Resin director Daniel Borgman talks social alienation and filming in nature
By Audrey Fox
Daniel Borgman, the director of Resin, discussed his experience working on the film during an interview with Culturess.
At the Toronto International Film Festival, we sat down with Daniel Borgman, the director of Resin, an eerie new Danish film. It’s the story of Liv, a curious young girl who has been raised in isolation by her father, whose emotional issues and intellectual limitations put their family at risk as a nearby community begins asking questions. Later in the interview, we were joined by its young star, Vivelill Søgaard Holm, a 14-year-old actress in her feature film debut.
Culturess: This is such an interesting concept for a film, and I guess I should ask you first, what drew you to this project?
Borgman: I was interested in broken people making bad choices, and I was very interested in our relationship to time and nature and society. The film was full of all of those things. And then the idea of making a film out in the forest was really appealing to me. So, it was a lot of things. Also, trying to work on a more genre project was very interesting to me.
Culturess: It’s a really packed film. It’s got some traditional family drama stuff, but then there are also elements of quasi-horror and sort of a dark fairy tale.
Borgman: Yeah, I think the dark fairy tale thing is definitely true, because it’s sort of allegorical. The text that it’s based on can be very much read like that, and one thing I was concerned about approaching the project was that there was too much stuff in it. We spent a bit of time to try to synthesize it down, but also allow it to be open, so people can bring their own experience to the film and leave with their own understanding of what was actually going on there.
Culturess: I was really surprised by how much I sympathized with everyone in it, even people who were doing objectively awful, but I understood their motivations and what they were going through. How did you bring that into the film and balance it so that Jens [the father] doesn’t come off as a horrible villain?
Borgman: A monster. I mean, he is pretty monstrous. So the actor Peter Plaugborg and myself, we were very concerned with having him not be a one-dimensional bad person. And I think my worldview is such that I think no one is completely evil, and I think if we all know ourselves enough and reflect enough none of us are all good either.
And I definitely am a believer that circumstances really shape people’s philosophies and actions. People put under a lot of pressure tend to not behave in the way that they would like to. So all those things matter to me and I always try to see the good. But I tend to generally believe that no one is really bad, they’re just messed up.
Culturess: His part of the story is more sad than evil. He’s trying to keep his family together but everything’s spiraling out of control.
Borgman: And he probably didn’t have the tools that he needed, and he wasn’t supported by anybody to discover those tools or find alternative ways of behaving. For me this is a film about misunderstandings, and different social groups not really understanding each other and not being curious and not wanting to listen.
I think the reason that Liv survives is because she is curious and the person who an aide to her survival is also the only other really curious person in the film. So it’s like, for me that’s a big takeaway, if you can be open, you might generally have a more positive outcome.
The world is so busy trying to turn everyone into tribes and turn everyone against each other, I think it’s good to tell stories about the problems of that, whether it’s very small or very big.
Culturess: Tell me a little bit about the actual filming process. You said you were interested in filming in nature and really getting out there, what was that like and were there any obstacles that you had to overcome to do that?
Borgman: It’s really complicated to light things at night with fire! *laughs* It’s really dangerous. But no, I just think to be honest I’m just not into the lighting. I just don’t like big crews and I don’t like all the stuff that goes with getting lights out of a truck. For me, everything was positive about being out in nature, but I don’t know if that applies to everyone involved with making the film. I’m sure that it made other people’s jobs harder.
But I think we were lucky because we had really nice accommodations in a beautiful old farmhouse that was literally 100 meters from the set so we were able to just go back and forth. I think I lived there for like 5 months and I really enjoyed it. Other people went a bit crazy with cabin fever but I just loved it.
Culturess: How long was the actual shoot?
Borgman: It was 8 weeks with a one week break in the middle, so quite long. And there’s pros and cons to that. For me, it’s great because we have all this extra time, but for everybody else there’s a big difference between being away from your family for 5 weeks compared to 8 or 9 weeks.
Culturess: Since this was Viv’s first film, what was the casting process like for her. Did you go on a big search?
Borgman: Yeah so we had a big search, my friend Amanda-lie who is an actress took the main lead in finding Viv. It’s so easy these days though, you just get on social media and then you get the kids to self-tape. I remember in the past there was so much physical moving around, but now they can all just sort of come to you. We asked the children to pretend to be an animal hunting, and Viv sent that in and she was amazing.
She’s also a dancer, a really great progressive dancer so she sent in this amazing tape of herself doing this very strange dance. I think we all just were in love with her straight away and then we just thrashed her to bits training her up for the movie. And luckily we cast her, otherwise it would have been like torture! I think she’s a one in a million kid, she’s so amazing.
Culturess: When you were casting for her father, were there a lot of chemistry tests to make sure that you could build an authentic-feeling relationship?
Borgman: There were, but Peter’s just one of the kindest, most empathetic people. He’s huge, right, like seven feet tall and buff and so he’s quite scary, but he’s so lovely. It’s really important when you have vulnerable young actors that need to be in quite intense scenes, that there’s not just an on-screen connection but an off-screen friendship or at least a lot of trust, and I think he did a great job of wrapping her up and encouraging her.
Culturess: It is a pretty brutal role for a kid!
Borgman: There’s a lot of physical stuff but we just made sure we had time. We had put Viv through a lot of workshopping and we gave her the role and we kept rehearsing. Maybe three days out from shooting, we did an improvisation and she just popped. I think that happens at some point they just become an actor, and you don’t have to do anything after that. Viv was just there, ready to go.
Culturess: And one question for Viv: what was the experience like working on this film, and what was your favorite part?
Viv: It was so fun! I’ve never done films before, and the team spirit was fun. It was just a crazy experience! I also like the role of Liv, I love the character — I’ve felt like that person before, hunting and going into the forest.
Daniel: Because we were staying so close to the set, Viv could just go into the forest while we were prepping. We would just send her to go be Liv and build little huts, and she just took it on. We just sort of suggested it and then after a while we were like, “Where’s Viv? She’s out in her hut in the forest, walking around making weird stuff.”
Next. TIFF Review: The Personal History of David Copperfield. dark