By Hanna Rantala
BERLIN (Reuters) – Pitching a full-length movie about four elusive, hairy humanoids who grunt for dialogue was understandably one of the harder projects that directors Nathan and David Zellner have taken on.
“It’s the kind of project where either you get it or you don’t,” David told Reuters in an interview alongside his younger brother Nathan about their film “Sasquatch Sunset.”
“The financing was very difficult and took years to do because for obvious reasons, it’s an unconventional movie.”
The film showed in the special selection of this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where the co-directors had previously been in competition for the top prize with 2018’s “Damsel.”
Over 89 minutes, the mythical half-ape and half-human creatures – portrayed by Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek and Nathan Zellner – wander through California’s majestic redwood forests doing it, to quote the Bloodhound Gang, like they do on the Discovery Channel.
The overlap between human and animal behaviour is both the funniest and most uncomfortable part, said David of the film, which shows the Bigfoots, also referred to as Sasquatch, produce a whole range of bodily fluids.
“We’ve always just been fascinated with it and along with the way it kind of represents the kind of connection between humans and nature,” said David.
“Sasquatch Sunset,” which premiered at Sundance this year, is the Zellner brothers’ second Bigfoot-themed production after a short that showed at the same festival over a decade earlier.
Turning the actors into the hairy creature was particularly gruelling, requiring two hours to apply the hair and make-up.
“It was pretty heavy suits but, you know, you instantly feel like this, this beast, you feel like a character,” recalled Nathan, adding: “You have these big feet and you’re limping around in the real, you know, redwood wilderness.”
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala, Writing by Miranda Murray, Editing by Rachel More and Tomasz Janowski)
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