Albert Serra Premieres Caven Concert Film at Locarno
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- "Sixteen Moments of My Life" premiered out of competition at the Locarno Film Festival, documenting Ingrid Caven's one-off performance at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris with Catalan musicians Molforts, who also score Serra's features.
- The film's 16 songs were built through an indirect creative process — Ingrid Caven and the Molforts communicated only through the music itself, exchanging CDs and never speaking directly, with Caven improvising over the musicians' compositions.
- Albert Serra framed his directing philosophy as 'old school Hollywood': non-communication with actors, subconscious results, and no hours-long discussions of meaning — the same approach behind 'Liberté' and 'Pacifiction.'
- Serra said he wished he had directed Elvis Presley in dramatic roles — 'he would have been an amazing dramatic actor' with the right director — and imagined Maria Callas in light comedies rather than the 'very static' dramatic work she did with Pasolini.
- Serra is 65% through editing his next film 'Out of This World,' starring Riley Keough and F. Murray Abraham as part of an American delegation traveling to Russia amid the Ukraine war; he insists 'it's not a war film, it's about economics.'
- Serra announced plans for a 'Brigadoon'-style musical comedy built on 'maximum happiness,' explicitly framed as the tonal opposite of his life's work — 'the opposite of what I've been doing all of my life.'
Why it matters: Serra's 'Out of This World' — 65% complete and starring Riley Keough and F. Murray Abraham — marks his most star-driven project to date, while his announced 'Brigadoon'-style musical comedy would represent a complete tonal departure from the austere, slow-cinema reputation he's spent two decades building.
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