Lukas Agelastos film blog

Layla M. (2016) film review  by Lukas Agelastos, 12 December 2020. Layla M. is about a teenage Muslim girl growing up in Amsterdam who becomes radicalised. Layla is smart but stubborn like many kids her age- and of fiery Moroccan background. She has a hard time with the increasing suspicion towards girls with headscarves and boys with beards that she witnesses every day. While her disappointment grows, her faith increases. Layla connects with a group of Muslims who fight for their religious views. Layla starts posting flyers and films online depicting atrocities committed against Muslims. She also becomes interested in the charismatic Abdel. When her brother, who has more moderate views than her, and she are arrested by the police, Layla resolves to leave home. She decides to marry Abdel and leave for Belgium to raise money and awareness for their cause and to start an adventure. After they narrowly dodge a raid by the police on a group of jihadists, they flee to the Middle East, where

More on Directing Actors -  a guest post by Jay Jay Last month, I wrote an article about directing actors in a realist film . Interestingly, my fellow Raindancer , Jay Jay, posted this long reply on our closed Facebook group, which I thought was worth making into a guest blog post in its own right.

Directing actors in a realist film  by Lukas Agelastos I am intrigued by watching “slice of life” dramas, as this naturalism makes me identify with the protagonists. Like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, in my films, I want to give ordinary people depth to unfold their stories. For example, Loach’s marginalised but jovial characters resonate with the people I met in Scotland as a student in my teens and twenties, and Leigh’s three-dimensional personalities make me think about the way we deal with each other. Leigh wants the viewer to come away from a film “reflecting on the way we live from various points of view” (Leigh in MacGregor 2011). But as a film director interested in doing Social Realism films, how do you direct actors? This was a question that I constantly worried about when I was moving from documentary to fiction film. This article deals with the research I did prior to embarking on my own journey into directing actors while studying towards the MA Film at Raindance . I c

Structuring a Social Realism screenplay  by Lukas Agelastos In this article, I am looking at a concentration of the ideas and thoughts I drew from experts and professionals on screenplay structure. I am attempting to offset the lack of texts on Social Realism screenplay structure by discussing some concepts that seem to be relevant to the sub-genre. I will discuss how structure applies to "art cinema" and Social Realism. “Structure is the prime element of a film or television script. But while the importance of structure is clear, the interpretation is often less so” (Miller 1984). According to McKee (2014), the purpose of structure is to yield progressively building pressures that compel characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking actions and choices, slowly revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self. "It is because narrative structures bend time to human will that we delight in th

Social Realism films - a quick definition  by Lukas Agelastos Both Samantha Lay (2002) and David Forrest (2009 & 2013), the authors of the most important texts on British Social Realism, acknowledge the impact of documentary film on the genre. In order to define it, Lay lists the following features: It aims to show the effects of environmental factors on the development of character by showing the interrelation between location and identity (Hallam and Marshment in Lay 2002). They are texts which explore controversial issues in a society, especially in crisis or conflict (Lowenstein in Lay 2002).

Where do I start?  By Lukas Agelastos Before I start writing a screenplay, I need to come up with an idea first. Inspiration, research, and coming up with a premise are part of that. Collaborative writing with a screenwriter can also help in instances when I want to come up with new angles for a project, a completely fresh idea, or when I simply need the feelings of team play and accountability to bring a project forward. This post is from the perspective of writing a screenplay in the genre of Social Realism. While I mention Mike Leigh in this article, he isn't a great example of a screenwriter since most of his films are developed through months of improvisations with his actors rather than based on a script. But that's the topic of another article on this blog.