#Film “A Love Letter to A Person I’ve Never Met”
@andy.nasta
Ladies and gentlemen, get ready to dive into the world of cinematic brilliance as we shine a spotlight on the enigmatic filmmaker, Sasha Korbut, and his latest piece, "Incomplete." Prepare to be captivated, because Sasha is about to take us on a cinematic journey.
“It started from the words that popped up in my head while waiting for an E train at West 4th Street - ‘I miss you so much.’ It was a late night, the winter of 2018. I was standing on the platform feeling utterly lonely and desperate for connection. When the train came I started to type letters on my phone - it felt like a testimony, a love letter to a person I’d never met. By the time the train reached 50th Street, the letter was pretty much ready. I finished it as I was walking home. While waiting for the traffic light to turn white I looked up and wrote a final line ‘I am here, waiting for you, on the corner of the street where you can see the full moon’ Looking back at it now I can say it was the first draft of the script that in 5 years will become ‘Incomplete’ film.
As much as Incomplete is a love letter to a loved one that I’ve never met it is also a love letter to New York, a city that has been my companion for the past 12 years. Being in NYC almost feels like a long-term relationship with a partner that I have ambiguous feelings about: a sense of commitment mixed with the unwholesome codependency; career opportunities and thousands of fleeting connections on one hand, left alone at night on the other. I was interested in exploring the latter - a sense of loneliness seems unavoidable in such an overpopulated city. When I set up to make ‘Incomplete’ into a film I knew that I was not the only one who felt this way hence I was looking for a way to make a personal story universal. I can humbly say that I believe I succeeded in it.
You know, to be heard at times you do not need to scream but to whisper because then people start to attentively listen in order to comprehend. The film has the quality of a quiet conversation that usually you have with a close friend in the kitchen. To make it a form of confession I decided to not include any dialogue in the film but rather use a voiceover that accompanies the main character’s journey throughout the day. It’s as if we have private access to his most intimate thoughts.”
Sasha Korbut.
1. Working with Oren Moverman must have been quite the experience.
Oren Moverman, and I met at a “Call Me By Your Name’ dinner hosted by Armie, Timothée, and Luca Guadanino during the film premiere in New York City. Don’t ask me how I got there - consider it one of those lucky moments when you are at the right place and at the right time. We connected on love for The New Yorker magazine. I also knew that he directed ‘Time Out Of Mind’ an indie drama starring Richard Gere. I recall as I got tipsy, I said to Oren ‘It’s not a masterpiece but it’s such a great movie.’ I am still laughing about it today. Back then I had no idea that Oren was a big deal in an indie film world, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and a well-respected producer. We first became film friends and years later I showed him the script and asked him if he’d step in as an Executive Producer. He said yes and I screamed. Just for you to understand Oren’s previous producing credits included Paul Dano’s first feature 'Wildlife' starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Carrie Mulligan, and Cory Finley’s 'Bad Education' for which he won an Emmy. So imagine me, a first-time filmmaker asking Oren to step into my project. I felt like someone believed in me. I now understand Lady Gaga’s viral speech ‘There can be a hundred people in the room and 99 don’t believe in you and you just need one to believe in you’
2. Cory Michael Smith and Pontus Lidberg bring their A-game to your film. What was it about these two that made you go, "Yep, they're the ones"?
Well, I initially wrote Incomplete keeping myself in mind to play the lead. It was back in 2018 when I was auditioning for film projects and I wanted to be an actor. I did some appearances in indie music videos and a few ads, I was even doing some background acting in ‘Ocean’s 8’ and ‘Succession’ but that was pretty much it. I thought that I didn’t want to wait until someone granted me the role and I’ll write one for myself. When we started to rehearse in 2018 I was ready to be the lead. Then the pandemic happened and we pushed the production to the foreseeable future. By 2022 I was no longer interested in being in front of the camera and wanted to step behind it. I thought of Pontus immediately. I remembered him from my years at The Joffrey Ballet School as he was my teacher for the summer program (Pontus does not recall it but I convinced him to make it our narrative because it just sounds fun). In 2022 he lived in Switzerland. He flew twice to New York to meet up and talk about the project. I played cool like ‘I got it all together’ while in my mind I was BEGGING him to say yes.
Cory was the last person who joined the project to complete the cast. At that point I was desperate. I could not find an actor who would agree to play a small role that is at the core of the whole film I offered the role to several people and none of them said yes. Then my film friend called and said that Cory was in NYC as he just returned from France where filmed the Netflix series Transatlantic. I knew Cory was a famous actor and had a massive following for his portrayal of Riddler in ‘Gotham TV’ series so I felt like I had nothing to lose and was ready to hear NO from him in the first place. Well, guess what Lady Gaga said about a hundred people in the room. Earlier this year Cory's friend after watching ‘Incomplete’ sent me a text ‘You made him sound to die for’
@andy.nasta
3. Let's talk sound. Leslie Shatz's involvement is no small feat. How did this collaboration shape the auditory landscape of 'Incomplete'?
I knew that the sound had to be at the core of the film. In ‘Incomplete’ I explore three types of connections that each human is craving to find and fulfill - intellectual, spiritual, and sexual. I wanted to use dance and sounds as a way to convey such connections, therefore in the coffee shop scene where two actors merge in a fantasy dance, the sound of the heartbeat became a symbol of a spiritual connection, in a mental battle over a chess game in the Washington Square park a ticking clock translated the intellectual engagement, and an orgasmic breath (the alluring subway dance sequence) reflects that sexual chemistry that we are dying to have during sex.
Keep in mind that before becoming a filmmaker I was writing for various editorials interviewing artists. I wrote a profile of Leslie Shatz for the FILMMAKER magazine. He was already an Oscar-nominated sound designer who worked on Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’ and ‘Dracula’ as well as 12 Years a Slave and most of Todd Haynes’s films and he was the only sound designer that I knew so I went to him. Luckily he was a fan of dance on the screen and he said yes to the project. I make it sound like everything came so easily to me. Well in some way it did. It just took a decade of connections and one existential crisis.
@andy.nasta
4. The screening at ROXY and QUAD cinemas is quite the coup. Any butterflies about showing your work in such iconic venues?
We had two sold-out screenings and a dozen people on the waitlist. Imagine how a 7-year-old in me who was born in the Soviet Union, and raised in Russia, and who grew up watching and re-watching ‘Home Alone 2: Lost In New York’ feels like? Would I have ever dreamt of having a NYC premier of my film at all?
5 What's the next step for Sasha?
I partly wish I had known. There is a known queer novel that I am interested in adapting into a feature. I am currently in conversation with the author but I keep asking myself two questions: “Am I the right person to adapt this book into a feature?’ and ‘Can I actually make it? ’I won’t know the answers until I start and therefore I make small steps forward. I will eventually know it and perhaps five years from now we will begin an interview with the question ‘Congrats on your first feature. Tell me how did it feel to adapt a novel into a movie? And by the way, big congrats on your first Oscar nomination. Who could have predicted it? But seriously speaking it’s a work in progress with no definitive future therefore time will unfold’.
@dreykaun