Calgary International Film Festival 2015 - Interview with Hyena Road's Paul Gross

Posted on Wednesday, October 07, 2015 at 08:00 PM

CIFF 2015: Interview with Hyena Road's Paul Gross

Interview by CalgaryMovies.com

Hyena Road is the latest film from Canadian director / actor / writer Paul Gross, which was released as a Gala Presentation during the Calgary International Film Festival 2015. Based on the war in Afghanistan, the film follows a sniper (Rossif Sutherland), an intelligence officer (Paul Gross), and a legendary Mujahideen warrior in their battles with external and internal conflicts. They all face the atrocities of modern warfare, with their stories told from a Canadian filmmaker's perspective.

Being an industry veteran in Canadian film and television, Paul is known best for his contributions to definitive Canadian produced tv shows such as The Red Green Show and Due South. Also, as the director and main actor in the big budget 2008 film, Passchendaele, taking on Hyena Road would be an extension of his previous work in the war film genre.

Following the screening of Hyena Road at this year's CIFF, we got the chance to catch up with Paul Gross to ask him a few questions:

CM:  Let’s start with something a bit on the lighter side. What’s your preferred social media?

Paul:  I don’t really use a whole lot of social media, although lately I’ve been on Twitter as we’ve been promoting the film. Twitter terrifies me — it’s like crack cocaine.

CM:  Current book you’re reading or just read?

Paul:  Just finishing Aliens and Anorexia by Chris Kraus — she’s brilliant and the book is a wonder.

CM:  Who’s your favourite director?

Paul: If you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick one, I think it would be Bertolucci — 1900 endures as one of the great triumphs on cinema

CM:  What’s in your playlist?

Paul:  First Aid Kit right now — over and over.

CM:  What’s your most favourite film of all time?

Paul:  I don’t really have one. But if I were to have a double bill it would be The Conversation, lightened up by Butch Cassidy.

CM:  Hyena Road. What made you want to do this more modern war film? Why now?

Paul:  The film started with a trip I made to Afghanistan in 2010 as part of a group to visit the troops. I found the experience bewildering and seemed to bear no relationship to what I had been led to expect about Afghanistan by governments or the media. I decided I would return with a camera team and photograph the war zone which I did in 2011. It was during this trip that the idea for the movie started to take shape and the first draft of the script was complete a few months later. Of course, that’s the simple part. Financing it is always the challenge and there were many starts and stops before we finally got the cameras rolling last year.

CM:  This movie is very relevant and powerful. What do you want people to get out of this film?

Paul:  I was largely ignorant as to what we had asked/expected of our soldiers in Afghanistan. And I don’t think I was unique in this — I suspect there was a large swath of the Canadian public who had no real sense of what it was our soldiers were doing, which strikes me as shameful. It seems to me that when we send our soldiers to a foreign land and ask them to fight on our behalf we ought to at least know what it is we are asking them to do. And even though our mission in Afghanistan is finished, it seems likely that we will be engaged in another such conflict in the not too distant future, given the unstable nature of the world at the moment. We ought to have some understanding of what we are committing our military to when we do.

CM:  I hear financing was quite a challenge for your previous war film. Did you have the same challenges?

Paul:  Yes. Financing is the hardest part of movie making and getting harder with every passing year. Independent cinema is under enormous pressure and we can only hope that it lets up.

CM:  What was it like shooting in 2 different worlds? Afghanistan and Manitoba?

Paul:  We filmed about 60 hours of unscripted stuff in Afghanistan that appears throughout the film. We shot half of the script at CFB Shilo in Manitoba and half in Jordan, based out of Aqaba. Shooting in different continents is always a challenge and the logistics can become nightmarish. Probably the biggest challenge we had was shipping a variety of military grade elements into one of the world’s most turbulent regions. Crates of blackpowder, detonator cord, blanks, operational assault rifles etc. caused huge headaches getting through various airports and customs and at one point it looked as though the entire enterprise would collapse. Through dint of terrific effort, however, we managed to get it all in.

CM:  Love to hear more about your experience in Afghanistan and the challenges shooting there.

Paul:  It was dizzying and chaotic and beautiful and frightening and an experience we will never forget. The military was enormously receptive and accomodating — taking us out on helicopter runs, tank runs, foot patrols, artillery strikes etc. The footage we captured not only formed the template for how we executed the body of the film but also was our reference material for the crew involved in the film — like our bible, so to speak. We traveled light, without track or crane or lights, shooting on Reds and GoPros and some Sony digital thing. All of it makes an appearance in the movie and it’s thanks not only to Karim Hussain’s genius (D.O.P.) but also to the amazing things you can accomplish these days in the colour grade that it blends seamlessly. But all of this took a huge amount of pre planning.

CM:  Let’s talk about the team. In a war film like this do you find that the bonds is even more apparent much like the bonds between soldiers?

Paul:  Yes, it does and in that sense it’s a bit like any other film — the atmosphere on the set often resembles the atmosphere of the script or project. The bonds formed quickly and transfered easily to Jordan when in then incorporated the Jordanian crew who worked with us. It seemed as though everyone involved took proprietary ownership of the movie — it was theirs as much as mine. And that is the kind of environment i love to work in, where everyone is throwing their best ideas in to the collective whole.

CM:  What’s one thing you can tell us about each other that no one will know?

Paul:  Rossif Sutherland is fond of vitamin B shots. Christine Horne is terrible at ADR. Allan Hawco is mentally unstable. David Richmond-Peck is an e-cigarette entrepreneur. Karl Campbell has enormous muscles that actually work. Akkalu Meekis is a wonderful actor and equally a wonderful man. Neamat Arghand only narrowly escaped being killed by a suicide bomber between wrapping in Manitoba and the start of shooting in Jordan.

CM:  Mr. Gross, what’s it like to have this screening in your home town?

Paul:  It is a delight, always a delight. I love the spirit of Calgary — unique and open.

If you missed Hyena Road at CIFF 2015, Elevation Pictures will be releasing Hyena Road in theatres across Canada on Friday, October 9, 2015. Special thanks go out to @PaulGross_, Elevation Pictures, Rhombus Media, and Taro PR.

Calgary Showtimes: Hyena Road >

Calgary Local Scene Event Listing: Calgary International Film Festival 2015 >
CalgaryMovies.com's CIFF 2015 Coverage >