It took Winnipeg filmmakers Daniel Eskin and Trevor Mowchun more than 10 years to finish their first feature, World to Come. The production was so prolonged that Mowchun says he often referred to the title jokingly, thinking the film would only be completed in a time and place far away.
On the other hand, Mowchun says he found the experience freeing. Even with a small budget through grant money, the friends didn’t have to meet deadlines or satisfy the needs of producers.
World to Come is based on events surrounding the tragedy that rocked Winnipeg’s Jewish community in the late 1980s and 1990s.
In 1988, Rabbi Ephraim Bryks, the principal of Torah Academy in Winnipeg, denied allegations of sexual abuse against children. One of the alleged victims who came forward with accusations, Daniel Levin, later committed suicide. Rabbi Bryks was never charged with a crime.
The two directors, who had made short films together since they were teenagers, had complete creative control.
“We had all the freedom in the world when making this movie,” Mowchun tells The CJN on the phone from Montreal. “We could just figure it out as we went along. We could take any risks we wanted to with the form.”
With time available to experiment with the look and feel of the story, the directors shaped World to Come as something original and different. Ethereal and expressionistic, Eskin and Mowchun’s drama can be a challenging watch.
Unlike historical dramas that deal explicitly with facts and real-life figures, World to Come is much more abstract. It is also dedicated to Levin, who died at the age of 17.
There is little dialogue and many avant-garde elements, reminiscent of films by Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) and Andrei Tarkovsky. The pacing is deliberate and the story is driven more by visuals and sounds than plotting.
“You never know if these experiments are successful or articulate, but we had these ideas and we just went for them,” Mowchun says.
Audiences can decide whether these ideas work, when World to Come has its world premiere in Toronto on July 11, as part of the ReelHeART International Film & Screenplay Festival.
Even if the film’s formal elements seem intimidating, the subject matter will likely fascinate.
The drama tells the story of a Jewish man, Doveed (played by Daniel Silver), who returns to Winnipeg to find that members of the town’s religious community have not come to terms with the alleged crimes.
Mowchun says that Eskin was provoked to write the screenplay due to his close proximity to Winnipeg’s Jewish community in that era.
“I think when he found out about this [alleged abuse] and he started to inquire, he was met with some resistance,” Mowchun says.
Similarly, the Doveed character witnesses a spiritual crisis after returning to his hometown. There, old friends, family members and authority figures try to repress the past.
The film’s directors proved to be a good creative team, even if their focuses were different. Eskin was more involved with writing the screenplay and working with the actors. Mowchun worked on a corresponding “image script” on index cards, jotting down images and thematic ideas to expand the story.
“I wasn’t in any rush,” Mowchun says, adding that shooting World to Come was spaced out in small chunks over around four years. “I was content to work slowly… watching the footage and writing more scenes based on that.”
Although it has been more than a decade since the project began to take shape, it is not over for its first-time directors.
Eskin and Mowchun are now submitting World to Come to many film festivals, and are trying to get the Winnipeg Cinematheque to screen the drama. That would allow the film’s cast and crew, who shot the film in Manitoba many years ago, the chance to see the long-gestating project.
At least with a national premiere approaching this month, the directors can no longer joke about the title.
World to Come premieres at the AGO
Jackman Hall on July 11 at 7 p.m.
www.reelheart.org
*Story has been slightly modified to correct an actor's name.
