With the global health and wellness market valued in excess of $5 trillion, it’s unsurprising that some view the industry’s many claims through the sceptical lens of placebo profiteering however when Writer/Director Leo Villares was doing his own research into the sector, he learnt he needed to get over his own ingrained misgivings and that there may be more than meets the eye. The Farm, from Picloc Productions, is a short film about openness and empathy triumphing over cynicism, featuring tight shots of Tom Stourton as a reticent anxious unbeliever whose driving scepticism puts him at odds with the opportunity for an emotional breakthrough with his wife offered by the wellness cult, and expressed through the film’s lush cinematography capturing the natural beauty of their idyllic location. The Farm certainly left me with a desire to open my own, perhaps overly closed mind to a way of being that might make us uncomfortable yet may well hold truths which justify the industry’s ongoing meteoric popularity. As The Farm continues on its festival run, we spoke to Villares about rethinking shooting locations as dirt roads gave way and idyllic waterfalls became deadly flood risks, and finding a warmth and relatability to his protagonist’s situation by being compelled to let go of his expectations about the production in order to embrace the opportunities of the realty on the ground.
Take us back to the start, when did the idea for The Farm come to you?
The Farm first started to take shape when my lifelong obsession with cults intersected with my own explorations of spirituality. Like so many mildly anxious twenty-somethings, I downloaded a mindfulness app in an attempt to improve myself. However, as I listened to teachings about one-ness and ego death I found I had to overcome a sort of secular cynicism that was hard-wired into me. I really wanted to believe in something greater, yet there was a protective mechanism inside me which sneered whenever an idea was too big or scary to compute. The clash between cynicism and sincerity was a strange back and forth. I felt there was an interesting paradox here, and I wanted to follow a character who is able to break free of their protective layers of irony and finally have an honest emotional experience. As the writing of The Farm progressed, it became like a sort of wishful thinking – I wanted to take the most insecure, uptight person you’ve ever met and put them face to face with a powerful mystic, who annihilates their carefully constructed worldview.
I wanted to drop my protagonist, the ultimate stick-in-the-mud, into that group and watch chaos unfold.
Research through my Brazilian family led me to such a powerful figure – a psychiatrist and writer called Roberto Freire, who pioneered experimental therapy techniques on his remote ranch in Brazil in the 70s. Freire opposed attempting to ‘correct’ the behaviour of his patients with tranquilisers and electro-shock therapy, as was the prevailing methodology of the time. Instead he would give them the time and space to plunge head-first into their perceived madness – a process known as ‘anti-psychiatry’. Freire and his followers would roam around his ranch half-naked, mud-bathing, screaming into waterfalls and playing theatre games, in the pursuit of an anarchist utopia. As soon as I saw those photos of Freire and his patients doing strange group exercises on his ranch – flapping their arms at each other, touching their feet and crowd-surfing one another, bathed in blazing sunshine, I knew I wanted to film that. I wanted to drop my protagonist, the ultimate stick-in-the-mud, into that group and watch chaos unfold.
I love squaring the circle with comedy and horror, how did you and Writer Shir Ariya craft all of those golden moments which were then amplified by the cinematography?
The film is about anxiety, and to me, anxiety is both funny and terrifying. Anxiety warps the reality before you and creates a kind of private horror-thriller movie that plays in your head. The idea that you’re stuck in a very powerful internal nightmare when the reality is perfectly mundane and harmless, is simultaneously comic and tragic. I’m always drawn to films that play on this axis of horror and comedy.
We would use a slow, creeping zoom to show that claustrophobic, anxious feeling of the world closing in on you – of tunnel vision narrowing your whole world down until all that’s left is you and the object of your worry.
With Cinematographer Sahil Kotwani, we built a cinematic language to support this effect. In Calvin’s most anxious moments we would use a slow, creeping zoom to show that claustrophobic, anxious feeling of the world closing in on you – of tunnel vision narrowing your whole world down until all that’s left is you and the object of your worry. Then we snap back to reality, employing wide lenses and more distant, objective framing to show the real world around Calvin – carrying on, undisturbed by his internal nightmare. The Farm is at times a little cruel in its comedy, but I wanted to make a film that would show this anxious nightmare unravelling and vanishing to leave behind something more warm and open. I hope The Farm is a reminder for us to stop watching the film in our heads and pay attention to what’s actually in front of us.
The choice of a slider rather than dolly allowed us to have controlled camera moves without the headache of levelling dolly tracks on uneven terrain.
Is the setting Freire’s actual retreat and how did you plan what equipment you wanted to use to capture that remote location?
We weren’t able to access Roberto Freire’s fabled ‘Coyote Ranch’. However we were very lucky to film at the Sítio Arraial ranch in the Mantiqueira mountains – a very special, secluded place which has hosted many spiritual retreats. We shot for five days on location. The choice of a slider rather than a dolly allowed us to have controlled camera moves without the headache of levelling dolly tracks on uneven terrain. The local power supply was inconsistent and couldn’t be trusted to support our power-hungry HMI lights, so we brought a huge generator. For nighttime exteriors, our DP Sahil Kotwani wanted to fake moonlight from high in the sky. We needed plenty of grip equipment to construct what our Key Grip Matheus Rufino called ‘the giraffe’, a long-necked configuration of rolling stand and boom arm designed to get lights high up in the forest canopy.
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Getting all of this equipment to the location was no mean feat – despite choosing the driest period of the year, the first three days of our shoot were absolutely drenched. The tropical downpour was unrelenting as we arrived on set – four of our trucks and vans got completely stuck in the mud and were hauled to safety only late in the night when we desperately appealed to the local mayor to borrow a tractor. Internet down. Over the next 48 hours we had the local council on speed dial. Our local sewage system overflowed, meaning we had once more to call in support from municipal authorities, in the form of a giant sewage-sucking vacuum. All the surrounding dirt roads turned into slurry until the council laid rocks and rubble to return some structure to them. To top it all off, on our first walking tour of the grounds with the actors, we came across a venomous, deadly Jararaca viper. I don’t think any of us slept well that first night.
I am bowled over by the sheer number of absurd hurdles you faced. How did all of those obstacles, and knowing you had to surmount them, affect and challenge you as a filmmaker?
All this wave of chaos turned our filming plans upside down. Our production partners at Volta Filmes – EPs Tie Villares and Felipe Duarte, along with their production team of Maria Gentil, Will Velasco and Lanna Marcondes, did heroic work through the night to keep us safe and keep the train rolling. Every day we had to rethink all of our shooting locations. Once idyllic waterfalls were transformed into dangerous rapids. This is my most ambitious short film to date so the stakes had never been higher. It was a real exercise in ‘just keep swimming’, trying to hold onto the story but not be unnecessarily attached to any particular place or event. I felt similar to Calvin – forced to learn to let go of the film that was playing in my mind, and embrace the one taking place around us.
DoP Sahil came up with a great improvised camera move, using the slider to orbit around Bernardo, showing several new cult members in the background and panning to reveal Calvin joining the circle.
At the end of the third shooting day something wonderful happened. As we were moving from day to night shifts, we were allowed a lie-in the next morning so we had a pool party to let off some steam. The next morning we find glorious sunshine. The sleep and the sun were priceless. We shot the final scene of the film, which called for several crew members to join in as supporting artists, playing cult members on screen. Everyone was relaxed and had made friends, Bruno Kott was leading us through the breathing exercise. DoP Sahil came up with a great improvised camera move, using the slider to orbit around Bernardo, showing several new cult members in the background and panning to reveal Calvin joining the circle. This felt like a different kind of camera language to the slow zooms we had used earlier on – moving the camera more rapidly and orbiting around to show a true shift in Calvin’s way of thinking.
Tom Stourton is brilliant as Calvin, I’m currently enjoying his role in Industry. How did you approach him and sell the role to him?
I was inspired to reach out to Tom after watching his film All My Friends Hate Me, which I love. He gave a Q&A and spoke about the inspiration for his film – an attack of hungover anxiety he had at a wedding party. Hearing him speak that day, I felt he really succeeded in capturing the blend of paranoia and comedy that we were striving for – from that point onwards he was on all of our moodboards and ideal casting decks. The process of getting in touch with him was pretty standard – our UK Casting Director, Jane Frisby, got the script to his agent, who eventually surprised us all by coming back with an affirmative response. Working with Tom was great. His writing chops came in very handy – we were able to workshop scenes and improvise new dialogue throughout the rehearsal process. I love how quickly he can pivot from doing silly physical comedy to asking serious, probing questions about his character. Off set, Tom the actor was actually the polar opposite of Calvin – he took to Brazil with real warmth and curiosity, always keen to meet new people and experience new things.
Whilst we were shooting on set Bruno Kott, playing the leader Bernardo, would act as our true on-set guru. He would lead morning warm-ups for the cast and crew based on the work of our inspiration Roberto Freire.
It was always our goal to blur the lines between the real world and the story world when filming. It was my dream that the production, for the actors, would truly feel like a bizarre spiritual retreat. We were very lucky to have some precious days of rehearsal together in Sao Paulo before heading to our shooting location in the mountains. Actor James Turpin led some really fun theatre exercises and Capoeira sessions with us, to loosen us all up and ease Tom and Aurora Dawson-Hunte into Brazilian culture. Whilst we were shooting on set Bruno Kott, playing the leader Bernardo, would act as our true on-set guru. He would lead morning warm-ups for the cast and crew based on the work of our inspiration Roberto Freire. The fact that we were such an international group, able to shoot in a truly remote and magical place, (the Sítio Arraial in São Bento do Sapucaí) definitely helped create the feeling that we were forming a rag-tag family on an expedition into the unknown.
I would love to hear about audiences’ reactions to the film as there are serious undertones here intermixed with the comedy.
As mentioned before, the commodification of wellness and spirituality was a theme that inspired us to write. I’ve since had some audience members tell me funny stories of encountering ‘esoteric’ types – signing up for a massage session and accidentally finding themselves in a trauma therapy circle. Poking fun at the wellness industry and those who engage in spiritual jungle tourism is all very well. However, I was more happy to hear one viewer say the ending had a ‘strange warmth’ that almost made him want to ‘join a cult’.
I hope that any sarcasm in the film is balanced out by the concession that, ultimately, these places do help people. We all want to belong. It’s been very rewarding to hear viewers say they relate to Calvin’s feeling of isolation and understand the anxiety of being an unwelcome addition to a close-knit group. In pre-production I’d often worried about Calvin being an overly unsympathetic character, but I’m glad to hear that some people can understand the route of his insecurity and therefore forgive his missteps. I think it’s great when you judge a character in a film and then they completely surprise you – so I’m overjoyed when viewers report this experience.
Sound design is such a key part to the film, melodic, rhythmic soothing sound clashing into horror.
Guillermo Pita created a wonderful original score for us, with additional music from Maria Toró. They took inspiration from Ruben Ostlund’s The Square, and Mike White’s White Lotus, but used Brazilian instruments and layered arpeggios of vocalisation to give a sacred, ethereal feel to the music. Guillermo initially called the main theme Caco’s Lullaby, which I think sums up the melodic, soothing feeling you described. We wanted it to feel like the spell of the Farm working its magic, lulling you off to sleep until – smash, it’s abruptly cut off by Calvin kicking his girlfriend in the face.
These harsh changes in soundscape were handled well by our Sound Designer Dominika Latusek, and really helped add comedy to these transitions. She was tireless and eagle-eyed, always spotting little details that needed to be added. I love what she did with breaths throughout the film – from the layered, rhythmic breathwork of the group’s exercises, to the subtle, quivering nose breaths that highlight Calvin’s insecurity when he goes head to head with the guru. Ines Adriana, our sound mixer, did a great job of blending all of this together. This was no mean feat as she often had to retime musical queues to match on screen performance. She was patient.
The editing brings us full circle in the short runtime. How did you maintain that balance of tension while keeping the lighthearted comedic tone?
Our Editor Ryan Ling is great at remaining detached and objective, pushing the material to its limits and shuffling things around to create unexpected connections. He was able to find several transitions that worked better than what was in the script. Most fun of all was working on two-hander scenes with Ryan, and seeing him reuse actor’s reactions in unexpected ways – often allowing us to put an added comedic spin on certain lines of dialogue. Whilst cutting Ryan would keep checking in on the levels of suspense and comedy in the edit to make sure we were maintaining a good balance, and never sitting for too long in one tone or the other. Ryan’s editing room was many things to me throughout the long weeks of post – first a sanctuary, then a torture chamber, and finally, a home.
What’s next for you?
Very soon our company Picloc Productions will shoot a music video for Lowswimmer. We’re very excited to be partnering with Kodak, who will be donating the super 16mm film stock for us to shoot on. Picloc is also developing a feature film with director Remi Moses. After working with him on his short film Saving Art [read our full interview with Remi], we’re very excited to explore that story world further and take it in a more ambitious, dark direction.
