The Heart of the Sky
The Heart of the Sky is a fiction-documentary hybrid film project about an immigrant family who recently arrived in Toronto. Sandor, a controlling man who constantly interferes in the family’s affairs, holds the family’s immigration documents. He is a community leader from back home, who has helped them come to Canada. To escape their troubles, Ali, the youngest son in the family, constructs a fantasy world in which he and his sister are connected to a form of divinity. For a while, they escape into their fantasies. Eventually they get cold and hungry and return home to their dysfunctional community.
In The Heart of the Sky I attempt to evoke the sentiment of a disrupted family through the eyes of two of its members. I have made several films that deal with family dynamics, and my interest relies on the idea that family relations are a reflection of the social and economical turbulences of society as a whole. The film introduces a Hungarian Roma refugee family that has not been able to adjust to life in Toronto. However, there are no concrete references to the place they come from or to the place they have immigrated. My intention is to make a film in which the issue of displacement is apparent only through simple gestures. I am interested in depicting a family that is in between places; the film will not be a description of the clash of cultures, but an immersion into a very particular family that seems to exist in a vacuum.
I need a junior research partner to help me work through the whole postproduction process. I just started reviewing footage, and I am interested in a student who will help me catalogue the material and organize the editing. The film shoot was not based on a concrete screenplay, so the editing process will consist of discovering, writing, and constructing a film. The student needs to have an interest in both fiction and documentary filmmaking, be proficient with FinalCut Pro, and know, or be willing to learn, a postproduction workflow for RED (4k) footage. Knowledge of sound postproduction and color grading would be great.
The junior research partner should be keen and willing to engage with the material. I welcome a new perspective on what I have shot as well as help organizing the footage to create a structure. I will edit the film with the assistant, and afterwards I will need help managing media.
