“Our Lovely Pig Slaughter”, an interview with director Adam Martinec

The Czech director explains why he chose the tradition of the domestic pig slaughter as the context for this relentlessly eventful family reunion and how he managed to weave the many complex, tangled dynamics, conflicts and crises at play into such a tight, exhilaratingly dramatic and often humorous script unfolding in one day, all the while staying away from simplistic dichotomies, by having a clear centre – “I’m obsessed with studying the fear of loneliness, which I believe is coded in everyone. For me, all the motifs presented here go to that same centre.“

We also talk about the archaisms this family is plagued with, or at the very least hindered by, and the contradictions and frictions those generate – which, added to various practical mishaps, leads to several boiling points –, about dramatic pacing and the influence of the Czechoslovak New Wave, about working with non-professional actors including the director’s own father, about Martinec‘s dynamic musical choices, about the universal quality of the film and the recent trend, in international cinema, to turn to the countryside.