Isabella Eklöf On Dogma 25, ‘Mr Nawashi’ & Streamer Diversity

Scandi cinema’s revamped Dogma 25 movement has its first project and director Isabella Eklöf is having some fun with it.

“A passionate drama between two people who like to tie each other up,” was the Border co-writer’s description of Mr Nawashi at today’s British Screen Forum (BSF).

Described as a “BDSM love story” last month, Mr Nawashi comes a few months after Dogma 25 was unveiled during a packed presser at the Cannes Film Festival with Eklöf and other Scandi filmmakers. Dogma 25 is committed to “protect the artistic integrity of feature film and create space for uncompromising cinematic storytelling,” coming 30 years after the original Dogma, which was led by iconic Scandi filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. Von Trier is unwell at present but “sends his blessing” to Dogma 25, Eklöf said.

Dogma 25 involves a 10-pledge “chastity vow” including a rejection of using the internet to write scripts and at least half the movie being without dialogue.

“Mr Nawashi was the obvious thing to do, it’s a chamber piece and you can travel with it,” Eklöf, a co-writer on Ali Abbasi’s Border and director on HBO’s Industry, told the BSF. “I thought this would be the time to tell my story because I knew I would have to do it at some point and because of the nature of experimentation and openness.”

She said she will likely involve an intimacy co-ordinator with the project but these co-ordinators are considered “annoying” by some and maybe the answer to their position in the industry today “is not as obvious as one might think.”

Dogma 25 movies will have small budgets of around £1M ($1.3M) and no more than 10 people working behind the camera, Eklöf explained. “I don’t even have to write a proper script I just do some monologues and images and then go and shoot,” she added. “Because of that freedom I wanted to explore my story, which is always difficult.”

She charmed the audience at BSF with some hilarious quips including that Dogma 25 emerges from the perfect nation, Denmark, because Demark “has a wonderful combination of tolerance and money.”

On a more serious note, she acknowledged Dogma 25 “doesn’t really help [filmmakers] that aren’t privileged,” but countered: “I hope the biggest thing is that [young filmmakers] see that it is possible to do something that is not necessarily pre-approved.”

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a no no when it comes to Dogma 25 and Eklöf gave the controversial tech short shrift, describing its ability to write scripts as “s**t.” She did note that it has a role in areas like VFX.

Streamer commitment to diversity is “capitalism on paper”

Eklöf’s Dogma 25 crew has been hugely critical of the streamers’ impact on cinema and today she branded these American giants’ commitment to diversity “pointless.”

“The streamers are a little bit like how capitalism on paper supports diversity but then you go into the store and there is a huge line of soap and it’s exactly the same, the same marketing and the same price,” she explained. “What kind of diversity is that? It’s pointless.”

Next up for Eklöf is Sky’s Nick Cave adaptation The Death of Bunny Munro, which she directed.

She had the audience giggling when she said she is drawn to characters like Matt Smith’s deeply troubled Bunny Munro because “my father was a psychopath.”

Eklöf was speaking at the BSF before Prime Video Europe chief Andrew Bennett and director Richard Curtis.