Meet the 2012 Tribeca Filmmakers #2: 'Certain People' Director Levan Akin

Making his directorial feature film debut (after directing Swedish TV and the short film, "De sista sakerna," which won Best Children's Film and the Audience Award at Hamberg), Levan Akin brings "Certain People" to Tribeca with the help of writer Lisa Östberg and producer Erika Stark. They wanted to make a film that would 'activate' the audience, and raise questions about the current class atmosphere in Sweden, without giving any answers. Akin calls himself "a true cineaste," with his love for the medium being his motivation.

What it's about: A group of affluent (monetarily and culturally) friends gather to celebrate Katinkas birthday. It´s all rather stiff to begin with. But things are livened up with the arrival of Katinkas brother and his girlfriend Linda, a game-show hostess from another social class. She is welcomed as a delightful and harmless character, but as the evening moves forward the group feels increasingly provoked by her.

Director Akin says: "The film was challenging in every step of the process. Thankfully we had a producer (Stark) that never gave up. One big challenge was finding the actors since we only wanted 'new' faces on screen. There are so many amazing swedish actors but only a portion do film. Our challenge was to start bringing in a new generation of talented actors."

On things that (may have) inspired the film: "We did not watch many movies in pre-production on purpose. The only films I and the photographer looked at, for various reasons, were 'Harold and Maude,' 'Metropolitan' and the TV series 'Carnivale.' Really strange. I don't think it ended up having to do anything with our film in the end. The inspiration for the character Katinkas' wardrobe was a picture of Joni Mitchell in the 70s."


Indiewire invited Tribeca Film Festival directors to tell us about their films, including what inspired them, the challenges they faced and what they're doing next. We'll be publishing their responses leading up to the 2012 festival.

Keep checking HERE every day up to the launch for the latest profiles.

Below watch the film's Swedish language trailer:
 

Katinkas_Kalas by azmovies