion of injustice.
Maybe there's a way to repair it if I can.
Which, you know, on a very small scale,
but those, those, you know, when you're
in those formative years of your 20 and
you try to define who you are, I know
that those were the triggers also for
me to move from one place to the other.
So I moved from the US, yes,
because I could, again, as I
said, I could have stayed, but the
political situation was so awful.
And also living in New York at the time
where the homeless were just increasingly
how shall I say that?
I mean, if we really were to go
back, I'm sorry, I'm going to
backtrack a little bit on that.
When I lived in the US, I lived
in New York, the time Reagan
arrived, he closed all the asylums.
And so a lot of, a lot of people
found themselves in the streets.
And it was at the same time, the
crazy years of the Wolf of Wall
Street and the start of Wall Street,
but at the same time, really on
the street, it was, it was awful.
It was a total despair.
It was unbearable because
also I felt a lack of.
knowing what to do about it.
So for those years I left.
I didn't want, I wasn't American.
I couldn't do anything more than that.
So I left and then I arrived in Israel
and then in 88 started in Tefada,
there's nothing I could do about it.
And I decided to leave.
So it wasn't only because
I had no more work.
Because at the end of the
day, you can always find work.
But it was some, this, this situation
was just, I couldn't figure out
what to do within that realm.
I couldn't, I just
couldn't, I didn't know.
So I, and I wasn't active.
I wasn't an active.
Member of any kind of party.
I'm still not.
But the right and wrong I had
decided I couldn't live by is
really what dictated my leaving.
And my idea was then to go
back, then it was not Reagan
anymore, to go back to the U.
S., but then I stopped in
Belgium to say hi to my friends.
I had left since high
school and I got stuck here.
And actually it's an okay place
because, yeah, you don't have to
take any political stand here.
It's a weird place, Belgium.
It's an amazing place for those who
don't know, but I was I was immediately
hired because then at that time, just
pure sheer luck in 88, 89 started
advertising on television here.
There wasn't that before there
was massive work and then
nobody had work in the industry.
It was very tiny, tiny industry or
a few films a year and that's it.
And here I arrive and I have
all those connection and I'm
like, yeah, I've done this.
And I've, you know, kind of also being
very not humble about what I had done,
but also then everybody considered me
as like, oh, she knows how to do it.
And it was really a
weird time because I was.
Doing all those huge advertising.
I was there were no woman around me.
I had no role figure in that business.
And I did an incredible advertising
all over the world from Japan
to Australia back to the U.
S.
to South Africa.
And it was the time of like.
Endless bounty in the industry in the
advertising world till a few years
later, where my kind of sense of, I
don't know if you call it sense of
justice, but at least sense of, of,
reality or whatever hits me again,
where I was, it's kind of a funny story.
I was in a pre production
meeting for Frozen Peas.
That was a local shoot.
Frozen Peas.
And, and I remember the, the client,
you know, those pre production is
when we decide how it's going to be.
The look, there is a director and
the client and the agencies and
the producers around the table to
just really go down in detail how.
The commercial is going to look
like and, you know, the music
that's going to be with it.
And I remember spending four hours in that
meeting where half of the time to decide
the exact color of the actress or the
model they needed to compare to the piece.
And I totally broke down and
I left at that point, I had
done a lot of commercial.
I was really high end commercial
producer, or I wasn't a producer,
but I was production manager.
And I knew they had really little
other choice on the market, but me,
and I just looked at all of them.
I said, do you know how many
children die from hunger while
we're deciding the call to dress?
Because I had it, I had it.
And I really hope at that time
they would throw me out and
say, never come back again.
And, you know, here, but they kept on
hiring me and I had to decide in the early
nineties that if I didn't make a change in
my life, then I would never get out of it.
So then I started the other part of
the story, but I have to say that to
go back to a point you made earlier
about how do you take those decisions
of being able to throw tons of money
away because it doesn't feel right.
It takes guts, but I never, I
think it doesn't, it, it takes a
specific kind of people that are not
afraid of what tomorrow will bring.
And I've never been afraid of that.
I think it's partly educational and I
think it's partly being completely newly
and crazy because I was never afraid
not to know if I could pay my rent.
I was never afraid not to know.
And I had those really hard moment.
I'm not to think that I didn't have them.
But it wasn't That was not going to be
ever that I remember some kind of break
to what I wanted to do and I yet didn't
know what I wanted to do, but I know and I
remember and I think it's still today and
I think it's not only it's still today.
I think it also cost me money to have this
kind of attitude of saying nobody's going
to tell me what I'm going to do tomorrow.
And so there is a toll for
the people living around you
around, but at the same time.
I can today, 30 years later, or a
little more than 30 years later,
I can say, you know, every day I
wake up, every day I, I'm saying
to myself, I'm going to change job.
I can't, uh, and every day I'm happy.
So, you know, the counterbalance of
that is that and so when I threw out
the frozen peas and I had to decide
what to do, they kept on calling me.
So I did a few more commercial,
but then I went back to literature.
Literally, that's what I did.
My first refused when I
was a teenager came back.
Another refused when I was now.
Hold was it?
I was like late twenties.
Early 30s.
And I say, well, I don't
really know what I want to do.
I want to stay in the environment
of making storytelling, which,
of course, even advertising
is sometimes storytelling.
And but I want to do bigger.
I want to change the world.
I want to save the world.
I had all those like really beautiful
dreams and I went back to literature and I
optioned a book, which was a Swedish book
by a Swedish author called Tony Lindgren.
And I said, this is for me.
This is a book that I need, get
the rights, find a director.
And then I was stuck and I
was like, how do I do now?
Because I don't really
know how to do a feature.
Right.
I just know how to do commercials.
And so I got training and I went to a
training program that still exists today
in the film world for professional called
European audio visual entrepreneur.
I'm training there now for the past
15 years, but it really opened my
eyes to the fact that I knew nothing.
So the next skill you need to learn
is to make it till you believe it.
And some other would say fake it
till it's happening, but I really.
Made it and I start to believe in it
that film was never made, but it was a
great learning curve because then you
realize that the other things you need to
do is get out of your shell and getting
out of your shell is actually starting
to go on market and starting to meet
people and starting to talk people and
not only thinking that you're going to
do a story, but maybe somebody else has
a great story that they want to tell.
And and get to know people
and then see how it works.
So those years were difficult one
because I wasn't making any money.
But I was free as a bird and
I traveled sense and sleep,
but I met a lot of people.
And of course, 30 years later.
Those same people are the people
that I'm still working with.
A lot of them are still people that
I'm working with because the revolution
then wasn't so fast in terms of
turnover of, you know, the people in
the position of financing and all that.
It was just lower, slower mode that today.
Today you speak to one person,
you're not sure they're going
to be around for six months.
So, but then we were all starting.
I'm speaking mainly European now.
I'm not, I totally abandoned the idea
of, there was a half a second where
I thought, well, maybe I'll go to Los
Angeles and it's going to be easier.
I abandoned that very, very fast.
I really liked European freedom actually.
And the fact that it wasn't
entirely driven by a market.
So it's and that, that allowed
me to really dream, actually.
And then came 1994, and was my first
Cannes, and it was a film festival.
Can film festival.
Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: I knew what you had.
You had a film.
You had made
Diana Elbaum: nothing.
I came there.
Yeah.
No, I didn't have a film.
I still was trying to
figure out how to make it.
But I had a dear friend in Israel was
a distributor and she called me and she
say, you know, you should come to can.
I'll introduce you to all those people.
You can sleep in my room as
maybe your listener don't know.
Cannes is the most expensive place
to go during the film festival.
I would not advise because
it's extremely expensive.
So, you know, having the
invitation, I say, okay, I
need only to pay for my train.
That's going to be fine.
You know?
And, and so I did.
Full of hopes.
And I think after maybe six hours
there, I was like trying in the
bathroom of the most prestigious,
you know, hotel in the world, like
the Majestic, because I couldn't
figure out what people were doing.
And unfortunately, this friend...
Was a trigger for something else
because she saw me like, literally,
I was drinking and crying.
That's basically because of,
you know, I went to all those
parties, all the drinks were free.
I didn't know that many people, though I
had met people, but not yet to the massive
amount of people that are in Cannes.
And I was like, well, we're all
trying to do the same thing, sell
our little stories and all that.
I'm never going to make it.
That was really a done moment for
me, but I was happily drinking for
free and I was happily, you know,
crying in really beautiful bathrooms.
But anyway, and she took me and then
she saw me really desperate on day
two and she took me by the hand.
And the advantage of speaking Hebrew is
that a lot of people do speak Hebrew.
So she literally in the majestic
took me from table to table where
all the executive Americans and
Europeans were like doing deals.
You know, this like, like really,
it's, it's almost a cliche, right?
Mainly men, of course.
And she was, so she took me from table to
table and she told me, you know, the only
thing everybody does here is sell dreams.
You can sell dreams as well.
And what she meant by
that is two way things.
Two way, two way to look at it.
We do sell dream because what we
do is we have a written document
and we're making into films.
It's prototype So prototype is deals.
It's a dream in itself.
And What's not a prototype is a remake
Every film is a prototype because it
starts on paper if it's got the chance
to find the financing it needs Then
it becomes a film so, you know And
Rupert Isaacson: at this first
can were you did you have a story
you were trying to get made or you
were still I was the same Story
Diana Elbaum: where am I?
Yeah.
It was the same story.
And I would receive
answers from sales agents.
It was the Swedish story.
Yeah.
The Swedish story.
And it was like, you know, yeah.
How many films have you made?
Well, I've made only advertising.
Who's your director?
Oh, he's a first time director.
He did a really successful
short, which wasn't true.
And who are your actors?
Well, we casting.
And of course I was like
name dropping like crazy.
And people would look at me
and say, first film director,
first film for the producer.
No way.
How are we going to finance that?
What
Rupert Isaacson: was the book, by
the way, that you were trying to get
Diana Elbaum: made?
It's called, oh, good
question, Twenty Lindgren.
I have to go on Google.
It's oh my god, Robert, I just forgot.
And I love the book.
But...
What was it about the
book that grabbed you?
It was something about a fake...
It was something about a fake painter
and a young singer and how her family, he
was totally in love, like teens, he was
totally in love with her and always wanted
to impress, but her family decided she was
going to be the next big thing in music.
And so he was never considered as a, the
real pretender for her, for her love.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell me, tell
me the name of the author again.
I'm going to.
Diana Elbaum: Lin Tony, N-G-R-E-N,
Rupert Isaacson: Tony Lin
Diana Elbaum: Gren, I think
it was called in French.
I can't, I can Google it, but
Rupert Isaacson: I can't.
Okay.
I'm just gonna
it looks like there aren't many great
matches for your search . Oh my God.
Tony.
Tony.
That's the story of my life.
Did you say Tony
Diana Elbaum: Ren?
Thorny.
It's T-O-R-J-N-Y.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh oh.
That would be YT Sorry.
Let, let
Diana Elbaum: T-O-R-T-O.
J N Y.
Rupert Isaacson: J N Y.
Tony.
Yeah, that's not a name
that an English speaker
Diana Elbaum: would...
Lindgren.
L I N D J R E N.
Lindgren.
He passed a few years ago.
J
Rupert Isaacson: R E N.
Not G R E N.
Diana Elbaum: Oh, J R E N.
J R
Rupert Isaacson: E N.
Well, I've got him.
Tony Lindgren.
And you say
Diana Elbaum: that his, I can't
remember the title in English.
Rupert Isaacson: Ah, okay.
I'm seeing the way of the
serpent pulse and sweetness.
But I thought it was polar, but Shaba
Shaba is a great writer, by the way.
Well, thanks for turning me on to him.
How did you, how did you
discover him out of interest?
Diana Elbaum: No, you can kill me.
I will never remember.
I can't remember.
Okay.
It's one of those things.
I love secondhand bookstores,
so I think I just picked it up.
Maybe I love the cover.
I don't know.
You know?
Why did you pick another, another one?
Maybe it's Paula.
Anything on Paula?
Rupert Isaacson: Paula?
Okay.
I think I did see that.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Diana Elbaum: I don't
know, but I can find it.
Hold on.
It was about, it's funny.
It was about the truth and the fake.
So I guess I'm a precursor
of what we live today.
So it's Paula, that's the name in French.
Yeah, I guess it's a cover.
Not that I see the cover, but
how can I find in English?
Because my Google is in French,
maybe in English, let's do English.
See what it brings.
There's a cover with a
woman in dark glasses.
That's the French cover.
Rupert Isaacson: Was it set in modern
Diana Elbaum: times?
Well, it was set then, yeah.
It's a book written in 1993, actually.
Oh, yeah, I know.
I know how I get on that.
There was this then upcoming, uh,
editor called Actorsuit who was really
going into a different literature than
usual, and I really loved that one,
so I think I read, uh, what is the I,
I don't even know the, I don't know
how I can find the original title.
And he's a wonderful writer.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I
shall, I shall look up.
Okay, so you, you were trying, you were
still trying to get this book made.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, I was
and I was getting all those.
Yeah.
And I was getting all those like
either macho backlash or whatever.
I was getting those kind of signals.
And so after crying my heart
out that I will never make it
for like two or three days.
I got a lucky break when I came back
home, whereby the producer of Chantal
Ackerman, who's an amazing Belgian food.
director who did Jeanne Dilman,
who's been voted as one of the best
film in the last, I don't know,
50 years or something like that.
Like a few months ago.
Called me and she said, well, Chantal
is doing this film who's the most
commercial film she's going to do with
Juliette Binoche and William Hurt.
And it's between Paris and New York.
And we've heard about you and we
are looking for somebody to produce
a film because we will not do it.
And it was then a co production
with France, with Balenciaga.
And that was my break.
And
Rupert Isaacson: what was the
Diana Elbaum: name of the film?
It was called A Couch in New York.
Rupert Isaacson: A Couch in New York.
Okay.
And that was your first, the
first film that you produced.
That
Diana Elbaum: was your break.
Yes.
That was my really
Rupert Isaacson: lucky break.
William Hurt and Juliette Bouchard.
Diana Elbaum: Sounds great.
Yeah.
And it was a, it was a huge, huge lesson
of understanding the craziness of the job.
As a producer, um, because it was
really, you know, already Juliette
Binoche was very known, of course,
William Hurt was very known.
Chantal is a very specific, deep art
house, a world of her own, but the film
was financed by very commercial companies.
And that already, I understood there
was red flag all over the project
because on one hand, it was a rom
com between Paris and New York.
You can't go better than
that with those actors.
And on the other hand, it
was a very author film.
And but regardless of, I love the film
and also it, it, it, it allowed me to,
what to witness something else I had never
witnessed is when the film came out, it
didn't really do well except in Belgium.
And It was my first film.
So I was literally buying tickets for
every screening, you know, in Brussels
just to see how the audience would react.
And then when I saw the audience coming
out with kind of a smile on their
face, I was like, how magical is that?
Actually delivering to the world,
something that people will take
time to come and see, sit down two
hours in a black, you know, in a
theater, black place and pay for it.
And come out with a smile or a
tear afterwards, or an emotion.
And that totally made sense all of
a sudden about what my job could be.
And it allowed me really to understand,
thanks to that film, not only the, what
was happening inside a film production,
or rather inside of, yeah, trying to put
together a film, and then working this
kind of really crazy, High end Parisians,
German, at the same time, preserving
Chantal, whom I became very, I knew her
before, but I became much closer to her,
a real author and a voice of another
against this pressure of the market.
And on the other hand, seeing an
audience, seeing people deliberately
choosing to go and buy a ticket and
then being really happy about it.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm just
gonna tell the listeners too.
I'm just looking.
I just, I just wikied both Paula,
which is the name of the movie that
didn't get made by Tony Lundgren.
Yes, indeed.
An aging painter versus a up and coming
young diva, which sounds brilliant.
And then this one that you made your
first big break, a couch in New York.
Where there's anonymous, an anonymous
apartment swap and Juliette Binoche
who's a dancer swaps with William
Hurt, who's a psychoanalyst, and she
starts rather illegally seeing his
patients who show up, and a succession
of her lovers start showing up in,
in her apartment, and in the course
of this, Of course, they fall out of
love and then in love it looks great.
Interestingly though as mainstream
movies go, it's on the arthouse side.
It's...
So now here you are, you've sort of got a
foot in Hollywood with a movie like this.
Well, not really.
Well, exactly.
You would think you have because
it's, it's, it's an American, these
are, this is a big American actor.
There would have been presumably
some American financing.
Diana Elbaum: No, on this one,
there was French, mainly financing.
Okay.
And yeah, it's I think Chantal really...
People were drawn, people are
drawn to big name directors
or very interesting directors.
And of course, both of them had done
amazing work before with great directors.
And having a European director, having
this kind of like, take on RomCom and
New York and Paris was very infatuating.
We actually shot in Germany in Babelsberg
studio, so that was another thing of
being in a mythic studio like Babelsberg.
For those who don't know, we have
a few mythic studios in the world,
Cinecitta in Rome, Babelsberg, And
Barandov in Babelsberg in Berlin
and Barandov in Hungary, where like
the history of cinema was made.
So it was also for me being still
the younger kid on the block around
was like, Ooh, all those actors.
Yeah.
So I thought I was like, you know.
I sort of, I thought I had made
it then, but the road was still
long to go after that one.
Rupert Isaacson: Before we embark
on that road, why is Babelsberg,
um, such a legendary place for those
of us not in the movie industry?
A lot of us be the first
time we've heard that name.
Why was film history made there?
Diana Elbaum: Because all
those studios were built really
at the golden age of cinema.
I don't exactly know if Babelsberg
was, I think Babelsberg was
even built before the war.
So we're talking about studios that are
today almost a hundred years old, where
At the time, I don't think there were so
many films made on location on relocation.
A lot of stuff was done in studios.
So they've seen the like of the Fellini's
and, and, and at least I can't really
name, I don't know if I I'm not a big
historian in film, but the thing is
that there is something in those walls.
that ooze
Rupert Isaacson: greatness.
Like Pinewood in the UK, for example.
Diana Elbaum: Pinewood in the UK.
Yeah.
So there's, there is not that many, I'm
not even talking about the American lots
but I'm talking about European studios
and they, and you see the people work
there and you see the art department,
you have all the profession, a film
business there and a filmmaking there.
Which is still very, I mean, up
until the digital era was extremely
traditional and extremely artisanal.
And you have those people who have those
amazing qualities of building and creating
spaces in the clutch in New York, the
whole Paris apartment was made there.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so was
it not shot in New York at all?
Was
Diana Elbaum: it only?
We did, we shot the apartment,
the New York apartment in New
York, but the Paris one was shot
in, because it was a small space.
The thing also, you just have to
imagine, she was a dancer, had no
money, it was a small apartment.
So.
To be able to fit a crew and move
the cameras, you have to be able
to move the wall, which is in
real life really complex to do.
So you do it in studios.
You can do top shots, you
can do the lighting you want.
So we had a beautiful, beautiful
backdrop of Paris behind it
and it's all hand painted.
And you had all those craft people
around the studios who were just amazing.
It's amazing to see it's kind
of, being inside of yeah, inside
of Inside of inside the art.
I don't know how to better say it.
And yeah, so those studios are
really, if anybody goes to Berlin
or to Rome, um, are visitable.
So it's really great stuff to visit.
Cause it's
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Okay, so there you are, you're
at this Babersberg golden age
of movie place in, in Berlin.
You're making an international film.
You've, you've, you've kind of made it.
Well,
Diana Elbaum: yeah, in my head, I made it.
And I didn't know it was
such a long road afterwards.
But yeah, then I get an offer to go to
Paris by the Balenciaga production house.
And I was I decided not to do it.
There was there was something in me
who said, I'm not a big city girl.
And and I was starting to get my
environment clearer in Belgium.
Then came after that so, you know,
and also it, it's, it, it kind of
need to remember that in, in the,
in the nineties, again, I was though
the Balenciaga producer was a woman.
But there was still an era
of very complex for a younger
woman to try to be entrepreneur.
And also, that's part of the job.
I think what I was mentioning before,
my fear, I have no fear of tomorrow, has
to, is a kind of entrepreneurial thought.
And I'm going to build my own business.
And so I felt Paris was too big, um,
and, and not the place I wanted to be
anyway, because I'm, I like Paris, but
I don't like Paris at the same time.
And already then and still now.
And what happened is that
God, this is so long ago.
What happened is that those
young kids came to my office.
One day my office, big name my
one room in my one apartment, one
room apartment and said, Oh, we
heard you are producing films.
You know, we know you've done the
Chantal Ackerman and we have this
script and we also know, because one
of the things I said to myself, if
I need to make it, I need the tools.
So the came out, Sony
came out with those mini.
Cassette kind of camcorder.
And I bought one.
It was quite expensive at the time.
And I was like, well, I have the tool now.
I need the stories.
Right.
But they came for the tool.
And I was like, yeah, I'll give you
my camera if you want for your film,
but I'd love to read the script.
And I fell in love with the script.
And I say, not only I'm going
to give you the camera, but I'm
going to find money for the film.
And that's really my first, that's yet
another thing being a producer because
it's a generic term for a lot of.
Different kind of way of working
as a producer as more moving into
the creative producing space.
Okay,
Rupert Isaacson: I was just, by
the way again, wiki ing madly
while you were talking there.
Babelsberg Studios.
For those who I wondered about
this, if it was where Metropolis
was made, you know, the great...
I think so.
It was.
It was.
Diana Elbaum: It's really
even more than a century old.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, it
goes back to 1912, apparently.
But if you, if people, if listeners
might think it's consigned to history,
Uh, V for Vendetta, Captain America,
Civil War, Inglourious Basterds, The
Bourne Ultimatum, Cloud Atlas, The
Grand Budapest Hotel, One of the Hunger
Games, et cetera, et cetera, and The
Matrix Resurrections, all filmed there.
So, interesting.
For those of us who,
you know, see movies...
Now mostly on Netflix, honestly we all
kind of think Hollywood and even if
they're sort of apparently Hollywood
movies And I know this from my time Riding
on movie sets to finance my way through
college That I would be at Pinewood or
Shepperton or somewhere on location and
sitting around on horses for you know
hours and hours and hours waiting to be
told to do something for five minutes and
then go home after sitting on the horse
for 10 hours, you know, and that's, as
you know, what life on movie sets is.
It's waiting around.
But often these movies would be shot
partly there, but of course, part
shot, part shot, partly elsewhere,
but they might be American movies,
but they'd be shot in England
for tax reasons or this or that.
And it was this kind of, I remember at
the time realizing, oh my gosh, this is
this complex, complex, complex world.
So just before you go on there, thank
you for illuminating for those of us
in You know, don't know Babelsberg
and there are studio tours there.
If you're next in Berlin and Potsdam,
the Weimar film thing, go check it out.
So, okay.
So now you're at the point Diana,
where having had this conversation in
a bar in in Israel and by hook and by
crook, you have now found yourself.
Going out to get your first money
for a movie and it's now, now the
movie life has shifted to Paris.
How do you, how do you
find money to make a film?
And what is this film again, by the way?
Diana Elbaum: Give us the time.
That film, that film is a great film.
That film is called Thomas in love, Thomas
Rupert Isaacson: in
Diana Elbaum: love.
So yeah, we can do a whole
podcast on that one another time.
But yeah, how did
Rupert Isaacson: you, how did you.
How did you find the
money for Thomas in love?
Diana Elbaum: Well, we in Europe,
so we have a lot of we are,
there's a lot of investment from
the government into the culture.
So we are calling it in the
jargon of filmmaking self funding.
So it's all the subsidies.
So you go subsidy, then you go market,
meaning broadcaster, distributors,
and then you go to international
sales, which are the people will
sell the film around the world.
Those were the scheme at the time
that I started there are many more
today as the one you mentioned tax
credit and regional fund today.
And then, of course, there's private
equity, but at a time in Europe, it was
only subsidy and a little bit of a little
bit of market money, like a broadcaster,
or, of course, there were no streamers
at the time and then distribution,
the exhibition, the theaters.
The the those were the way of financing.
There were, you know, so that's
how I got the first one made.
It was very low budget, ended up in
Venice, film festival and competition.
And yeah, and then, and it
actually sold all over the world.
It was quite a big success.
Rupert Isaacson: Just,
just to pause you there.
Thomas is an agoraphobe who hasn't
left his apartment in eight years.
His psychoanalyst consults him to meet
a woman through some online services.
And of course, this is a 2000 movie
when this was something quite new.
Will he find love online?
Will he ever leave his apartment?
So, okay, so you're making this
movie in 2000 when the whole online.
com thing is still somewhat new.
Yeah, especially in Europe.
Right, and online dating then, you know,
people would have died rather than admit
that they were looking for love online,
let alone Tinder and Grindr, and now
it's like, what, you're not on Tinder?
You know, do you remember,
it's so interesting how
social norms move on so fast.
But of course,
Diana Elbaum: and also that was part of,
I mean, to, to just add to that, I think
that was part of the, of the success
because everybody was like the way we are
with artificial intelligence, not knowing
what was that revolution was starting.
Everybody was freaked out and say, why
are you going to make love on online?
And you know, your life will be
dictated, so of course, but so we.
We, we unknowingly, because we're
Belgian, so we have no afterthought.
We just like what we do.
And like, there's no like a long
term thought about it, but that
those kids or those directors that
came to me and writers that came
to me and said they, that's the way
they were looking at the future.
And I, and what I love, I still
love the film because I sold
it like a lot during COVID.
Funnily enough, I resold the rights to
a lot of broadcaster and local streamers
during COVID because it's exactly that.
And the funny thing also is that my
director who's a very Christian man, I
have to say, uh, probably the only one
that I know who's devoted Christian,
was, uh, everybody had tattoos.
In the a lot of people had tattoo
in the in the film and it was
a time there were no tattoos.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
before there was a tattoo.
And it was always a
Diana Elbaum: big discussion.
I say, why is everybody having tattoos?
They say one day people will lose God.
They will need to connect
to something else.
Tattoo will be the way.
Now that I look around me, I have
to say, he's still a good friend
and was like, how visionary was he?
Whether on his belief, but at least
the way he saw the world becoming.
And, and so Thomas in Love was...
Was playing on the fears of what
internet would be without us knowing,
we're just playing with the idea.
And so, and there, that's really
when things start to take off.
Because of the success of that
film, because it was at the Venice
Film Festival in competition.
And because, you know,
it was sold all over.
So my name started to go around
the circles of, well, she
actually, you know, know how to
Rupert Isaacson: do stuff.
Now I just want to pause you again
there to ask you a couple of questions.
So these are the kinds of things
one hears when one is listening
to movie people being interviewed.
Oh, you know, well, I, I've got
the money that sort of a bit this
way, and then I sold it here.
Having made and sold an independent
movie myself, I know that it's
not quite such a smooth process.
When you say that and I think for
listeners, this is quite fascinating how
movies get financed and how they get sold.
And of course, this is part of living free
and writing free that one would like to
maybe do this sort of thing for a living.
I know you said that you found the money
to make the film through EU subsidies
for the arts, but I'm sure there's
millions of people constantly trying
to dip into those, um, piles of money.
What?
What made you successful there
and then I'm going to ask you
as a subsequent question, how do
you sell a film at a festival.
So let's start with the first one,
how do you get this EU money that's
floating around, but there's a bazillion
people out there trying to get it.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, it's, it's
a good question because I think
it's quite beautiful definition
of Europe, actually in which I
believe really dearly and fiercely.
Firstly, there is the national funding.
So, you, you have to understand
something about the film industry.
We are as much a creative
industry as we are an industry.
So those two poles are really interesting.
And continue to be throughout my career.
Interesting because we provide a
lot of work for a lot of people.
It's a huge provider of work.
And at the same time, we are a voice of.
a country.
So the same way Belgian chocolate is
known around the world, I wish Belgian
film were known around the world, but
it has actually a similar value in
terms of employment and in, in terms
of, of getting people to know us.
I'll give you an example that I think
is going to highlight much more is
that, for example, when there was
Green Card, this film with I'm not even
going to name the name of the actor.
Unnameable French actor today.
The film was such a big success.
It was shot in New York.
The New York then film commission
was starting, decided to put a
tax break because they realized
that films bring tourism.
People go to Southern France to look
at the chocolate where chocolate,
the chocolate film was shot.
It brings people when I go to New
Zealand because my son wants to go and
see where Lord of the Rings was shot.
Then it brings stories.
There's an after effect to the industry
was extremely important for the people,
for the places where it was shot.
So you have to consider that.
Films in itself is a creative,
creative act, but at the same time,
it's also a return on economy for
the places where films are shot.
And that's why today wasn't happening.
Then you see all, every single
region, I won't say in the world,
but at least in Europe, in the U.
S.
And now it's going, it's, it's
opening up to the rest of the world.
The Middle East per se have what we
call regional funding, which means that
come to us, we'll give you money, part
of the money you need for your shoot,
because if the film is successful,
they know it will trigger tourism.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Interesting.
I didn't know that.
I thought the tax breaks were,
were from a different thing.
I didn't realize they
were connected to tourism.
That's really interesting.
So that's, so they're thinking
if this movie gets made and is
successful, people are going to want
to come and check out the locations.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, not only that,
it also provides a lot of work.
I mean, I can give you an example,
for example, of the southern region
of Sweden, which is the region
of Malmö and Gothenburg, uh, that
region was entirely I mean, the
main business was Saab, those cars.
If you remember, everybody wanted
to have a sub when we're at least.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Subs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there was this one
Rupert Isaacson: get a moose and survive.
That's right.
No, that was Volvo.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Diana Elbaum: So the thing is
that the entire, this entire
region mainly lived off.
Of that one industry.
And this one politician way back then,
like 25 years ago, asked the question,
what if the car industry crashes?
What's going to happen to
the people who live there?
And so he managed, it was really,
I mean, and this is really how the
regional fund started to be created.
He managed to convince the
politician to invest in filmmaking.
They build a studio where Las
Ventrilles is mainly shooting.
I don't know.
I don't remember the name of the studio.
They create a special branch at the
university for our directing and other
profession in the in the film business
and they start to give subsidies
out a lot of subsidies and then.
It boomed because we
are very cheap people.
We go where the money is, huh?
So a lot of people, Lars von Trier
went to shoot there, open a production
company there, but a lot of other, a
lot of other films were made there.
And when Saab actually crashed, they
of course failed it, but not as much
as if there was no alternative to it.
So that's what the industry part of our
job it's so that's why we also very we can
make policy change either because of the
content and I'll give you another example
if you'd want about that, or because of
the sheer manpower we use on making films.
We do make a difference.
And, and it's culture.
Also to one of the thing I want
to mention regarding Europe.
You're right.
There is European money.
The European money is basically linked
to the creation of the European Union,
which was set up after World War
Two to make sure that we will never
fight each other again and oblige us
somehow to collaborate with each other.
So besides the national funding,
you have the European funding.
European funding is only.
given if you are co producing, that's
a term, with other European countries.
So like, for example, if I have a film
where the basement is in Belgium, but
I'm going to go to shoot in Slovenia
because I need mountains and then going
to go to Spain because I need beach
and it can be anywhere in Europe, the
fact that I'm working with another two
European countries, or even in Europe, so.
Only one allows me to go to
super funding, European funding.
And this is really stems from that time
after World War II, when, you know, they
needed to find Schumann and the rest
of them needed to find a solution for
the European not to fight each other.
So, so far it's still holding a little
bit, but that allowed us, that's how
we start then to co produce with other
country, discover other way of telling
stories, discovering new talent,
discovering other way of functioning
and getting to know each other better.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
So, I mean, something I was going to
ask you was, you know, you said you're
looking back on your younger self saying,
well, I wanted to change the world.
And I, you know, I was.
Worried about social injustice, and I was
going to say, okay, well, how did films
like Thomas in Love and Couch in New York
and so on look at that, but it's quite
interesting to look at it through this
lens now later to say, and I do know that
you have, obviously, and still do make
films that do address social injustice,
and we'll talk about that in a minute,
but it's something which might, would not
have occurred to me until you made this
point just now, for example, this story
in South Sweden where someone says, look,
what happens if This industry crashes.
This is the only thing we've got some
farsighted person persuades government
to invest down there in an industry
that hasn't really yet happened.
They invest the car industry does indeed
crash and they've got something and where
the note I made here was policy change.
I think you're right that the, the
influence that movies have, the only
thing I think that's, that's ever
exceeded it, which is now beginning
to exceed it is, of course, computer
gaming and that, of course, is now
marrying perhaps an unholy alliance, but
nonetheless, marrying the movie industry.
Yeah,
Diana Elbaum: I'm going to have
to tell you, it's not only the
impact of the industry as an
industry, it's also the impact of.
When you have films like Rosetta, who
was a Pandora, the Belgian Pandora, in,
I can't remember when, 90s something,
the film was about a young woman not
being able to find, who dropped out
of the society, of, it was on the
margin of society, and had to endure...
Labor almost forced labor, no
pay harassment and so forth.
And it was a trend.
It started a trend.
It was a trend where the young
people coming on the market
without any skills socially.
I mean, literally here were overlooked.
There was no protection for them.
And after the film came out,
became the Rosetta law to protect.
the kids.
So this is the social impact.
You have that.
Absolutely.
And you have the beautiful example of
in Kenya of Rafiki was the first film
recently who spoke about homosexuality
was banned, but because he was taken in
the festival, because it was a revelation
of a voice from coming from Kenya on
LGBTQ issues of the sudden it opened.
Then it allowed the discussion on LGBTQ
rights in Kenya and in Africa as a whole,
but it starts, it's a trigger for more.
So you have the entertainment world,
like I did, Thomas in Love for me was
a social, totally political and social
film, because it had to do with somebody
who was neurodivergent, actually.
Yeah, yeah.
And nobody was like, everybody
was laughing, but literally.
When you have that, I mean, it is
about then what do we do with the
people in our society and he so
the world is invented around that.
But I think you have
the entertainment world.
And yes, I saw Barbie and I love it.
And I think it's still
quite political, actually.
But I think everything you see, you
can actually look at the political.
angle of it.
Some you might like and some you
might hate and that's totally okay.
And I think that's actually
what makes the world better.
But the fact is to go and see it and
decide which film you're going to
go and see and not being, not being
dictates by the algorithm and still
keep the curiosity about the film.
Yeah.
Let's go and see a Chinese film and let's
go and see you know, South African film
and let's go and see a Chilean film.
It's amazing how it connects.
Because we all live differently the same
Rupert Isaacson: things.
It's true.
And I think that's something
that's become more mainstream now.
I mean, for example, you know, if you
take a long haul airline flight some
years ago, the movies that would have
been offered would have just been
all new releases and some classics.
Now.
You know, even on something like
American Airlines, which is a
relatively conservative, uh, would
make relatively conservative offerings.
I fly back and forth to Texas
on American all the time.
And I, I noticed that just sometime
before COVID, they started doing
all this international cinema.
And I don't think they were doing it.
Particularly through a
social message motivation.
I think they were realizing that they
just had a lot of international passengers
who kind of wanted to see these films.
And suddenly you had all these movies
about issues in the Arabic world and
issues in India and issues in Thailand.
That you just, and even if only
a certain fraction of the, of
the passengers are watching them.
It's still a much greater group.
Than would have been in traditional
quote unquote, art house cinema.
Diana Elbaum: But it's whether
the cinema will take it.
That's another another
door to open or not.
I'd rather not because it's
very complex, but you're right.
Then I would, I did.
I know when I fly to Ethiopian airline,
wherever I go, I fly to Qatar airways.
Oh, I flew right now, a lot to Canada.
I've been enjoying seeing films that
I would never see anywhere else.
So it's not the best condition, of
course, because the headphones are awful.
But it's still it's still some way
to discover, instead of looking
again at an American film, or, you
know, something that you've heard of.
And just take the time, because
you're stuck in the airplane anyway.
But I would still.
Tell you try to, you know, the big screen
is a unique experience, but I just want
to address the second question you asked
me regarding how do you sell a film.
So basically the way it's structured is
that not everybody can do the good job.
Right.
So, The world of selling is a world apart.
So you basically there are a lot of
companies that are selling films.
And those, those, and they're actually
interesting enough have dedicated
person per region of the world.
So if somebody sells a film in Europe,
if you have a sales agent that they call
that sells film in Europe will not be able
to sell a film in Asia, because it's all
through connection and who do you know
and what kind of film work, what kind of
film didn't work in a specific region.
So when you go and shop, quote, unquote,
for a sales agent for your film, it
depends on the genre, whether it's kids
film, horror, romance you know, art house
and, you know, name, you know, action,
or you name all the genre of the films.
Do you would have dedicated
sales agent for either the genre?
And if it's more of a kind
of social drama, then.
They will tell you this, you know,
we can see it work here and there.
They will actually, they
know so well the market.
They have the pearls, they have, you
know, they have the pearls of the market.
They know exactly what sells where,
how, how much, and everything.
Those guys are, those guys, sorry.
those people, a master of
the world in knowing what's
happening and how does it work.
Of course for Art House Film, the
first step necessary to make it
happen is a A list, what we call
in our language, a A list festival.
So A list festival is, it's,
there are very few of them.
So you can, it's Busan in Korea,
it's Cannes Film Festival.
It's Venice Film Festival, San
Sebastian in Spain, Film Festival,
and there's probably a few others.
Interesting enough, none
of them in North America.
Not Sundance?
Sundance.
I'm not sure it's a list.
I'm not sure.
It's very specific.
It's a world classification.
But once you have your film in
competition or a sidebar competition
in those festival, the eyes of
the world are on those films.
So just to give you an
appreciation of how complex it is.
We have a film this year
in competition in Venice.
So it's upcoming in a month.
The film is called Green Border.
It's a Polish Belgian
French Czech co production.
It's based, it's a beautiful film by
veteran filmmaker Agnieszka Holland.
And when Alberto Barbera, the head of
the Venice Film Festival, announced the
lineup of this year, he actually mentioned
that he watched more than 5, 000 films.
And they are make, maybe taking for the
entire not only the competition, but
the sidebar, the special screenings,
and all that, they maybe take 80 films.
So, The level does, that's why
then all the eyes for the good or
the worse, because I had filming
the film festival in Cannes or in
competition, they should have never
get there because they get destroyed.
But all the eyes are focused on
those films and you know that
those films will have more sales.
Especially for the arthouse, again, I'm
not talking about Netflix films, and I'm
not talking about the Amazon films, and
I'm also little, not that much talking
about the American films, but for the
European and non European, because we're
not the only one in the world, there are
African, Asian, South American films.
Those, being able to be selected in one of
those festivals is essential for the film.
Rupert Isaacson: So, presumably, it
must be rather difficult to get your
film into one of these festivals.
How do you do that?
Diana Elbaum: Well, just make good films.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: How do you submit?
What's the submission process?
Gatekeepers.
How do you get past the
Diana Elbaum: gatekeepers?
Well, sales agent is
a gate, a sales agent.
At that gate.
Gatekeeper is the, the artistic director
of the festivals that are gatekeepers.
Mm-Hmm.
. It's really, I mean, I have
country example of amazing film
that were never in festivals.
Sometime they also miss.
I can think about a Belgian film was
called in English broke man, my,
my brain is, is is on the verge of
collapsing in French, it was called
Alabama Monroe, but it's not in French.
The original title is Broken Circle
Breakdown, a beautiful, beautiful film
that film went through the cracks.
Of every festival, but it was
an amazing sales agent, a German
sales agent called Match Factory.
And they managed to turn it
around in Berlin where they did,
it's a based on country music.
So they had the country music band coming
and then get people interested in it.
And of course, the director had
made a huge bus and can with
this previous film whose poster
was a lot of men naked on bikes.
And so they had the
men, naked men on bikes.
They're actually the actors riding
their bikes on the croisette.
So he was known for the first film.
So it was not like a new upcomer,
but that film wasn't selected in
any festival, not at least it became
afterwards, it became like a huge event.
So it's marketing slash.
Great concept.
Where should the film go?
That's what the sales agent do.
This film is good for this festival.
It's not good.
It's going to get killed in this festival
or it's too small for this festival.
So it's a whole continuous conversation
we have with this so important part
of getting a film to the market.
And it starts at script.
Usually you get your sales agent at the
script level and they will say yes or no,
but those that say yes, then they will
see the, the, the cut, the editing cut.
And then they will work with us, with
production director on the, on the
communication, the marketing, the
poster and where it's best placed.
Sales agent will
Rupert Isaacson: come in before
you've actually shot the movie
on the basis of the script.
Diana Elbaum: Well, yeah,
there are two reasons for that.
Once they used to be able, and
they still bring a lot of money,
they can bring private equity,
they can pre sell to territories.
Let's say I have a film my sales agent
loves, it's a great subject and then
we're going to go and pre sale to the
UK, and we're going to, we could pre
sale to the US, and that money will
Rupert Isaacson: When you say pre
sale, you're talking to distribution.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, sorry, to distributor.
And the pre sale notion is
that they buy on script.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: They don't
buy It's like a bit like a
publisher buying on a proposal.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
That I understand.
But then you'd
Diana Elbaum: have to package.
I mean, they just don't read
the script and say we want it.
They want to know who are the
actors, who's the, the cameraman.
You have to have
Rupert Isaacson: good actors
and a director attached.
Yeah, of
Diana Elbaum: course.
It's the packaging, what we
call the packaging of the film.
So this is an extremely important part
of the way the film circulates, and the
fact that you either see them on Netflix
when it's not an original, or Amazon or
Apple, and or you see it in the theater.
That's because behind that, before the
theater, there's a local distributor, but
the local distributor then gets in touch
with the sales agent to be able to get
the film and then this, hopefully, what
you hope for, is a bid war on the film.
How much are you going to,
how much are you going to pay?
That the money then goes back to the
investors originally and then to me.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
So, in terms of Getting all
of these people attached.
You've got, you've got to have your
director, you've got to have some actors
attached before we can go to the film.
It's interesting.
It comes back down.
Look at my notes.
It you said script where you began
at the beginning of this interview,
which is storytelling, right?
If the story is not sound.
If the script is not amazingly
compelling, then presumably these people
will not attach themselves, right?
So the script must be, at the end of
the day, the most important thing.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, it's
script and it's a vision.
How it will be made, and
it's an interesting question.
Yeah, it's a combination of, it's
an alignment of it's an alignment.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
It's the right script.
With the right director
and the right actors,
Rupert Isaacson: but without
the script, those, that director
and those actors, there's
Diana Elbaum: nothing.
Yeah.
The story does nothing.
So the,
Rupert Isaacson: so the, the, the
raw material is always, always the
Diana Elbaum: story.
Yeah.
And the raw material.
What's funny.
Maybe you're listening.
Listener will not know, but I'm
just going to tell the truth.
That is so weird for.
The entire world and you know it better
than I do referred is the fact that
the we always think about filming and
filming and the production of a film,
but the writing of a script takes years.
Yeah, absolutely.
And actually the shorter
periods in the whole process of
making a film is the shooting.
Yeah, because shooting is usually in
Europe is around 35 to 40 days for a film
could go to 60 of course it can go to
much, much higher number of days depending
on the film, but the post production
meaning the editing and the VFX and
the music and the sound and the putting
the film together, which is a lot of.
Technical steps after that can take, you
know, almost a year for more complex film
usually takes nine months, but the writing
of the script is something that can take
a long time and, and on average, when
you have an idea or you have, because I'm
not always starting on script, I'm also
either on a book, as you heard, and I'm
still doing that and and Or just an idea,
an article, a podcast now it, it, it can
take, you know, the average for a film
to be made in the right circumstances
is around four to five years.
So that's why when you're saying, you
know, making a few films at the same time
is because you have to make a living also.
And and so there's no other option
for producer and which also shows the
extremely complex work of directors.
Because they're only attached to maybe one
or two films or one TV series and a film.
So, it, the process is
extremely long to get from start
Rupert Isaacson: to finish.
So how do you get paid as a producer?
If, if everything is speculative and it's
going to take four to five years from
conception to execution, and that's before
you've even sold the thing, how on earth
can you pay the rent in the meantime?
So,
Diana Elbaum: there's, there's a
few, there's, I mean, depending
on where you are in your career.
So, there's a few a few things.
As I mentioned, they
were, we are in Europe.
So there's the subsidy that allows you
to get some money for the development.
What we call the development is
actually the process of writing.
Usually that money goes to the director
actually, and never to the producer,
which is historically like that.
And that's the way it is.
Then you can find partners.
To partner with and, and you can get
private equity for the development.
It's rare, but you can still get it if
somebody really believes into the story.
But basically the way producers make a
living mainly is actually by filming.
So you put together a budget.
Once you have a script,
you have to budget it.
So you put together a budget.
How many days of shooting, how many
extras, how many location, where
is it going to be shot, et cetera.
Once you have the budget, usually
producer keep, you know, are
budgeting themselves at around 17
percent of the cost of the film.
The 17 percent are divided and
it's very regulated, so we can't
really, Germany will be much less.
Germany would be 10%,
France is, if I'm, 12%.
It's for a country, it's a very regulated
because we're working with public funding.
So it's very regulated.
So the 17 percent is 10 percent for
producer, which means production
company is 7 percent for overheads.
Like, you know, the back office,
my accountant, my financial
director, you know, my assistant
are all paid out of that.
More often than not, you will
hear a lot of European producers
say, well, I'll never get that.
Of course you never, because you're never
sure you're going to get the amount,
total amount of the budget you need.
So more often than not, they
reinvest virtually that went
into the finance of the film.
So once you finance the film, so
you have a lot of partners, so it's
like a cake and you divide your cake
and everybody get a share according
to what they put except exception.
The exception is private equity,
which kind of serve itself before and
a little more than everybody else.
You have to make sure you still have
some crumbs left at the end of the day.
And then and then the film goes out.
And the film is sold.
So the money comes back
to you on that level.
Now, the fact that I'm making, I've
made a lot of films, there's still
money on, on, on coming, incoming money
from all the films, not all of them,
but a lot of films that I've made.
So after a few years and starting to
have what we call a slate of films
you start to generate your film, start
to generate money that come back to
you and then you reinvest those film,
you reinvest that money in further
project in buying IP and all that.
So the equilibrium
Rupert Isaacson: intellectual property.
I don't
Diana Elbaum: know.
Right.
Yeah.
So the, the equilibrium is really
to make sure that you pay your rent.
And also when the company grows,
make sure that you pay your staff.
Yeah.
So your business model is changing,
obviously, because it's not anymore.
One person is maybe two, three
at times, much more than that.
My latest company, we were 12.
So the pressure it puts on you to
bring bigger project, to make more
margin, to make sure that they're
more in tune with what the market
wants, shifts your way of looking at
the stories you're going to develop.
You cannot go to the first.
Like I've done so many times and
there are still, you know, my,
unfortunately for a lot of people, but
fortunately for me and unfortunately
for whatever reason, but you can
understand what I'm getting at.
I'm still going to go after
the first thing from Peru.
Where I'm still going to go because
those are the stories that I love, but
I have to compensate it with comedies.
I really love comedies.
So I'm doing, and comedies, I'm not even
looking at telling them around the world.
Comedies don't sell well, but they do
bring audience in my home, in my country.
So I've done a lot of comedies,
which are not artists, but I
think comedy is another, another
way of being, of telling stories.
And I really love that.
But I, so I, I really juggle.
Between what's, where is my heart?
Where is my pocket?
And that's how you build basically
the film you're going to go after.
It's a business sense.
It's just business modeling.
It's right.
And when
Rupert Isaacson: you say that the
films generate income after they be
made, presumably that's because rights
in different areas of the world get
sold rights to new online streaming
things, rights to television rights.
Okay.
Airlines.
Right.
Right.
So, and that these things get sold
gradually over some years after the
initial film distribution in, for say,
cinema or whatever has been sold, right?
So that you can, you can keep
selling that film to different
areas for a decade or more.
Yeah, well,
Diana Elbaum: the lifespan of a film,
unless it's a super master film or a
cult film, becomes a cult film, or is
a winner of those A list festivals,
Golden Bear, Pandora you know, or A
Lion in Venice the lifespan on the
market is maybe two to three years.
Yeah.
So I have a few that I've outlived that
because they became cults without, you
know, you're not making a cult film.
It's the audience who decide it's cult.
But yeah, otherwise, so it's, it's really
the balancing act that it's so complex
in this world that for any entrepreneur,
but especially in our world, balancing
act between Keep on being keep on doing
the things that you're good at and
defending voices that might not have
an outlet and keep on making films
that allow you to keep on doing that.
So it's always been oscillating
between the two as far as I'm concerned
and the films I've made always.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, so, we left
you last in the year 2000 with
this film, A Couch in New York,
which was a commercial break.
But as you said, also, oddly enough,
a film about neurodivergence.
No, that was Thomas in Love.
That was Thomas in Love, yes.
Well, right, although I imagine that the
Couch in New York character too, you're
dealing with this idea of the, you know,
the crusty, fusty person who's, you know,
not, lucky in love, da da da da da, which
these days we probably call that person
perhaps Asperger's or, you know, somewhere
on the autism spectrum, because back then
we weren't using that sort of language.
You, you said yes, you know, every,
every film becomes a political act
to some degree because of the way it
affects how people look at social things
that can affect policy, for example,
like the story you told in South
Sweden when Saab collapsed and so on.
Yeah, I do know that activism
is dear to your heart.
And you mentioned a little bit earlier
that you've been back and forthing to
Canada, and you've also been making
other films in other parts of the world
that have to do with social issues.
So, where does it go for
you after Thomas in Love?
And,
Diana Elbaum: so I'm making a lot of film
and I'm, I'm giving a try documentaries.
I'm not very good at it.
I think I have too much perversion
for I know really wrong term.
I think I, I think I have a hard time.
I just want to change the world.
So documentary is too much
in my face, but I love them.
Absolutely.
And I'm like, You know, we had those
discussion before that just amazing
and I just don't get to feel for it.
I don't think I'm the right
person for documentaries and
believe you me every two minutes.
I have an idea for documentary.
So anyway, so I'm trying that.
I'm doing a lot of co production with
France and those are the reverse where
French people won the Belgian money.
So I'm like working like a mad person.
I have,
At the end of the 90s, I have
a personal issue, health issue, that
I have to stop for two years, not
sure I'm going to be able to get back.
And that was quite a traumatic
time personally, so I had to take
like a year break around 96, 97.
It lasted actually more than that.
Sorry.
It's around 97 to 99 of
not being able to work.
My parents dying one
after 10 months apart.
And also my decision that I was
still quite young, I have to
say, and the decision that maybe
the party was a little over.
of like going right and left, taking
a plane here, going there, doing
this, going to festival, you know.
And but it wasn't true.
That's what I thought at the time.
And so I decided that maybe I had
another I had to consider my life.
So it was a really two
year, I had to break down.
It wasn't a breakdown.
That was a physical stop.
I couldn't work, but it wasn't,
you know, it was physical.
It wasn't anything mental or, you
know, kind of a burnout or whatever.
Not that.
Then I had another break 10
years after we might get into it.
But and then I've decided
my life was maybe not.
I was only centered about those
things that I was making all
those films that I was making.
And I decided then that I would
go and adopt my first child.
So that was a big, big, big,
and I was still working.
I went back to work and, but it gives you
another kind for anybody, anybody who's
a parent knows when a child comes, how
much energy gives you to do even more
Rupert Isaacson: wonderful.
I have no idea what you mean, Diana.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah.
It's just like, you know, this energy.
And then I, I got another amazing, um,
I'm not really sure I'm on timeline, but
I think it was around those same time
that I was waiting at the taxi station
in Brussels, at the train station, and
it was pouring rain, as it usually is.
And there was this tour that was
putting people in taxis, you know,
because otherwise people would go
crazy and start to fight each other.
And that person was so amazingly funny.
It was just, it was just sunshine
and I just couldn't figure out
how somebody could be doing
that job and be really funny.
So we engaged in the discussion and I kept
on saying to people, no, take that taxi.
It's fine.
And I was talking to him and he was
like, yeah, I do that, you know,
but I really want to get into films.
And it just started like that.
And he became my biggest hit ever.
It was a young who he also
became a big director.
Afterwards, we did one
film, two films together.
And he was the, a Belgian
Moroccan young kid.
And...
So I, I said to him, well, listen,
you know, maybe it's our lucky break
for you and I, if you want, we can
keep on having this discussion.
He took me, he took him a few months
to call me back and he came with
a comedy called the Barons and the
Barons, like Kingdom Belgium, then
the Barons, you know, you have Duke.
I don't
Rupert Isaacson: know how it's called.
Yeah.
Barons.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was and it was the first time
I also had this weirdly enough with
all my travel and all my storytelling
from everybody around the world, they
went to China, South Africa, whatever.
All of a sudden I realized that there
is a whole community in Belgium, at
least in Brussels, of Belgian, from
Moroccan descent, that had no voice.
And that was a beautiful moment because
we laughed a lot and we cried a lot and it
was a massive hit, massive, massive hit.
Everybody went around and I loved
it because, you know, when you
say, how do you sell the film?
How do you finance the film?
That was my best.
ever financing scheme, not because people
wanted it because nobody wanted it.
So I had to find the resources to
play against the machine somehow.
And to have all those executive
again, the same one with suits.
And I come with this project about
the Moroccan community in Brussels.
And they were like, yeah,
Well, no, no thanks.
And I was, so I had to switch.
I had to understand that
I had to outsmart them.
And I really did it.
And we did it together.
And it was just amazing how it went.
Because that film, being a comedy, went
from the cultural pages of the newspaper
into the society page of the newspaper.
And that's exactly what you want.
That's why we call it the crossover.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: By the way, I've
just, I've just, I've just wikied
it for the listeners, the Barons.
This sounds great.
But it does sound like it must've
been a hard sell commercially.
In Brussels three friends lead
a life of pleasant apathy.
They spend their days loafing around in
unhurried torpor, bantering with each
other and adhering to the theory that
the fewer steps one takes, the richer
one's interior, one's interior life.
But, as is so often the case, when real
life crashes unpleasantly into their dream
world, Hassan, Aziz, and Munir are forced
to deal with life, love, and the future.
This must have been...
I
Diana Elbaum: fired the person who
wrote that, but no, basically...
And that wasn't you?
But you know, basically what it was, it's
like the cliché assumption when you see
three Moroccan kids standing on the wall,
they are thieves, except they're not.
Just society hasn't
opened the door to them.
So the only job they can get is
bus driver in the neighborhood.
And those guys have other,
other, other dreams.
So that's exactly how the pitch
went for the, for the financing.
Because the pitch was, yeah, it's
a first film about, you know, the
young Moroccans that are done.
The people were like,
not even listening to me.
And you don't even need to,
they don't need to say anything.
I saw the language.
But when I came with a pitch and
say, so what do you say when you see
five Moroccans in a brand new BMW?
100 percent of the
answers were it's stolen.
And I was, then my pitch was like
anybody, any five people can buy any car.
The problem with our film is that there
are six and there's only five seats.
It had nothing to do with the story,
but then I triggered their attention and
that's how we started financing the film.
And it's a really, really funny film.
It's extremely funny, but
it made a whole change.
And what was delighted, delighting
is that, All of a sudden, that
neighborhood who unfortunately got a
worse reputation during the attack,
which is Molenbeek, it's right next to
me where I'm sitting right now, who was
always where the Moroccan families, is
being gentrified now, unfortunately,
also for that city, but where the
Moroccan families were, was unknown.
It was like, don't go there,
you're going to get killed.
You know, and we change, we put a
spotlight on it and say, no, the normal
people having normal family life and
they just, and they just, you know,
they, they not giving the opportunity.
There was no representation in the
newspaper, in politics, in nowhere.
of the Maroccan community then.
And it did make the change.
So I'm very proud of that one.
And you see, you make
change with comedies.
I'm a really firm believer in that.
Absolutely.
Because it's drama and you don't
Rupert Isaacson: need tears.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Because what, what is humor, but
perspective humor allows you to see
a situation from the outside and
to to put your prejudices aside.
And it bonds people for sure.
You know, the, the right joke
cracked at the right moment.
wE'll always relieve tension.
You know, it's, it's, I agree with you a
Diana Elbaum: whole
heartedly to make people cry.
It's much harder to make them love, but
I saw beautiful view as, you know, as I
was saying with the couch in New York,
I was going to every, every screening,
which I do actually for all my films.
And I saw.
Beautiful scene in theater and that's why
I, you know, I'm a firm believer that the
collective experience of seeing films with
other people is essential, is essential.
Seeing your film on your phone is fine,
seeing the film in a plane is fine,
seeing a film on Netflix is fine, but
you will never replace that experience.
Never.
And if you were to go only twice a
year to the cinema, it's worth it.
And I saw an amazing scene during
those screenings where like older.
White people would come and were like,
the theater was full of like Moroccan kids
because that was the film for them also.
The crossover was that at the end of the
screening, I saw this old woman, like
just embracing the young guy next to
him, next to her and saying, you know,
I'm so sorry, we don't know who you are.
So this is unbeatable.
This is worth like all the
hardship and the hurt and the
craziness of the business.
It is worth that.
Really, frankly, I'm a
firm believer in that.
So, yeah, and so that even, like,
then launched even more the company.
I mean, that we became the
company was just, like, booming.
There was, like, everyday calls to make
more films, co production, whatever.
And so I enjoyed that,
that moment till till 2000.
I think it was...
My son was then nine, so it must
have been 2007, eight, where my best
friend lost her daughter to leukemia.
And I remember the eulogy at the church.
Well, she was in the film
business, my friend, or she
still is in the film business.
And a very famous director was the
godfather of her daughter, Jacob
Vandermal, who's an amazing person.
And he gave a eulogy and I came
out of there completely shaken.
The eulogy was basically of all the
things we could have done with you.
All the, all the dreams
we could have dreamt.
And I knew I was really tired by then
because we had so much work and the kids
that I had, I adopted my daughter also.
And I realized I just
didn't have the time.
And I think to recognize those moments
where it's not working for you, where
everything becomes a burden, where
you're not happy with what you do.
And you probably do a little trap
because you're Machine, endless
machine of producing and producing.
I had a partner then partner at work
and I called him from the car and
I say, I'm going to take a break
and he's going to last a year.
And and that was June.
And I left, I left for another year.
I should have maybe, but I
left for nine months and I went
around the world with my kids.
Just forgot everything.
And I say to everybody.
I am not reachable.
So I took my two kids and we went.
Yeah, beautiful trip.
We went from Europe to Los Angeles
to Tahiti to Cook Island, New
Zealand, Australia, and we finished
in South Africa and we toured.
We just went into the nature
barefoot no, like almost no luggage.
And just, and just took the time
to hug trees and be together.
The kids were small.
It was really crazy.
But but I just did it.
I knew I needed to refill myself.
Emotionally, I needed
to connect with my kids.
And I needed to not go crazy
because I really felt the rabbit
hole coming really, really fast.
And I couldn't do it anymore.
And then when I came back, my partner
during that time actually produced a film
that I was involved with and he took over
and I immediately, it's kind of funny.
I mean, it's funny for me, might
not be funny for anyone, but I went
from barefoot to high heel to go the
red carpet in Berlin because we're
in competition and unannounced.
And I plunge right back into it, but
those he had to serve eight months
of not working, not thinking I didn't
read any book, didn't enter any mail.
It was early anyway, it was complicated
with the mails, like across the world.
And the phone was barely whatever,
you know, it was pre everything's
fast was just, I think the best
thing I did for myself and we need.
And I, I.
I'm advising that because I'm teaching
now a lot and I'm advising not to take
a break, but really the mental health
issues into the work environment,
at least in the industry has been
overlooked for so many, many years.
And now it's becoming, of course,
front page of, you know, everyone,
we do need to take care of ourselves.
And this work can just
absorb you a hundred percent.
Forget who you are.
It's not, it's worth it.
Obviously not worth it.
Rupert Isaacson: But I
think it's cyclical, yeah.
I mean, I think one is required
to sometimes be an absolute
slave and servant of one's work.
And then one is required
sometimes to break from it.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, but the world
doesn't allow you to do that, you know,
so you have to do it for yourself.
Exactly.
You're gonna say, oh, no, you know
what, you are, you know, I mean, some
countries do that and in the teaching
profession, especially go and take
a sabbatical and we'll pay for it.
Yeah.
But otherwise, no, I mean.
Sure.
Again, I find myself so
privileged every level of my life.
Not only on the decision, I mean, on
the decision taking on the freedom
I have to do and not to do to,
of course, it comes with a lot of
other things, but on these, those
essentials, I feel myself so privileged
Rupert Isaacson: the self determination.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, and I think, I
don't think, I think, yeah, I, it's,
I wish I could it's really what I'm
trying to stress out to the younger
professional coming to the market.
Is recognized when it doesn't work.
It recognized when you're hurting and
it's not a given it's definitely, and
depends who you are in which part of
the world, which color of skin you have.
Which believe you have, it's
much harder for a lot of people.
So, yeah, that's, that's that's the,
the, the, the, like, and so that's what
I've been doing from that time I started
to teach a lot, because I think it's...
How did the teaching
Rupert Isaacson: begin for you?
Well,
Diana Elbaum: it became back
then, they just called me and
say, oh, would you like to train?
And I was like, yeah, I
can try, see how it works.
And I called you.
So this same workshop I did remember
in the 93 or something like that,
your European entrepreneur of Europe.
I've heard.
So they called me and say, well, we're
looking for a new, what they call
group leader or expert or whatever.
And it's basically
taking a group selected.
They select a group of 15 producer.
It's actually 50.
It's divided in four groups and
you trade them through a one year.
And you meet three times during that
one year, and they have a lot of
work to do in between on the project
on the companies and everything.
So I really started in 2007 or
8 or 9 around that period when I
came back, I think, and I just.
Like, as much as I love making films,
I love that equally, and I'm so,
again, privileged to be able to do it.
And still today, so I've been doing
training in Europe, and I've been doing
training in the Caribbean, and I've
trained And some universities like
Sorbonne master and stuff like that.
But those, but the one I'm training
are professional, they're not
university level, they already
professional in the business.
And and lately I started during COVID,
I started, a great program called
Daba, which is, is is from South Africa
and is training African producer.
And, and, and then lately for
the past, also during COVID, I
started the Canadian program.
So there and the main program
called access for BIPOC producer,
black indigenous people of color.
And, and this is like a new revelation
for me of being less Eurocentric.
And being non American and just, um,
see how, um, those either the BIPOC
producer in Canada or the African
producer, we can build with them.
They are the new generation, new
business models that they don't
depend either on what a lot of them
call the colony, the colony money.
Or like the guilt money from the
European countries towards, you
know, African or Canadian films.
And on the other hand, how the
Canadian producer who are from the
Black, Indigenous and people of color
communities can get their voices heard
when it's so complex to live anyway, as.
Those communities.
And so
Rupert Isaacson: what are they getting
their financing from then, if not from
the old colonial funding mechanisms.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, well, I'm, I'm
a big fighter to help them raise
within themselves and within their
own community political awareness
that will allow that policy changes.
And that allows them country to recognize
what I was saying earlier, what we were
talking earlier regarding Europe and
how much does it, how much work does it
bring, how much recognition does it bring
the, the side effects of the industry
and to really see themselves as part of
an industry and not just one film at a
time, see themselves as as entrepreneur.
And so there are a lot of other ways.
There is a lot of charities.
Of course, and foundation,
sorry, the charity term strike
it foundation in Africa.
I mean, for sure in Africa, a lot
of foundation are around to actually
Rupert Isaacson: those foundations
not effectively colonial,
Diana Elbaum: not especially, but
there's a Very big industry happening.
One of the thing we need to
recognize of this Eurocentric.
Sometimes people forget is that
the African average population and
Indian, for example, also, but also
the South American one, at least
Africa and India is 70 percent of
the population is below 30 years old.
So it's huge markets.
It's a huge market and still for
independent films, they're looking
at co production with Europe.
So yes, do take the money, but also
try build another system because
you are sitting on the biggest
growing market in the world.
And it's not, and it's culture.
It's not uranium and it's not cobalt.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
You don't have to chop down a
forest or dig it out of the ground
or exactly children to go into
a hole in the ground to make it.
Yeah.
Diana Elbaum: And those, so this is really
essential for me to, with the knowledge
I have, with all the mistakes and the
failures I've had, because we're speaking
about, you know, I won't take about all
those, but those are learning curves, of
course, is fail, fail again, fail better.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Well, the first film you
tried to make didn't get made
Diana Elbaum: with all my All my
experience and my easier connection.
I'm just telling them that the only
difference between them and me is
I get a no faster on the film, you
know, at my age and the experience,
the no, a fast no is like a savior of
the day because then, you know, you're
not like, like I did with my first.
Book that I've never made being a nail you
know, a nail that doesn't enter the wall.
I know how the wall is made now.
And so it's just much easier.
And when the no final no
comes, I also recognize it.
I'm not, you know, suicidal to that part.
But in terms of that.
So this, this part of the this.
The thing that I'm doing on
training is essential for my health.
I think mental health is also essential
for, to just keep the, keep, keep the
understanding what the new generation,
how do they look at what we do?
Where do you know, how do
they express those stories?
How do they try to bend to the
conventional or to the data today
and tell them there's another way?
Or at least I'm not telling them
and there's another way I make them.
I just open a little bit another door
to make the thing and have experience
with them another way because of the
problem is, you know, is the data we
are all, you know, know the product of.
And, and it's really easily you can
fall into the trap of saying, Oh,
well, you know, we've been told by
this streamer that that we need to
go on murder mysteries, but yeah,
maybe, but, you know, maybe not.
maybe another voice
will do another circuit.
So it's, it's, it's the pressure
on the younger producers and not
only producers because of the sales
agent and distribution and the whole
spectrum of the profession within
the film industry is extremely,
extremely complex to navigate today.
It's really complex because you get
information was not an information data.
It's just in the eye of someone
and you actually don't know
because it's not shared.
So you, you could be told
that's what the audience wants.
No, I kind of disagree with that.
And but you know, I'm a free spirit.
So what are you working on now?
So I'm working on can I mention it?
I'm working on your film on your
book, and we know how long that's
been when we say five years, we
actually can celebrate a 10 year.
So, yeah, I'm trying to adapt
rapper's book, the horse bug,
which I fell in love with.
Because I was horseback riding
then and totally fell in love with
and it's been a long journey and
I'm not giving up on this one.
This is one even with, because we
never get a no, we just get bad luck.
And so we're working actually actively on
that hoping to, hoping to make it one day.
I'm not going to give a date, but this is.
If there is less than to
do, I will do that one.
I'm working, I just finished
a shoot of young adult film.
It's the first one I do.
It's not even young adult.
It's a teen film about bullying.
And it's fantastic.
It's, it's a fantastic story.
About how ghost, who's the girl who's
just committed suicide, we look at how
she, how she ended up there and we're
tackling the notion of we're tackling
the notion of this anonymous bullying
that goes on with a social network.
It's a very beautiful, very strong.
It's based.
What's the name of the film?
It's called.
Okay.
We, that's a working title is
Tecate, which in French is the short.
For tanquette and
tanquette is don't worry.
So when a teenager starts to tell
you, don't worry, you actually
have to start to really worry
because the disconnect between
parents and teenager is so immense.
They will never let you in their world and
their world is really brutal and violent.
And so we wanted to tackle
that because it's an epidemic.
And
Rupert Isaacson: is that based on
a, on a book or is that just based
Diana Elbaum: on a book that's
very you know, it's based, it's
based on the research of a teacher.
She wrote a book, but it's
loosely based on that.
And it's mainly based on, I think, more
than 300 interviews we had with teenagers.
And the reality, uh, and it stems from
the fact that the director whose director
I've done, now it's the third film we do
together you know, had, she's well off
and she's quite bourgeois environment
with really good, a kind of a great
students, pretty, healthy, white.
Whatever, all the cliche of the
bourgeoisie her daughter was being bullied
and she almost realized it too late.
And so, you know, the, we convey the
idea of bullying is only the others.
We convey the idea of bullying
is like the fatter or the one
that has glasses or the whatever.
It's everywhere.
It's in every school.
It's on.
Every walk of life and and so
she decided those we've done only
comedies, the two previous film
we've decided to do this one.
It's been a hard sell.
I have to say very hard
sell on the market.
Nobody wants to touch it, but
we've decided we managed to get
enough money to be able to do it.
Not exactly the way we wanted,
but enough to do a good film.
When do you think it'll be out?
wEll, we just finished shooting
last week, so, you know, it was
supposed to, we're going to finish
it around May or June next year.
And it's French language?
Yeah.
Okay.
It's French language.
I have to find an English title, so if
your listeners have an idea, welcome.
Rupert Isaacson: Don't worry, mom.
Yeah.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah.
So I'm doing that.
We're starting to shoot a TV show, Ha Ha
Ha, Murder Mystery TV show in two weeks.
So that's a big project because
it's actually my first TV show.
It's it's set in the
nineties, so it's complex.
Of course, there's not enough money
because we also facing the hike
of the increase, the increase,
sorry, of the cost of living.
But the budget are from two years ago.
So they don't really care about that.
And and so we have to deal with that.
And it's it's a cross of for
those who saw it Little Fire
Everywhere meets Mare of Easttown.
It's it's woman based,
it's woman centered, it's a
woman director, a woman DOP.
It's based on the, on true,
it stems from true events that
happened in Belgium in the 90s.
Which at the same time, so the end
of the industrial era of the steel
industry and then the serial killer
and child molester and horror person.
And there was a war of police here,
so I'm not going to get into it.
It's quite complex, but it's
extremely fascinating around
the classes, the working class,
the bourgeois, ruling families.
About the Italian immigration and
that's another yet subject about,
you know, the makeup of Belgium
and war of police that then doesn't
get any results and awful series of
killers are being let loose because.
just ego, political, police ego.
Anyway, so we're shooting that
one till the end of the year.
That's going to be for
a delivery also in June.
And then I have a few other projects
in the, in development right now.
My first genre film was a survival
film, um, which also woman, kind of
a woman's story around motherhood.
But it's totally genre is
misery meets into the wild.
So that's another one that I'm
financing right now and we are
casting and we are wrecking.
So it's set in the mountains.
So we've been to beautiful place like
that's the other front part of my job.
We've been wrecking in Alto Adige
in so Northern Italy to Slovenia.
It's really fun.
And yeah.
Then quite a few others
that are baby level.
So just a few ideas, another TV series,
and then another book that I've just
option and from a Belgian writer and
yeah, and then a lot of him coming
from, I have project from Canada.
We have project from Italy.
We have project from Germany coming.
So there's a lot on the slate, but they're
all different stages of development or.
Rupert Isaacson: Just quickly
how does a book option work?
People talk about optioning.
This is one of these,
these, these terms you hear.
As a layman, if you're listening
how does, what does, what does a
book option mean in the film world?
So
Diana Elbaum: the way it works with
editor, book editors in the film world.
Is that before pre pre publishing
of a book, the editors, all of
them have what they call the
right audio visual department.
So when you get to know to be known in the
realm of book publishing or management you
do get a preview of the upcoming books.
So of course, the a lot of them are
snatched up by the American studios.
And you never get access to them, but I'm
working mainly with European publishers
or non American because I can't even get
to Penguin Random and the rest of them.
I mean, it's just like, it's like
so many readers in the studios.
There's no way you can get to a book fast.
On that level and also on the money level.
So what happens is that if a book is
of interest, then I make an offer.
And because we never know how difficult
or not difficult a book is, and I
can give you a few examples you take
an option to produce a film based on
the book for a year, two years, three
years, five years, and it has a price.
Rupert Isaacson: And the option means
that you, your production company
has the right to go out and try to
raise the funds to get the film made.
And if, if the publisher.
And the author say, okay, and
they signed that option with you.
They can't go out to another film producer
over there and say, Ooh, well, wait, let's
play one's off against each other or so.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, they can't and
they can't go to another language.
Okay.
If I read a book in French, if it's
translated after and so on, the
American market and somebody wants
it, I have a hold back period.
They cannot, no film can be, if the film
is made at the end of the day, no film
can be made after two, three, four years
of the, the release of the first film.
Okay.
So there's a hold back period for
further release in different languages.
So it's quite complex, the book the, it's,
very highly competitive market because
everybody's looking at what you mentioned
earlier on intellectual property is really
the worth also of a production company.
I option in my life.
Not only your book, but also
amazing, uh, content like Anne
Frank diary, diaries, or I also
Rupert Isaacson: optioned
the diaries of Anne Frank.
Yeah.
But how did you, have those not been
made and taken up by American companies?
Diana Elbaum: No, it
was actually in Israel.
It was actually European.
That would, yeah, that was European.
So you also have to understand that
all the publishers or the audiovisual
rights representative of the product
publisher every single market,
those people are really accessible.
So, you know, you go, you, you usually
receive pre market, you receive like a
whole, all those books are coming out.
And then you also receive all
those books have not been optioned.
And it goes from, you know, real life, you
know, like your book, like, a biography
or real life event, it goes to children
literature, you know, to, and then all
the rest of the genre we know and it's
extremely you know, if you see like The
Lost Daughter, for example, it was a huge,
huge IP because the author was, Huge.
And it was, there was a lot
of pressure on that one.
So the fact that the the producer
managed to get that as independent
producer in another studio.
So there's a lot of pressure
when books come out of there
are, you know, are announced.
I Also go back to old.
I have a lot of friends that are I
don't know how to say that in English.
I have a lot of friends
that are librarians.
So I also have dinner with them like
once every two, twice a year and
say, I want only literature from,
you know, American literature for
the seventies has not been option.
So, you know, then the rights and the
price is really low because if it hasn't
been option, probably has returned back.
I mean, that they have no value,
almost less value, a very, you
know, books that are coming out
are super sellers are unbuyable.
Cause it's so much money to, to option
and they won't give it unless you have
the whole package already figure out.
So it's mainly goes to the American in
the studios or big French companies.
The so the, another example of a
book was extremely hard to get.
And we managed to get, and we did
a film about it was a coming book.
It was a tiny Gucci, um, Again, I
have to remember the English title.
Stanley Goucher is the
father of the manga.
He passed, unfortunately.
The father of manga, okay.
Yeah, he's the father of the manga.
He's like above and beyond
every manga writers.
Give us his name again.
Tani Gushi.
Tani Gushi.
Beautiful writer, beautiful stories.
Rupert Isaacson: Down my wiki rabbit
hole as you speak, keep going.
Diana Elbaum: And so that was a
lot of pressure because the book
was very successful in France.
And not only in France, around the world,
but also the name as a writer was massive
and we really had to get or act together
to be able to get the the, the only
chance I had on that one was the fact
that the publisher was in non Japanese.
So the official publisher outside of
Japan was the Belgian publishing company.
And I knew very well the director
of the audiovisual rights.
And I went to eat with her and I
said, we have, I have to do this book.
I have to do this.
And so she gave it to me.
Well, not only because I'm nice and a
beautiful and friendly and I know good
restaurants, but I mean, it was not
an easy transaction, but we got it.
And yeah, so there is a lot of
pressure on that, but it's obvious,
you know, if, and, and funnily enough,
it's not because a good is a book
is good to film is going to be good.
Absolutely.
Usually what there is this one spark
in a book that you say, yeah, we need
to do this, but it's not always a book.
It's just a one spark.
Mm hmm.
Especially with adaptation of comic book.
Which,
Rupert Isaacson: which is the comic book
that you, you're, you've adapted by?
It's
Diana Elbaum: Cartier Lointain in French.
And again, for the life of
me, I will not remember.
Rupert Isaacson: His bibliography here.
Well, Cartier obviously means
like a quarter of a, of a
town, faraway neighborhood.
Okay.
Diana Elbaum: Gosh.
In Japanese it's Aruka Namashi.
Rupert Isaacson: Do you happen to know
when it came out because he's, he's,
Diana Elbaum: I think it's okay.
The story is set in 1998.
And let me go, I'll also go to wiki
because hold on, it was published in
1998 in Japan and then was translated in
2002 and three came back out in France.
Rupert Isaacson: I see it here.
A distant neighborhood, a distant
Diana Elbaum: neighborhood.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Haruka, Haruka Namachi,
a distant neighborhood.
We
Diana Elbaum: had the huge
pleasure, immense pleasure of Mr.
Taniguchi coming to the set.
We were shooting in the Alps, the border
of Switzerland, and he came to the set and
that was just amazing with his wife and it
was just beautiful, beautiful, middle aged
Rupert Isaacson: salaryman.
Hiroshi Nakahara accidentally takes
a train ride back to his old hometown
to visit his mother's grave, then
for reasons he cannot explain...
Hiroshi is transported over 30 years
into the past, reacquainting himself with
the family he's lost and the individual
memories he has since forgotten.
Good sounds, good esoteric Japanese stuff.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, I mean it's, I
think it's everybody's wild dream
to sometime revisit unfinished
story, unfinished business.
Absolutely,
Rupert Isaacson: right,
right the wrongs and heal.
Must be a story of healing.
sO, there's a couple of moral
takeaways I'm taking from this as
we head towards the end of this
really fascinating conversation.
One is, always talk to strangers.
Always.
You
Diana Elbaum: wouldn't, you
know why Rupert, you know why
I always talk to strangers.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because we're always told not to.
And it's really interesting.
Diana Elbaum: I wasn't going that way.
But
Rupert Isaacson: we are, we are told
not to, we are told to be reserved.
We are told not to put ourselves forward.
We're told not to be mouthy.
We're told not to be curious.
And you're, you're saying
this high school teacher.
The conversations with that person,
then, you know, a bar in, in Israel at
a certain period of your life, and then
this conversation with the, this amazing
young man who is somehow managing to
bring grace into the stressful situation
in a taxi rank, who then turns out to be.
With you a very successful young,
Diana Elbaum: Director.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
So talk to strangers.
There's something else, which I wanted to
ask you really from the beginning of this.
You had a high school teacher who
turned you on to Dutch literature.
And this is where these stories began.
Have you made one of these stories?
And also, what is the Dutch
literature book that we should
all read that we don't know?
Diana Elbaum: Yeah.
Oh my God, this is like down memory lane.
So no, I've never made any anything.
I still want to make one, but I'm not
going to be able because the family's
holding tight on the rights, but
Rupert Isaacson: What's the book
that you feel we should read?
Diana Elbaum: So the book, and
I can't even remember the book,
that's just to tell you that much.
I know it triggers something in me.
I think it's called The Wall.
I can't even figure out.
I don't remember the name of the writer.
But you know, and but then
many, many, many books later.
When I made this connection with
Faulkner because literally she told
me, if you like him, you're going to
love Faulkner and that's how I started.
And then I went Faulkner and I
read all Faulkner in French because
Shakespeare and Faulkner are the two
writers I cannot read in English.
Okay.
Interesting.
I don't get it.
And that sounds so kind of,
oh, I can't read Faulkner and
Shakespeare in English, but it
Rupert Isaacson: makes sense
because you're dealing with a
very particular kind of English.
And I think I think that those two,
I think that all the classic writers,
it truly actually doesn't matter what
language you read them in, because the
power of the story is so is so powerful
that it transcends the language.
And I think I think any author.
And I know I would say that, you
know, if you can translate my book.
really well into your language, please
have at it, because there'll be aspects
of it that I couldn't do in my own
language that come out of that story,
that you might do better in translation.
Yeah.
Because stories, stories have,
are their own ecosystems for sure.
Yeah,
Diana Elbaum: absolutely.
I totally agree with you,
and language have like, mmm.
It's language are beautiful.
And yeah.
So yeah, and then Faulkner.
And then I love Faulkner.
I came back and I said, oh,
you know, I love Faulkner.
And she was really in her own
way of being a Flemish teacher.
Everybody hated Flemish,
by the way, at school.
But in her own way, she kind
of like guided me and she said,
oh, maybe you should leave.
You should read Cortez no, sorry.
Marquez then came, of course, The
Hundred Years of Solitude, where
then my world completely kind
of like, you know, what is that?
And and then after that came all
the others, Fuentes and Borges
and Cortázar and like the very
classical South American writer.
And I just couldn't get enough of it.
And it's funny because at that time, also,
I never read one female writer, right?
And still, I could totally,
engage in those crazy, crazy.
Time lapses that magic realism brings
you of of and kind of a little bit of
schizophrenia because especially Fuentes,
but also Cortázar with the division
of the self with the point of view of
the he and the point of view of the I.
Is it was mesmerizing for me to
be able to look at anyway, it was
mesmerizing and never, and you know, I
was training traditional French school.
So we had, you know, we had
Victoria go and we have.
We had like Giono and we had all
the French classic, but it was also
at the time we were reading a lot.
And and just this encounter with
the American writers and the
South American, um, I, I, I've
seen her many, many years later.
And and then we went to
eat and I had to thank her.
I mean, really, I had to thank her and
say, you know, you changed my world.
You actually changed my world.
And I wish we would recognize more
the capacity of what teacher can
do to a young child, a teenage
and how important that is.
But she literally, she didn't change
my world because I didn't know I had
to choose a world to change, but she
opened a door that I didn't know existed.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
I had a teacher like this at school who
had been a the student of Tolkien's.
And he read a couple of things
that I had written, um, and
said, Rupert, you can do this.
You should, you should do this.
I've just I've just been looking
up now, Dutch literature, because
now I'm like, oh my gosh, well,
clearly there's a whole world here.
And of course, who pops up but Anne Frank.
Yeah.
And it's true.
We don't think of her as a Dutch writer.
You know, we think of her
as, except Dutch of her,
Diana Elbaum: except they think
about her as a Dutch writer.
Rupert Isaacson: Got.
But there are some really
interesting people coming up here,
like Gerard Re Reeve, and Oh yeah.
Writing about homosexuality and the,
when it was still illegal villain,
Frederick Hammond's talking about the war.
So, thank you for telling me.
I've got a whole, I've got, I've got, I'm
going to dive down a Dutch rabbit hole.
It's
Diana Elbaum: kind of funny that we, you
know, you're speaking to a film producer.
You're going to end up reading
20, 20 times more books and
going and actually seeing films.
I'm not sure I'm doing my job right.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, the other
thing that you're doing, which is
the other moral of this, which I
want, I want listeners to take away.
Is obviously I'm a predominantly
English speaking person.
So although I've stuff I've written
has gone into translation I write
in English and I live in Germany.
My German is poor, but it's functional.
I can speak French.
But I didn't write in it and I
wouldn't presume to be able to for
those of us listening to this cause
I'm, I will go back and listen to
this as well, we tend to assume.
In the movie industry in the
industry of stories, TV, et cetera,
that it's all English speaking.
So I know that a lot of you will
have a lot of you listeners will have
tuned into this episode thinking, ah,
well, this must be about Hollywood.
And this must be about.
The offshoots of that which of course
are the streaming services and that
sort of thing what I think is really
fascinating is people outside of the
English speaking world discount because
they're just not exposed to it until
it gets remade in English because a lot
of a lot of great films in English were
actually made in other languages first
people forget that A lot of the classic
movies that we know and love were often
French movies or German movies or Italian
movies before they were English movies.
But there's this whole industry and that
you can even take a country as small
as Belgium, which, you know, when you
look from the American, Americocentric
point of view, people are like, ah,
Belgium is just a tiny little country.
What does that mean?
But of course, where do we get Tintin?
Where do we get Asterix?
Where do we get the cultural output?
anD that when you do now sit on the
aeroplane and you see all these films
from all over the world, as you said,
Diana, there's an industry there.
So I think a real takeaway is that
don't think if you want to go into
the movie industry, if you want to
publish a book, if you want to make
a film, that it has to be Hollywood,
that there has to be this break through
those gatekeepers into that world.
No, no, you can make it where you are.
There is a whole industry
that will sustain you.
Okay, it's connected to an
international industry, but it
will sustain you where you are.
So if you're sitting in you might be
sitting in the USA or you're sitting
in the UK, but you might be sitting
listening to this in Benin or Mongolia.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, Avangardia
actually gets a huge,
Rupert Isaacson: huge...
Absolutely.
Oh, God.
You can stake your film and your
TV stuff there, and you should.
You don't have to think Hollywood.
And I think this is really important
for people, because I think a lot of
people don't start, because they think,
Oh, well, I could never make it there.
I don't have the rights.
I don't have the connections.
How would I make it in film?
Because Phil equals Los
Angeles, or it equals, yeah?
Diana Elbaum: Yeah, it's...
But it doesn't.
Yeah, it's, it's a lot of overlook.
And it's good that you're
mentioning that we making films.
Oh, I mean, we, when I see the film
community is making films everywhere.
And actually the market is, of course,
the market is craving for the American
films because it's an entertainment.
It's, it's got a production value.
Only in America, you can make, but
you know, Nigeria makes as many films
as the U S or India makes as any
film in the U S to just name a few.
The thing is that also one of the
things that we should be craving for
in the market is actually the market
of the independent film world is
craving for is all those new voices.
As soon as I look at last year,
look at the foreign Oscars.
For example, our international,
I think it's called, they rename
it International Oscar list.
Last year, there was a film of Bhutan,
and then you have a film from, you
know, Joy, Joyful from Iraq was there.
You know, look at those films.
They get there for a reason because
it's another way to look at our world.
And if you like to, I mean,
it sounds tacky to the max,
but I'm going to go for it.
I feel if you are a little bit
curious about how your neighbor lives.
Go see films from your own country
as well, depending on where you are.
And it could be the American indie
films also, which is totally different
industry than the Hollywood, because
there's also that whole other industry.
We did a film last year, one, we had
a film in Cannes, one, the Camaradeau,
which is the best first film of all the
all the films shown in Cannes called
War Pony about the Dakota First Nation.
You know, it's, and it's an American film.
War Pony.
You
Rupert Isaacson: produced
Diana Elbaum: that?
It's, it's, my comp, I mean, it's
a group, I'm part of a group called
Caviar, so it's Caviar Group.
And it's a first film,
First Nation Dakota.
I had no idea what it was and I saw
the film because I wasn't involved
in the production of that one.
But you know, I saw the film in
Cannes and I was, you know, my
heart went out and I was like, damn,
so much work to do in the world.
It's beautiful.
And
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
thank you for telling me.
I'm just wicking War Pony right now.
Looks absolutely fascinating because,
yeah, I know a little bit about the
Lakota, um, situation and the Rosebud
and Pine Ridge Reservations in.
In America, which of course are
the two poorest parts of America,
Diana Elbaum: but yet I
think, I think, I think film.
That's actually a reduction of literature.
Yes, it takes an effort.
Yes, it demands an effort.
Yes, you might not want to go and see it
because it's raining because it's a little
bit too expensive for my taste as well.
But you would be amazed the
conversation you can engage, and
you would be amazed about it.
How he makes you, I know I'm going
to go all the way, how he could
make you challenge your everyday
life and how beautiful it can be.
I've seen film this year in Cannes.
I've seen one.
It's this year in the last time in
May, who's called Zone of Interest by
Jonathan Glaser, which is a UK director.
He's done only three films.
And I can tell you that I came out of the
film so shaken, so destroyed emotionally.
And so it was a weird can, because
at the same time I had also a film
screening at Cannes, but I was crying
the whole, the whole Cannes, not because
I couldn't make it, but because of the
because of the emotion I felt.
And each time everybody of my friends
say, Oh, did you see the Jonathan Glaser?
It was a buzz on the Croisette.
And I was like starting to cry.
And I just came back from Locarno, another
film festival in Europe, just yesterday.
And I, when I landed, the
producer of that film was landing
at the same time from Poland.
And so we shared the drive from Zurich to
Locarno was around four and a half hours.
And I told, I mean, I was crying again.
And so I was asking questions
about the film, how they made
it, you know, how does it work?
And of course the film
has been sold everywhere.
So it's going to come out probably
in the full time in most of the
places and probably will have a
nomination for an international Oscar.
But, and how much I cried again in
that car drive, I was just like,
look at what you're doing to me.
Look at how I can't get away
from the emotion I felt.
And months after seeing the film,
and I'm not especially no romantic,
nor kind of, emotional person.
But that one just.
Triggered and if you can have that.
Once in a while in your life and be
able for two hours to forget about
the fact that you have to go home
and, you know, you have to pay bills
and, you know, that sometime life
is crap or just beautiful and just
have this bubble of time and fine.
And sometimes it's going
to be awful family.
You're going to hate it.
But the one you find the
great film, it's just.
Such an experience.
Rupert Isaacson: Tell
us the name of this film
Diana Elbaum: by Jonathan Glazier.
It's called Zone of Interest.
It's based on a book.
The author died the day of the screening.
Wow.
I can't remember the author's name, of
course, like the rest of the authors, but
you're going to find it on the internet.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank
you for the tip, War Pony.
And so I just see that War, War
Pony was produced by Riley Cuff, it
Diana Elbaum: was directed by her,
Rupert Isaacson: who of course
is Elvis Presley's granddaughter.
Yeah,
Diana Elbaum: it was directed
by her, directed by her.
And there were two directors who met
in another beautiful film shot by
Andrea Arnold called American Honey.
Those two actresses met and then
they shot there in South Dakota
for American Honey and that's how
they got in touch with the Lakotas.
So it's you know, one
film brings another film.
Rupert Isaacson: Gosh zone of interest.
A Nazi officer falls in love with
the woman of the commander of
the Auschwitz concentration camp.
That's,
Diana Elbaum: that's worse.
Worst speech ever.
It's really not about
Rupert Isaacson: that.
Based on the Martin Amis.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah.
Martin Amis.
Okay.
It's really not the pitch of the film.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Well, you know, they always,
they always have to But it's not,
Diana Elbaum: it's it's much
more, it's, it's a radical film.
It's also, okay, I'm going to get into
it just a little bit, Robert, and then
you it's also the fact that it's not, the
story is told by what's on the screen.
Okay.
I'm going to start again.
Take two.
The story is told.
The way we tell a story is not
always telling a story from, it's
always, it's also the combination
of the visual grammar of a film.
And, and the bounce back, the echo between
the narration and the visual grammar
makes a film amazing, could also make a
film really bad, sometimes it's overdone.
That one is just a perfect
equilibrium, extremely hard.
But, and radical, I have to
say, so, but go and see it,
because there is there is...
Rupert Isaacson: The commandant of the
Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Hus,
and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a
dream life for their family in a house
and garden next to the camp of Auschwitz.
It's
Diana Elbaum: the wall of the
camp is the wall of the garden.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gosh.
And it's amazing actors and the ways,
I mean, also read about the film.
Don't read too much about it.
Don't see too much online
about it, but go and see it.
But the way he shot it
was also very radical.
And, and the more you get
into those details, the more
it's not about appreciation.
Oh, sorry for my English, but it's not
about the appreciation of the craft.
It's not how complex it was.
It's not how expensive it was
is the fact that the results.
Has an emotional, emotional, brings
you into an emotional journey.
Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: The power of story, the
power of stories, the power of change.
We have the storytelling ape.
We're not, you know, they
call us sapiens sapiens.
Yeah, I had this thing about saying
that, but really all anything with
the brain thinks there's nothing
special to our species about
thinking, but we have this larynx.
And we tell stories other animals
vocalize, and they can do that in a
very complex way, but they don't make
films, write poetry, create literature.
That's us.
That's our species.
And it seems to be connected
to healing at its very core.
The, you know, the, the, the shamanistic
experiences, you, you, you, you want to
hunt, you must contact the, the spirits
of the animals, you want healing, you
must contact the spirits of the ancestors
through a shaman, bring your story, why,
why you need healing, the shaman goes
into an older state of consciousness.
MaKes contact, gets a story from the
spirit world, brings it back, tells
you that story, and then you and the
sham go on to create a new story.
That's the heal.
But even that's going
to the doctor, isn't it?
You go to the doctor saying, Oh, my leg.
And the doctor consults their
literature, which is a story
and tells you another story.
And then you and that doctor
create a new story of your
leg, hopefully getting better.
But I think that that, yeah,
really, that's at the core of this.
The story is healing.
Story is change.
As you said, it creates policy change.
It creates ripple effects down the decades
Diana Elbaum: further.
Yeah.
And you know, when you're speaking
about healing, my, when I'm feeling
really low, my favorite film, and
it's not European, it's not art house.
It's not anything to make,
make me feel up again.
It's like Kung Fu Panda, for
example, you know, just love it.
And it's like, don't explain.
And it doesn't matter.
And everybody has its own last place,
you know, and just, I feel so good.
And I was like, yeah, life is good.
I have a tendency of liking the
underdogs anyway, but, um, it's
just one of those yeah, it's a
place of refuge of the storytelling.
It's a place of feeling.
Yeah, it's exactly what you were saying.
And it's also a place of community.
And that's why the community.
And also, you know what, I'm just
going to give another example of
me going to a lot of festivals.
So now I was in Locarno and I
was, you know, in Brussels, I
had a festival and everything.
Those are the places where
you see the most amazing film.
And it's actually the lowest way.
It's a low cost way to see film, not
because the film is not good, but
because You get a package deal and
you can see 25 films and they are
happening everywhere in the world and
every city almost there's at one point
in another film festival documentary
film festival short film festival
and automatic film festival do it.
You would be so amazed if you take like, I
mean, not a week off, of course, because,
but if you're like for a week, you go and
see a film every day or every morning,
or it's, it's just amazing experience,
Rupert Isaacson: really.
That's really interesting.
And thank you for that.
That that's the other
thing I've only shameful.
I've only ever been to film
festivals and I've been trying
to sell a movie of my own.
It's never occurred to me much as I love
movie and story, um, I guess because
I'm often so busy making stories that
yes, you're absolutely right to go
and use film festival like going to
a music festival to suddenly go and
expose yourself to a whole smorgasbord
of storytelling and to dive into that.
For a week of your life.
Yeah.
Diana Elbaum: Yeah.
And just be surprised and no reading.
Just go in.
That's the best way to go and see a film.
Not knowing anything about the film.
So that's,
Rupert Isaacson: that's the
last moral of the, of, of the
interviews is go to film fest.
Go to your, go to your
city's film festival.
Diana Elbaum: Absolutely.
And for the younger audience.
If you have a young audience
listening, go and volunteer.
It's even more fun.
Yeah.
They're always looking for volunteers
and anybody actually go back to the
advice of if you want to get into the
film business, one of the way to start.
A lot of people that I know have
started in film business start to
volunteer in their local film festival
because they always want benevolence.
So you, of course, don't make any
money, but you make a lot of friends
and usually you end up drinking a
lot at the parties and whatever.
But the thing is that
you get to know people.
You get to see directors, you get
to see the guests that are coming.
Every festival has usually guests
or, you know, the films are coming
with a crew or an actor and etc.
And that's how you start.
If you, you know, have no other way
and, or if you're really interested,
you start like that and it's amazing
how it's a welcoming community.
And also because there's another
thing that I have to tell you,
which is a little more practical,
is the fact that I've hired a lot of
people in my life I've never asked.
Never ever ask what kind of diploma
they had and it's still happening.
It's a little more complex today, but
the experience outweighs the diploma.
So it's not saying that
you don't need to study.
Yes, you do need to study.
Maybe not cinema, maybe you're in
legal or your business and you love
cinema, you know, it's just an amazing
environment in which to work because
it's just, it's just a great environment.
I can't put more words, you
find like everywhere also crap
people, but mainly over my years.
amazing, amazing people.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you
heard it from Diana, people.
If you're looking, you young people, if
you're looking and middle aged, if you're
looking to get into the film biz, go
volunteer at your local film festival.
What perfect advice.
Join the community.
Diana.
How do people contact you?
Is, is that where, how do they find you?
Let's name of your company website.
Can people write questions to you?
How
Diana Elbaum: do they do that?
Oh my God.
That's like the hardest thing.
If you, if you type in
my name, you're going to.
pretty much fine about everything
about me and, and, and my information.
I'm if you want to write
me I will not take scripts.
Unfortunately you have to be very, very
concise about an idea you might have.
It might take a lot of
time for me to answer.
And yeah, I mean, my, I have that many, as
many hours as everybody else in the day.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, here's my,
here's what I would suggest for people.
If you've got it, if you've got a
question for Diana, because I know, cause
I worked with Diana a bit and it can
sometimes take quite a long time to reply
to an email and I am guilty as charged
the same thing because we're all busy.
But right to me.
With a question for Diana
and I will put it to her.
And what I might do is I'm, I think
I will collect those questions
like I'm doing for everybody.
And Diana, would you consent to come
back on and answer those questions
in a, in a second, second podcast?
It's pleasure
Diana Elbaum: with you and with
your listener, with pleasure.
And probably we can open other doors.
Yeah, it was great pleasure.
Wonderful.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much.
I look forward to that, that follow up.
There's a bunch more
questions I want to ask.
So till next time.
Absolutely.
I'll be here.
And thank you so much for
sharing all of this with us.
I'm extremely grateful.
Ah, it
Diana Elbaum: was a pleasure.
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you.
Okay, till next time.
Bye bye.
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