How to Build a Girl

“That’s someone who’s really enjoying writing.”

Beanie Feldstein, admired for her work in Booksmart and Lady Bird, hit the TIFF red carpet for famed feminist writer Caitlin Moran’s adaptation of her semi-autobiographical novel, How to Build a Girl. Feldstein is a riot as Wolverhampton teen Johanna Morrigan, who reinvents herself as “Dolly Wilde”, a rock critic and “lady-sex-pirate”. Feldstein promised Letterboxd that if Moran’s next two books about Morrigan, which have been optioned by the same producing team, are also adapted for the screen, she’s in for the trilogy. “Of course! I mean, she’s my girl! I feel so protective of Johanna and I love her so much.”

The Lighthouse

“I think the fart jokes work.”

The Lighthouse, directed by Robert Eggers and co-written with his brother, Max, is a film that the word “bonkers” has been thrown around a lot to describe. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson go head-to-head in the black-and-white, claustrophobic, psychedelic and disarmingly funny psychological horror.

Max told us: “I came up with the original conceit that, you know, the sort of horror-genre of a lighthouse, I’d never seen done. And then Rob needed a writing partner. Well, actually, he had said to me, ‘Do you mind if I steal this lighthouse idea?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, fine, whatever,’ not knowing where it would land me eventually!”

Writing as brothers, says Max, involved “a lot of turpentine being drank! That’ll make sense for people who see it later. No, I’m just joking. It was a perfect fit. We trust each other, and I think that’s the big thing about writing teams is you gotta trust each other. And brothers, you know, it’s easy. You’d hope it would be easy. Sometimes it’s not.”

When we suggested that the brotherly relationship likely influenced a lot of the flatulence comedy in The Lighthouse, Max agreed: “Yeah, again, it’s one of those things where we took risks. Comedy is about that. You’ve gotta be able to be honest and trust yourselves. We didn’t know how it was going to play but, thankfully, I think the fart jokes work.” (When asked at the TIFF Q&A whether those farts were real, Dafoe replied: “Half and half.”)

Jojo Rabbit

“Adults are ridiculous.”

“To me, Kak was so visceral and real.” That’s Jojo Rabbit producer Chelsea Winstanley talking about her imaginary childhood friend, for whom her family would set a place at the table and open doors, at her instruction. Jojo Rabbit’s writer-director Taika Waititi is also Winstanley’s husband, so her producing role naturally started early in the process, when they would share stories at home about childhood imaginary friends. Waititi plays the title character’s imaginary confidante: a stupid, vain, petulant and badly-dressed version of Nazi despot Adolf Hitler. It’s a character not found in ‘Caging Skies’, the Christine Leunens novel from which the film was adapted.

“We talked a lot, shared stories like that, so I think it’s very clever that he introduced that,” Winstanley explains. “It’s almost like we want to have some kind of heroes in our lives but we don’t know if they’re good or bad. Jojo doesn’t know the actions of adults. We’re just ridiculous. Adults are ridiculous. So it’s a really incredible way to show this kid that [Hitler is] not such a great hero.”

Winstanley, a director herself, was last at TIFF with the female-directed anthology film Waru, and produced the acclaimed documentary Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen, which was picked up by Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing and is currently available on Netflix. “It’s amazing how I get messages, emails from people around the world who have watched it, because they can, thanks to Ava DuVernay. She championed this film to get out there. I have a massive girl crush on her.”

On the topic of inspiring women, Roman Griffin Davis, who has been gaining notice for his title role, praised his acting coach, New Zealand actor Rachel House: “She’s properly amazing. She’s a great actress and she’s very good at teaching acting. She kind of taught me how to act. Apart from my mother as well!” Fun fact: House is a long-time collaborator of Waititi’s (and voices Gramma Tala in Moana).

At the Jojo Rabbit Q&A, actor Stephen Merchant revealed the inspiration for his Nazi Gestapo officer: “I don’t think it’s going to come as a shock to anyone that I obviously watched Raiders of the Lost Ark. The great Ronald Lacey performance as the Nazi Gestapo officer… he’s very scary and terrifying so that to me seemed like a great guide; you can be comic but every so often you just turn on that chill factor.”

Guns Akimbo

“Life’s too short to work with assholes.”

Daniel Radcliffe hit the red carpet this year for New Zealand director Jason Lei Howden’s Guns Akimbo, the follow-up to his micro-budget, metal-horror, splatter-fest Deathgasm. Also starring Samara Weaving and Rhys Darby, Guns Akimbo finds Radcliffe drawn into a live-streamed game in which guns have been bolted to his hands. It’s a far cry from Harry Potter and, looking over his recent output, we couldn’t help but comment that he must be having the time of his life picking roles as far from the boy-wizard as possible.

“I mean, I’m looking to be happy and live a nice life,” Radcliffe replied. “I’m very fortunate to be in a position where I can really pick and choose what I wanna do. No actor is in that position. That’s such a gift, so I’m very lucky to just get to work on stuff that I love and is maybe, I am told, weird, but I love it. And, yeah, also life’s too short to work with assholes, so I generally love to work with lovely people like Samara and Rhys and Jason. It’s very nice.”

Getting Radcliffe to name the film that made him want to work in movies is a tricky ask, since he started out so young. “That’s what’s weird about me is that I feel like most actors get into it by becoming a fan of film and then, like, ‘I wanna be an actor,’ whereas I was on film sets already by the time I realized I liked film. And I love film sets. I love being here. I feel like that’s what I fell in love with, was actually the experience of making things on set.” When pushed, he ponied up: “The first films I remember falling in love with are, like, Toy Story. Those are the first films that I remember seeing and going, ‘Oh, this is amazing’.”

Rhys Darby, who plays a down-and-out character named Glenjamin in Guns Akimbo, had been at the premiere of his friend Taika Waititi’s film the night before (Darby played Psycho Sam in Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople). “There’s nothing like it,” he said of Jojo Rabbit. “He manages every time to cast these fantastically comic-driven, gifted children, and [to] have so much pathos and heart. It was a triumph. I’m just jealous I wasn’t in it!”