Through the introduction of the second Sundance screening of his new movie “Closure,” director Michal Marczakin response to an viewers query on the movie’s premiere, needed to ensure the viewers understood the movie they had been about to observe was a documentary. “Not one of the scenes had been staged.”
It’s a clarification that turned out to be obligatory, as the lady exiting the theater in entrance of me stated to her buddy, “Thank God he stated one thing, I might’ve sworn that opening was the beginning of a fiction movie.”
That is, partly, by design. Marczak likes to cite his cinematic hero, and fellow Pole, the late Krzysztof Kieślowski, “fiction movies ought to seem like documentaries, and documentaries ought to seem like fiction movies.”
“Closure,” the story of a father’s seek for his lacking son, is a extra easy documentary topic and shoot than Marczak’s earlier movie, “All These Sleepless Nights,” which premiered at Sundance in 2016. That documentary, which weaved by way of Warsaw nightlife like an early Paul Thomas Anderson movie, pointed to a filmmaking expertise poised for a future in scripted narrative, as Marczak’s cinema was extra electrical than 99.9 % of indie movies. And the Polish director and his spouse, producer Karolina Marczak, had been, in reality, on the street to creating a story function, having written a script set on the Vistula River, which they had been rafting down on a analysis journey, after they met Daniel.
“One evening, we had been making an attempt to dock to one of many islands. Our flashlights went out, and it bought just a little bit harmful,” stated Marczak. “The banks had been actually excessive, and a person, Daniel, appeared from out of nowhere with this flashlight and guided us to security.”
Their savior, a late-40s man travelling alone, welcomed them to affix him at his campfire. It was there that he shared the story of why he was on the river: Daniel had been trying to find the physique of his lacking teenage son, Krzysztof, who investigators had cause to imagine possible dedicated suicide by leaping off a bridge into the river.
Within the morning, Marczak helped their new buddy along with his tools. The picture of Daniel standing in a small boat on the large river, scouring beneath its floor with a digicam on the finish of a pole, caught with the filmmaker. When the Marczaks returned dwelling, the plan was to complete the following draft of their script, however “I simply couldn’t focus as a result of I had him behind my thoughts, and we ended up pushing aside the fiction movie to make this doc,” stated Marczak.
That picture of Daniel within the boat could be Marczak’s place to begin for a month-long strategy of testing and prep, to search out the language of “Closure.” Nature would’ve performed a really completely different position in Marczak’s deliberate scripted movie — crammed with solar, swimming, and the enjoyment of nature.
“Daniel was combating the river with all his energy,” defined Marczak. “So how do I make the river the antagonist within the film?”
The director, who would additionally function a one-man movie crew, determined to shoot with extensive lenses from inside his topic’s boat (quite than one other vessel) to create a way of being with Daniel, putting us inside his battle. He additionally needed to keep away from being handheld, which might add a “frenetic nervousness,” when Marczak was satisfied the movie ought to mirror Daniel’s “meditative, repetitive search.”
The bottom of the “Closure” digicam and sound rig was a Sony A7 III (the up to date model of the small, comparatively cheap digicam employed on “All These Sleepless Nights”) and an Easyrig. The setup additionally included a customized prime lens made at Panavision in Poland and a modified DJI LiDAR for focus pulls, all designed so Marczak might shoot by himself for eight hours straight — and whereas getting good sound, and with all his tools both on his particular person or in his backpack.
“It’s all off-the-shelf (gear), however the magic is within the particulars and the way you mix it,” stated Marczak. “We simply pushed to the utmost of what that digicam can do. We spent an insane period of time (together with throughout pre-production) in shade grades to wash up the picture, de-noise it, add extra definition, extra shade, and grain to it.”
Earlier than capturing on daily basis, Marczak would take heed to William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops” and music from Oscar profitable composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s early collaboration with Die Angel (tracks the “Closure” staff was later capable of license for the movie), which the director stated “provides me rhythm and helps me within the working (the digicam) to set my temper and tone.” Marczak has hassle pinpointing it, however that music was intrinsically linked to how he envisioned Daniel’s compositions framed in opposition to nature. The mix of music and picture spoke to how he understood each his inner and exterior struggles within the context of his movie.
Marczak knew he wanted to counter the very shut perspective of Daniel with wider photographs that offered context for the huge river and the encompassing nature. He needed, although, to keep away from b-roll, and he actively disliked the way in which drones had been utilized in non-fiction filmmaking.
“I actually don’t like drones, so I needed to give you a technique to clarify it to myself so it might work,” stated Marczak. “The thought was that the drone would all the time be a continuation of the motion; it might be a part of my sequence.”
In different phrases, the drone footage of Daniel looking out might match lower with what was being filmed on the boat and within the river, quite than transferring exterior the unfolding of dramatic occasions to ascertain the world and tone, which was precisely what Marczak hated.
To perform this, Marczak’s spouse and producer Karolina tracked him on GPS, driving alongside the river with a drone pilot in her automobile. When the chance arose, the director would name within the drone, shortly take management, and shoot footage of the scene from above. Then, as soon as performed, shortly fly the drone again to the operator and shortly change again to his Easyrig setup. Slightly than waste time getting out of the water and the body, Marczak determined he’d “paint himself out of photographs” with visible results in put up manufacturing.
That’s to not say Marczak’s presence shouldn’t be felt within the film, as his deeply private interactions with Daniel come at key moments within the second half of the movie. For the filmmaker, the selection to incorporate these interactions was what felt “essentially the most real to the method of how the movie was made.” It will usually simply be the 2 of them on the river, with Marczak serving to Daniel with the search when he was not filming.
“We might sleep on these islands, we bought genuinely shut, we now have change into pals, we’ve helped one another, and there was a robust connection proper from the start,” stated Marczak. “Daniel gave me (a brand new father) a variety of life recommendation, and we had a variety of honest conversations, so at a sure second I assumed, whereas filming, ‘, perhaps I’ll use this.’ And I began to mic myself.”
Marczak is aware of his voice off-screen works in opposition to his try to make his movie really feel like a fiction movie towards the top, and he acknowledged he might simply have lower it out with out lacking a story beat.
“On the finish of the day, it’s a documentary, I wish to make it as cinematic as potential, however then there’s sure issues in documentary that I really like, as effectively, that you just don’t have in fiction. It’s stunning, I believe, to make the most of the instruments of every little thing that cinema has to supply, each fiction and documentary.”
“Closure” premiered on the 2026 Sundance Movie Pageant. It’s presently in search of U.S. distribution.