It seemed like she might never really get here. But flight delays, lost luggage and the solemn observance of a national day of mourning for the victims of a raw recent tragedy in the middle of the Sarajevo Film Festival could not, in the end, keep great Scottish director Lynne Ramsay from coming to the city for the first time, and falling for it hard. In town to receive the Heart of Sarajevo award, which she described with real awe as “a huge honor,” Ramsay also presented her brilliant 2017 film “You Were Never Really Here.”
In her Variety Lounge interview, Ramsay was terrific company, revealing details of her many upcoming projects, including “Die My Love” with Jennifer Lawrence, which is a comedy — to Ramsay anyway. “It’s about mental health…and the breakdown of a marriage. But it’s really f—ing funny. At least I think it’s funny… But I’m Glaswegian, so I’ve a really black sense of humor.”
Also in the pipeline there’s Margaret Atwood adaptation “Stone Mattress” with Sandra Oh and Julianne Moore attached, as well as an original screenplay — her first since her debut “Ratcatcher” — which is earmarked for Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara. “I just absolutely love actors,” she maintained, citing the close friendships she has with all of her past leads, and even mentioning a new project with “Morvern Callar” star Samantha Morton, which will be a music video for Morton’s upcoming debut album.
Ramsay also took time to spool back through her formative years at film school: “I knew how to take a still, I could do lovely lighting, but I didn’t really know how to move the camera… my first dolly shot was the worst dolly shot you’ve ever seen.” But she’d only turned to film because a disastrous interview put paid to her ambition to study Fine Art and Photography at St Martins College. “I’d a terrible interview with this guy that took these really kind of lewd nudes. I hated his work. And I think he hated me.” Film school itself was not without its sacrifices: “I’d applied really last minute. And my boyfriend at the time had been waiting and waiting to go to film school as a cinematographer. And then he didn’t get in and I did, and that was the end of the relationship.”
20-odd years and four dazzlingly disparate features later, it’s safe to say Ramsay has worked out how to move the camera, among many other skills. “I just was interested in the whole combination of what it takes to make a film.” She learned from editors, cinematographers, documentarians, animators and perhaps that omnivorous curiosity is what separates her from certain film-school peers who “thought they were bloody Fellini in their first year.” She rolls her eyes eloquently. “I’ve never heard of them again.”
