Enea Colombi's distorted realities

Your films feel like they exist somewhere between reality and a dream. What does “reality” mean to you when you’re telling a story or crafting an image?

I don’t think reality necessarily means something that could actually happen. For me, it has more to do with recognition. You can show something completely impossible, but if the behaviour of the people inside it feels true, I believe it.

Maybe that tension comes from there: starting from something very ordinary and trying to push it somewhere else without completely losing its connection to reality.

There’s often a tension in your work between something that looks surreal and curated, and something that feels emotionally truthful and human. Where do those two things meet for you?

I grew up in the countryside, in a place where I spent a lot of time surrounded by boredom and nature. There was often very little to do. I think that’s probably where my curiosity and imagination started. The instinct to invent stories, to distort reality, to place characters and situations inside places that fascinate me. Maybe that tension comes from there: starting from something very ordinary and trying to push it somewhere else without completely losing its connection to reality.

Your images are often surreal and experimental but without feeling detached from the real world. How important is the texture and physicality of real locations and props to your work? 

I prefer not to work with worlds that are completely built from scratch. When I work on my own projects, I spend hours researching real interviews, going through Reddit, reading weird stories, or just driving around in my car. Very often I find a location first, and the characters come from that place rather than the other way around. Most of the time, I would rather find something real and interfere with it.

A place can feel peaceful and  threatening at the same time. That’s usually the kind of ambiguity I’m looking for.

Above: BIRTH director Enea Colombi. 

Nature and landscapes are a common visual theme in your work, even when the images feel abstract or dreamlike. Why do you feel drawn to anchoring your work in the natural world? 

I like that nature doesn’t care about the story. A mountain, a field or the sea can make whatever a character is experiencing suddenly feel very small. There’s something violent about that indifference that I find beautiful. Visually, I also like using landscapes almost as psychological spaces. They  don’t need to symbolise one specific thing. A place can feel peaceful and  threatening at the same time. That’s usually the kind of ambiguity I’m looking for. 

Credibility is always at the base of everything: the faces, the costumes, the locations, the way people behave inside that world.

As human beings, our experience of the world is inevitably first-person. We see  everything from inside ourselves, looking outward. We cannot se ourself from  an outside POV. I’ve always been fascinated by doing the opposite: observing  people from the outside, inside their environment, almost as if they were just  one element within a much larger space.Often that means placing them against  the scale of nature, but I’m equally drawn to places that create a strong sense  of alienation: roads, parking lots, supermarkets, bridges. I’m actually very  attracted to large urban infrastructures. 

Are you trying to make people believe what they’re seeing, or question it? 

I think the most important thing is to create a world that feels internally  coherent, no matter how strange it is. So credibility is always at the base of everything: the faces, the costumes, the locations, the way people behave inside that world. I’ve never been particularly interested in telling a story and having the audience constantly ask, “Is what I’m seeing real?” 

A brief, by definition, gives you a road to follow. The biggest challenge is finding a way to make that road feel like your own. 

For me, that kind of question becomes much more interesting when doubt itself is part of the narrative mechanism, like in films such as The Hunt, sex, lies, and videotape or Donnie Darko. Otherwise, I want people to accept the world first.

Moving between music videos, fashion and advertising, does the idea of “reality” change depending on the brief?

Definitely. A brief, by definition, gives you a road to follow. The biggest challenge is finding a way to make that road feel like your own. The degree of freedom changes from project to project, but I think the instinct stays quite similar. 

What I try to do is treat the product almost as a second character in the story. I don’t want it to feel like an obstacle that has to be fitted into the film afterwards.