Joanna Hogg on turning personal history into fiction at El Gouna

Joanna Hogg chairs the Feature Narrative Competition jury at the ninth El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt this week, the British filmmaker's first visit to the country.

The jury includes filmmakers from Egypt, Iraq and Turkey, and the films she has watched span first-time and established directors, several genres and stories from different parts of the world.

Hogg approaches each film without advance preparation. “I prefer to go in with no criteria and a very open mind,” she told Variety. She also avoids advance information, seeking “not even a synopsis of the story.”

What is Hogg looking for in a film?

She described her measure in terms of impact rather than sentiment, favoring clarity and the sense of a filmmaker who has ideas about the material.

“I am looking for something that moves me, but it also can be something that strikes me in a particular way,” Hogg said.

“It doesn't have to reduce me to tears, but just something that's maybe got a clarity about it, a feeling that the filmmaker has ideas and a vision.”

Hogg sees little sense in applying the same criteria to every film. “I really feel like I've travelled, even though I've been here in El Gouna. I've really travelled all over the place.”

She wants attention and clarity before tears. Emotion alone does not decide her choices.

What has El Gouna changed for Hogg?

Hogg called herself an outsider on a jury drawn from Egypt, Iraq and Turkey. Listening to her colleagues has widened her plans beyond the festival's own programme. It has “whetted my appetite to discover films, actually not just from Egypt, but the Middle East in general.”

The festival also returned her to cinema after months at home, a change she counts as a clearing of the mind before the next judging round.

“I've been stuck at home for quite a few months writing and actually not watching any films,” Hogg explained.

“It's been really nice to come here with a sort of clear mind, not having been watching cinema at all. Reading a lot, but not watching. And so I think it made me more receptive to the films.”

Time away from her own script made her more receptive to the films she judged.

How does she turn a life into fiction?

Hogg is now writing her next feature, still unannounced, and it returns to the line between lived experience and fiction. Her earlier films include “The Souvenir,” “The Souvenir Part II” and “The Eternal Daughter.”

“I'm very interested in the sort of tension between what's personal and a real experience that I've had and turning that into cinema and into fiction,” she said.

Experience has not simplified the work. “It's a different story that I'm telling with this film. Each time I'm learning from scratch in a way, which I quite like,” Hogg said.

Three films built on personal material, and each new one starts from scratch, because the story she tells now is a different one.

Why did she leave television behind?

After graduating from film school, Hogg worked in television rather than making features. “It was a disappointment in a way that I went into television,” she acknowledged.

“I went into it because I needed to work and it wasn't as easy as I thought making a first feature film.”

The decision came during a rehearsal for a television episode she had not written, and she remembers the exact place she stood that day.

“I was rehearsing a scene with these actors. It was very much television and it was not a story that I had any relationship to. I hadn't written the script,” she recalled.

“I almost can remember where I was standing when I thought this,” Hogg said. “I thought, I really must tell something personal.”

She needed a story of her own before she needed a directing credit.

Who pushed her toward a first feature?

Barbara Stone, a late American film producer and Hogg's friend, supplied the final push. After Hogg told her she intended to make a short, Stone asked: “Why make a short film? Make a feature.” Stone went on to produce “Unrelated,” Hogg's 2007 debut.

Hogg's friendship and working relationship with Tilda Swinton dates back to her 1986 graduation film, “Caprice.”

Their careers diverged for decades after “Caprice” before they reunited on “The Souvenir,” “The Souvenir Part II” and, later, “The Eternal Daughter,” according to Hogg.

“We talk about this sometimes and we said, ‘Well, actually, maybe it's not a bad thing. We both developed our own way first,’” Hogg reflected.

“Then when we came together with ‘The Souvenir,’ which was many years later, it was such a pleasure. We did think, well, ‘Why the hell have we taken this long to do another piece of work? We'll do more work together.’”

Stone's challenge and Swinton's return each pushed Hogg toward the features she now makes.

What happens when she goes home?

The still-unannounced film waits for Hogg back home, and she expects the transition from judging other people's work to be difficult after several days at El Gouna.

“I'll have to decompress,” she explained, allowing the films she has watched to settle before she can “come quietly back to my story.”

Her next test is whether she can step away from other people's finished films and re-enter her own unfinished one.