The Big Picture
- Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sat down with writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari and co-stars Harry Melling and Caleb Landry Jones for the “science fiction of the past” film,
Harvest
, at TIFF 2024. - The cast went on a “mad quest” to find their characters during this unique production that faced many environmental and budget-related challenges.
- Tsangari focused on the communal experience on set where they became a “mad family.”
The perils of xenophobia and capitalism run rampant in a secluded English village where tradition is brutally impacted by an Enclosure Bill in 2024’s Harvest. Adapted from Jim Crace‘s novel of the same name, director Athina Rachel Tsangari (Chevalier) immerses us in a world where small-scale agriculture and pagan rituals thrive. However, after a mysterious fire in the stables and the arrival of outsiders, the village people are struck with paranoia and dread, spiraling as the film progresses. The talented cast includes Caleb Landry Jones (Get Out), Harry Melling (Harry Potter), Rosy McEwen, Arinzé Kene, Thalissa Teixeira, and Frank Dillane.
The harrowing allegory premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sat down with director Tsangari and cast members Jones and Melling at the Cinema Center at MARBL. During their interview, they discuss the unique, communal, and visceral experience on set where they go on a “mad quest” to connect with their own characters while working in rainy and arduous conditions. They also recall how difficult it was to get the movie off the ground, as their already limited budget was pulled three weeks before filming. Hear all about how they immersed themselves in village life in the video above, or follow along via the transcript below.
‘Harvest’ Taps Into the Idea of Watching the World Fall Apart
PERRI NEMIROFF: I know what the movie is, but because it’s on the film festival circuit, a lot of our audience will not know about Harvest just yet. Would you mind giving a brief synopsis of your film?
ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI: I’m terrible at that, so I’m passing this to Harry.
HARRY MELLING: It’s about a village in an unspecified time, but we’re somewhere maybe in the past. But are we? Are we in the future? We’re somewhere. We meet this community of people on their harvest day, and something awful happens. I don’t want to give too much away now. It’s very hard to do, isn’t it? We just follow this community of people from their festival of harvest, and we watch what happens to this group of people. I think that’s all I can say.
Athina, I want to talk a little bit about the script because it is based on a book. One of my favorite things about adaptations is seeing something evolve. Can you tell me where you found space in that book for you to bring your own voice to the story?
TSANGARI: It’s a book that I was completely fascinated by because, at the center of this, there is an antihero, a character who doesn’t manage ever to do anything. I find this very essential for where we are right now. All of us are witnessing the world falling apart and just witnessing, absorbing, consuming all of this information and doing nothing. I think that was the most difficult thing in terms of setting up a film and a story where everyone is a coward. There is no catharsis; there is no redemption. There is none of this.
Why ‘Harvest’ Was So Difficult to Get Off the Ground
“It’s a film that was constantly falling apart and constantly keeps going.”
This is a wildly ambitious story and production in a multitude of respects. In this industry, sadly, when you bring something like that to the table, it can be extremely difficult for people to give it a green light and believe in it. During that process, was there any particular resource you acquired, person you met, anything at all that made you say to yourself, “It’s actually going to happen now?”
TSANGARI: It’s a film that was constantly falling apart and constantly kept going, which is amazing because the film is about a community that falls apart, that gets destroyed by capitalism. The way the film was made was against the thesis of the film just because every single person who kept joining our film believed in it and made it happen. It took about — I can’t even count right now — I think maybe 18 producers came along, and each one contributed something for us to make the film. Don’t ask me why it was so difficult since the book is a masterpiece. All of our team was incredible, an incredible cast and incredible crew. It really took the best out of us, but we did it.
Harry and Caleb, you’re both actors that I deeply admire, and you always deliver something different with your work. When Harvest came your way, what was it about either the story in general or these particular roles that made you say to yourself, “I have something to gain from this as an actor evolving my craft?”
MELLING: When I first read it, I knew immediately that I wanted to somehow be involved in this story. I just found the story so compelling. Certainly, looking at Master Kent, I found his journey quite massive actually in terms of what he goes through in the story, from this person who’s dealing with grief but also trying to keep things together in an impossible situation. I met Athina and I want to do it even more. It was a wonderful opportunity to play this very sort of fragile human being.
CALEB LANDRY JONES: Even though I didn’t know what she was gonna be asking of me to play this part and to join in this movie, I think that’s what I was most curious about. It felt like it was gonna be something that was extremely difficult. Mud was the only thing that I kept thinking about before going to Scotland. I knew it’d be a lot of mud, and it’d be really hard. There would be a space possibly within working with her, a chance at some kind of life, some kind of natural rhythm to the film that she was wanting to create, something very distinct to her. Anybody that joins her, that she has to work with her, learns very much. We were talking about it today.
Harry Melling Says Working With Tsangari Was a “Mad Quest”
“We don’t discuss the characters.”
Caleb, I stole a quote that I saw you give in another interview that I wanted to follow up on. You said, “Athina had everything pushed against her from every fucking angle, including from me as an actor. I really gave her a hell of a time.” Can you bring up times when, maybe, you had burning questions or ideas for her that would challenge the material, and then tell me how she overcame them?
JONES: Every day, “Who am I?” “Look to God.” “Who am I?” “There is no God.” [Laughs]
MELLING: Athina’s got this amazing thing where she sort of invites you into it, and you don’t have all the answers, but you’re on this mad quest.
TSANGARI: No answers. [Laughs]
MELLING: But you’re on this intense quest to try and find something that has a real distinct voice or distinct way of expressing something very specific. For me, that is what I learned from the experience. Every day you would arrive, and you were offered such a freedom to try and calibrate these very difficult maneuvers for me as a performer. That was an amazing opportunity.
I want to follow up on what you just said — “Who am I?” When you two jumped into these roles was there any particular part of the prep process or even filming on set when you had that moment when you found your character? A time when something clicked and it made you think, “I get him now?”
JONES: That’s what we were talking about earlier today. Every time thinking you’re on solid ground and then realizing that you’re not and going with it. We’re trying to understand that.
MELLING: There’s an amazing moment where, without giving too much away, Kent has a costume change. I remember at that distinct moment thinking, “Yes! Of course! Of course my entire journey has been leading to this one very specific moment in the film.” It completely blindsided me, but it was a wonderful moment.
TSANGARI: We don’t discuss the characters. We don’t really verbalize any of this. The rehearsals that we had were very much physical and physicalized, and dancing more than anything, and understanding how we swap and exchange and mutate energies rather than backstories and me telling them who they are. Every day is a process of doing and undoing a character.
Tsangari Saw ‘Harvest’ as a “Science Fiction of the Past”
“We’re always trying to transcend specific definitions of what the character is.”
Athina, can you tell me something about your approach to directing actors that stays consistent from project to project, but then also something about directing this film that called for something different?
TSANGARI: It’s more like the physicalizing of a character and working more with bodies and gestures and colors and temperatures and never drawing from psychology. It’s like we’re always trying to transcend specific definitions of what the character is. We spent all our days on the set, so nebulous, a little bit in a trance. Crew and cast, we’re all getting in the trance together, and there is very little talk. I hardly spoke with Sean [Price Williams], our cinematographer, and I hardly spoke with these guys. It was more like looking at each other and sensing each other.
I approach cinema as a sensory experience. I wanted to be experienced more than understood. The big difference with this one is how do you approach a period film, while at the same time, I never saw it as a historical drama? I kept saying to our production designer, Nathan [Parker], and our costume designer, Kirsty [Halliday], that it’s almost like a science fiction of the past. Whatever that means, but they got it. [Laughs]
Caleb, you mentioned that everyone looked at this as an impossible thing to make. Can you each recall something specific about making this movie that someone might have deemed impossible and explain how you pulled it off?
JONES: I think there’s a way of making movies that a lot of folks have become accustomed to and making this film asks for a different kind of thinking sometimes, from something that is very rigorous, where there’s no space to move within. This film demanded to be made differently. I think this is kind of the “impossible” I was thinking of.
MELLING: The whole film operated on such a different level that it was channeling into that. That was the most crucial thing in order to truly unlock the trippy, anarchic heart of it. That was like a tricky thing to sort of constantly be pursuing.
The Cast and Crew of ‘Harvest’ Became a “Mad Family”
Athina, I’ll throw that to you as well. Is there any particular element of this production that someone else out there might say, “You can’t do that in this industry, that’s not possible,” but then you pulled it off?
TSANGARI: The entire film. It was obvious that we could not do a film with the scope, with the budget, and the amount of time. At lunch today, I was just mourning how difficult it was to make a film like that. It’s a beast with such little time. For a director to have to shoot four gigantic scenes, or five sometimes, a day, and to arrive on set and all know our scenes. Also because we had the villagers who were never background artists. There was not a single extra. There is not that word in our vocabulary. They were all real people, farmers from the area, each one had a character. The entire scene was always everyone together. To be able to be given 45 minutes to make a scene, to shoot the scene, while at the same time it’s pouring rain, and we’re shooting regardless of the weather. The one scene I will always remember is the scene of the feast and the dance that follows it and the burning of the corn dolly. All of this happened in one night. When you say a night, at the same time, you have 60 people who need to be dressed and be seated, and for the feast to be laid on the tables. So, that was one night. We didn’t even go over time because we couldn’t.
MELLING: It was wet.
TSANGARI: It was pouring rain throughout. We couldn’t record sound because there was so much noise. It was like flooding, actually.
JONES: And long takes.
TSANGARI: And long takes. The wonderful thing with Harvest is that we set out to make a film where the actual process of making it, of bringing the community together, which was about two and a half years of researching and finding the place and then getting the spirit and the nature of being the main character and us visiting this instead of going there and invading it. We were embedded. There were fields that hadn’t been plowed in 400 years, and we went, and we sowed the seeds, and we sowed the field with rye and barley and flax, and we harvested it. Everything you see, it was actually a part. It was like a documentation of us being there in all sorts of ways, much more than a film crew.
In a way, the process of making the film was our political gesture towards what the film talked about, which was the distraction and the creation of community. Our resistance to the alienating effect of making a film, especially if you’re trying to make a genre film, it’s a very alienating process, usually divorced from the location and the people that you’re making it with. We became this…
MELLING: Mad family.
TSANGARI: A mad family living and shooting and being.
‘Harvest’s Budget Was Pulled Three Weeks Before Filming
Clearly, this is a one-of-a-kind experience and one-of-a-kind story. Harry and Caleb, I am curious for you, is there any particular aspect of making Harvest that you wished other films that you do down the line would adopt?
JONES: She’s made it extremely difficult. We were talking about that today, too.
I would believe that.
JONES: After getting to make this film, we’ve got a hard road ahead of us in the sense of what to do in that regard.
MELLING: So true. When you’re offered that amount of chance to rehearse with people, to play these characters out with a fellow company of actors, and are allowed to come up with ideas all the time to say, “Maybe this might work,” or “That hasn’t worked. Maybe this might work.” That is a real privilege to get in making a film. Now you go to something, and it’s like, “Where’s our two-week rehearsal?” It’s something that I think, also, you can really feel the freedom and the play of all Athina’s made. I’m glad that that’s been caught.
JONES: I just wanna work with her when she has enough time, and there is money that doesn’t get pulled three weeks before filming again, and [she isn’t] fought every step of the way.
TSANGARI: Hear, hear!
I did want to end with one semi-unfair question because we’ve emphasized the value of community on this production. We’re lucky enough to get to talk to the three of you, and that is wonderful, but films are not made without the entire cast and crew.
JONES: You’ve had good questions today.
I appreciate you saying that! A movie like this deserves it.
Filming ‘Harvest’ Was a Communal Experience That Included Locals
Can you each name an unsung hero on the set of Harvest, someone who helped you exceed your own expectations for your work or just impressed you, and we need to hear their name more?
JONES: Gregor [Warnok]. His enthusiasm. There was a young man on the film. He came with so much vigor and enthusiasm and excitement and willingness and joy. His love was very infectious, and his excitement was very infectious.
TSANGARI: He’s a kid from the area who played one of the farmers. I actually saw him in one of the dances from his high school graduation. I was looking for musicians for the bands, and I was so taken by him, and I was like, “Do you want to come?” He’s like, “Yeah, but I would just love to act.” He’d never been in a film before, and he was just a natural. Now he’s really considering going to drama school. He was incredible.
JONES: It’s a very hard question. Very unfair, like you said.
If we could, I would sit here all day and literally shout out every single person in the credits of this film.
TSANGARI: I have to say that it’s strange for us to be here, just the three of us, in Toronto, just because it was such a communal experience, and we’re missing the rest of our cast. It’s every single one. We wish we were all together, which actually in Venice we were all together. It felt like a wedding, celebrating us marrying each other forever.
JONES: And now we got Harry.
MELLING: Yeah!
‘Harvest’s Crew Innovated Using an Unsteady and Tight Budget
“Nothing could deter that woman from making that movie.”
MELLING: It’s just so hard because there are so many brilliant people. I thought Kirsty, who did the costumes, did an exquisite job. Just finding that world, which must have been so difficult because it’s full of story. The clothes always told so much story in it, but what the specific story was, we’re not sure but just being able to live in that world and feel all those nuances, those different little details come through. The individual little things, as well, I just thought was magic. So, I say Kirsty.
TSANGARI: And she did it with, like, five pounds. One unsung hero that I really have to mention because a producer is always an unsung hero. Rebecca O’Brien is such a warrior. The film fell apart so many times during the four years, full-on through the pandemic. She never stopped. Nothing could deter that woman from making that movie, even at the point where basically we really had to shut it down and go home because we really had lost a big part of the financing, and that was just three weeks before we started shooting. All of us were there, we were rehearsing, and she almost didn’t let us know.
JONES: I was being a baby, wasting time. She should have told me to take a hike a few times. [Laughs]
TSANGARI: I never actually had a producer because I’ve been forced to produce my own films in Greece. To actually have someone who not only is a brilliant general, but at the same time, she was always so respectful of our vision and always making sure that even the craziest thing — this film was all made in unorthodox ways, there was no, there was no recipe for the way we’re doing this. She was always enjoying it, just laughing and smiling like a proud sister.
Special thanks to this year’s partners of the Cinema Center x Collider Studio at TIFF 2024 including presenting Sponsor Range Rover Sport as well as supporting sponsors Peoples Group financial services, poppi soda, Don Julio Tequila, Legend Water and our venue host partner Marbl Toronto. And also Roxstar Entertainment, our event producing partner and Photagonist Canada for the photo and video services.
