FFCC vice chair Hans Morgenstern spoke to director Yorgos Lanthimos about his new film The Lobster.

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, probably one of the most distinctive voices in that already distinctive cinema scene that Greece has produced in recent years, did something special to preserve his idiosyncratic voice when he switched to making films in English. He moved to England. Often, you hear about foreign filmmakers, especially Oscar-nominated ones, like Lanthimos, wooed by Hollywood to make their English language debut. But, when we spoke, he made it clear that’s not what he wanted to do with his career. We spoke while he was in Los Angeles … for a brief press tour.

Speaking from the offices of film distributor A24, which is handling the U.S. distribution of his first English language film, The Lobster (we reviewed it yesterday: The Lobster offers brilliant satire of the corrupted expectations of human coupling — a film review), Lanthimos explained his decision. “I purposely moved to England in order to be as free as I was, but try to make films with a few more means because the way we made films in Greece was very free, but at the same time the films were done with extreme low budgets, and it was mainly because of friends offering their services and their passion.”

(Read the rest on Independent Ethos; there’s also more of this conversation in the Miami New Times)