Gozlan, Yann (Caged, aka Captifs)
With Los Angeles’ venerated Screamfest L.A. running this October 8-17 at the Mann’s 6 in Hollywood, CA, we thought it time to catch up with some of the filmmakers whose horrific entries will be screening at Rachel Belofsky’s tenth annual film festival of all things horrific.
Visit Screamfest online here for a full run-down of the films playing, as well as to purchase tickets. The highly anticipated Gierasch/Anderson Night of the Demons remake kicks off the fest this Friday.
Co-writer (with Guillaume Lemans) and director Yann Gozlan’s feature flick Caged (Captifs) is celebrating its Los Angeles premiere at Screamfest on Saturday, October 16 at 12pm. Filmmaker Gozlan sat down with Dread recently to discuss his French organ-trafficking film (which opens in selected cities in his homeland via distributor BAC Films today, October 6th). See a teaser trailer for Caged below.
Produced by Alain Benguigui and Thomas Verhaeghe and starring Zoe Felix, Eric Savin (Intimate Enemies) and Arie Elmaleh, Caged is set in Eastern Europe and revolves around the character of Carole (Felix), a young nurse working with a humanitarian aid group who is kidnapped and held captive in a setting not unfamiliar to fans of the similarly-set Hostel films, although unlike the antagonists in those films, her captors’ motivations differ.
Gozlan, who previously penned and directed the French short psycho-thriller films Pellis and Echo, stated of his feature genre excursion, which was budgeted at a low 1.2 million euros, “Caged is more a horrific thriller than a pure horror movie. I love suspense, tension, fear and uneasiness in a movie. You usually find these elements in a horror movie, and besides, the horror genre gives you a structure in which you can be inventive. And also, when you do a scary movie, you have to ask yourself basic – but important – production questions: questions (pertaining to the) point of view, of what is in the frame and of what is out, and of the function of sound.”
As for his inspiration, Gozlan states that he wanted to pen a narrative which featured “a character who has to face a phobia” and, having read an article concerning the trafficking of human organs following the Yugoslav war prior to penning the script, recalled the thought that such a concept “could be a good setting for a scary movie.”
Grisly subject matter for sure, and given the recent spate of hard-core French horror films (High Tension, Inside, Martyrs to name a few) one might assume that Caged may be another entry into that particular sub-genre (Olivier Afonso provides the FX), although Gozlan stated, “In fact, the movie is really different. It is not at all about torture! In fact, I’m not a fan of gore, and I wanted to do a classic and (more) sober film – something simple and efficient. No subtext. I wanted to play more with suspense, tension and uneasiness than with gory effects.”
Tickets for the Los Angeles Screamfest premiere of Caged can be purchased here!
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