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I wouldn’t say I see myself in a particular genre. To be honest, I get less and less interested in the story. Of course, there are directors who are very focused on the plot and masterfully play with its form, but they are in a strong minority, mostly a lot is sacrificed for the plot. In the end, only a ruminant piece that lacks originality comes together. If you have seen a thousand times, then in the first thousand you will already know what will happen next. I am more interested if the film is like a mirror – it reflects the opinion of a particular society or director.
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Did you take a taxi often?
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Come on, yes. It was more so in Sarajevo, where the idea for the film was born. There is practically no public transport there…
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That was also my next question – how did you come up with the idea for the movie “Change”?
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The first idea originated in Sarajevo. There are a lot of illegal taxis.
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Licenses for taxi drivers are limited, so you can either inherit or buy this license from another taxi driver, but you can’t just become a taxi driver any day.
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There are many who drive illegally without licenses and signs. Everything happens through a cell phone. Traditional taxi drivers are fighting them, there are fights, the police are trying to catch illegal taxi drivers. At the same time, there were stories in Latvian news about burning cars at the airport, its mood as it is in the nineties. Then I realized that was the problem.
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And the environment that seemed atmospherically interesting to me, in my opinion, also suits Riga. Filming in the game halls and in the “Lion’s House” – it seems to me that at least in terms of the atmosphere, this story is about Riga. For a large part of Riga.
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How did you obtain the information and how did your research on the film material take place?
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The study was done for me, meeting with taxi drivers, just talking to them. We also drove a taxi driver, who has been in line since the nineties, to see the port, how the jacks work, who are really waiting for their one gold customer, instead of driving all day with Bolt taxi. They wait for several hours, but when they find their customer, more money is torn off. We also drove to the airport. There we were told what the system is and who organizes it. All the more informative. Of course, we also drove around Riga by car ourselves. There is also one documentary shot in the film, which we shot while driving around Riga all night in the New Year.
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Video: Behind the scenes of filmmaking
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The characters in the film are markedly marked, so to speak. “Bad boys”, rich people’s circles… How do you view stereotypes? Aren’t you afraid of falling into stereotypes too deeply? But maybe that’s the reality?
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Those stereotypes may be visual in some way, but at the end of the film you realize that no one is evil because he just wants to. Everyone does what needs to be done to meet their needs and wants. At one point, these needs collide with the other person’s needs and conflict arises. In my opinion, at the end of the film, the owner of the taxi company also shows quite openly – he is simply doing what he needs to do to run his business. On the one hand, it was also a difficult task. These images appear for such a short time that we cannot reveal them as characters, so in a few minutes we have to give a very vivid impression of what the image is.
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