Blood Red portrays a world on the verge of collapse, where everyday life seems constantly on the brink of falling apart. What first drew you to film this community and this state of “permanent fragility”?

First idea was to make a fiction film inspired by some true historical events and Dostojevskij Deamons. They all had similar topics like frustration and sadness slowly growing inside of people, who doesn’t belive in the system they live in and that could explode into the revolt at any time. I think its a universal feeling that can be felt by people anywhere around the world. We see a raise of populists, extremists etc.  I just started to cast people and scouting locations in a village I grew up in. I didn’t perceive this film as a documentary at all, but every protagonist needed different approach to get most authenticity from. Sometimes I just observed, sometimes I could direct more. Fact I shot on iPhone helped a lot to be flexible, and not stress out those who are not used to camera.

The film avoids any explicit explanation and trusts the viewer to “feel” rather than “understand.” How did you arrive at the decision to remove dialogue and a conventional narrative?

Point was to create complex picture of one village in combination of episodic “short films” focused on single character. To make it complex I needed colorful variety of characters. I avoided dialogues from practical reason. Most of the time it was just me with a iPhone, that doesnt have such a good sound and it would make postproduction very complicated. I liked it as a challenge too because especially Czech films are mostly full of empty dialogues and they completely lacks any creative use of film language, so I also wanted to do it differently.

Béla Tarr is credited as a story advisor/script consultant. What was the creative exchange with him like, and what concrete contributions influenced the final form of Blood Red?

Film was made during mentoring program Béla had at FAMU where I was studying at that time. I just told him the idea and we started to work on a script. That was a painful process because school kept convincing me for a years that its not just so easy to make a film. You need a years of workshops, pitchings, funding, write, think and write again. Béla was repeating his motto: “Fuck industry.” and insisting that I should make a “script” in the way he worked. Cards with a very brief explanation of scenes like: “Old man in his vineyard” or “Butcher.” When it was finished he told me I should find locations and actors. So I went to village I grew up in and shot a pig slaughter that felt really intense to me. I edited it a bit and showed it to him and he just said: “You see? Now you have a good first 9 minutes of film.” And I’ve seen it actually doesn’t have to be complicated to make a film at all.  Since then I was just following my intuition and it worked. I got an idea what a scene should look like and I shot it that way. When I felt its not enough I had to think what to differently but I really never struggled. Everytime I just showed Béla what I have and we mostly agreed about it. 

Tarr is known for his distended sense of time, long takes, and existential approach. How does your own aesthetic converse with his without falling into imitation?

I never thought that I need to make a film that looks like his. Only conversation we had about a style was when he told me to watch Mulholland Drive again and notice how intense and thrilling that film is, and he told me there should be same intensity in my film too. Mostly I just went with situations and tried to make it intense and long takes are just best way to do it. About a black and white, I chose it because it was cheapest way to unify colorful reality in front of the camera and it also helped to strenged up timeless and universal dimension of the topic. I just really like slow paced films because they give you space to really feel complexity a lot and not just some informations and stupid story.