Written and directed by Jacob Richardson, The Aegean is a sweeping, ambitious epic. The uplifting story follows Hector (Costas Mandylor), a widowed Greek fisherman who feels the weight of his age in a world that has started to forget him. Everything changes when he meets Theodore (Nicky Dune), a resourceful, sharp, and endlessly positive teenager desperately seeking a saviour to rescue him from a dire situation. United by their shared struggles, they embark on a journey on the enchanting Aegean Sea, where amidst the azure waters, they discover a newfound purpose and a reason to carry on.
Set against the backdrop of the enchanting Sea, The Aegean takes the audience on an enthralling voyage that transcends boundaries, revealing the depths of human resilience and the redemptive power of friendship.
Leading up to The Aegean‘s premiere at the Brisbane International Film Festival, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the Jacob Richardson about his personal connection to the characters of his story, utilising the score as a character, and how he landed on Greece as the location for the film.
Nick: Watching this movie really highlighted, to me, the importance of show, don’t tell. We find out so much about Hector as a character through Costas Mandylor’s mannerisms, especially his eyes. But, I’m curious to know what show, don’t tell looks like from a screenplay perspective?
Jacob Richardson: Yeah, it’s really tough in a screenplay perspective. Because you hand someone a screenplay, and usually they’ve got page limits, you know? 90 pages is going to be like, 90 minutes. And you hand The Aegean to someone, and they go, “How are you going to hit 90 minutes with a screening play that, largely for Costas’ in particular, is a performance all in his eyes.
So, we sort of ran into that challenge at the front. I had a lot of people telling me it’s not going to make time. And then the first cut was like, 3 hours and 20 minutes. And then it was all about just cutting it back.
But I think when you’re making the movie, it’s all about three people who have to come together to make that performance work, right? It’s me, having written the script and directing Costas. But Costas also had to bring so much to his performance, all the time. It’s a big challenge for him as well. Not every actor would be keen to jump on board a project where they’re in it the whole time, but they don’t speak until the end.
Then there is also the editor. We had a great editor in Steph Liqourish, who is based here in Brisbane. And that’s all about making sure each moment is held for the right amount of time so the audience is getting what they need to get, without it feeling too performative or ham-fisted.
Nick: What did those conversations with Costas look like about the emotion he needed to show so that audience does click with his character, without knowing too much about him?
Jacob Richardson: I mean, he clicked on really quick. Each of the actors sort of worked in a different way. Costas, in particular, was the sort of person who just love to dive into the backstory of a character, and loves to dive into to it where it’s more for the understanding why his character is feeling the way he’s feeling.
He got a lot more backstory for Hector than the script had, and it was about working on that backstory together that I think gave him a lot of stuff. We shot on the island of Kythera in Greece, and he came to the island before he had to start filming, and he went out fishing with a few of the local fisherman. I think he got a lot of experience out of that.
Nick: In regard to the fishing, where did that first come into this story. Was it always going to be the story about a fisherman? Or as Hector’s story grew, did you then choose that profession for him?
Jacob Richarson: No, I always thought it would be a fishing movie. Part of it was because I saw another film at the time called Fisherman’s Friends 2. Which also, could not be further away from this film, if you try [laughs]. But one of the reasons why I thought I could make it, there’s one moment where he’s on the boat with the ghost of his father, and I thought I could make a whole movie just based on this scenario. And that’s where the basics came from.
So, yeah, he was always a fisherman. Then for a while, I toyed around, before I started writing the script, about basing it around my own interactions with my grandfather. Hector is sort of a proxy for my grandfather in many respects, and how he was dealing with the loss of my grandmother.
When I was thinking about the film, I felt Greece was the first place I wanted to film it. And then I thought maybe it would also work of the coast of Ireland, but at the time, The Banshees of Inisherin had just come out, and a bunch of other Irish content was coming out. So, I was like, “Let’s go Greece. I feel Greece is perfect for this film”.
Nick: That’s so fascinating that Hector was a proxy of your grandfather. Following that then into the other characters, where did Theo first come into the picture for The Aegean? And how did he evolve as Nicky Dune came on board?
Jacob Richardson: I mean, Theo is probably a representation of myself in some respects. Mainly from his interactions with Hector, and trying to draw him out of his personal grief. The whole point of setting it on the island, and of having Hector going through this – how he deals with the complexities of his own grief – is then backed up against Theo, who’s a young refugee teenager who comes to the island and draws Hector out of his shell.
So, I suppose the drawing himself out of his shell part is definitely based on my own relationship with my grandfather. My grandfather and I used to see movies together all the time. It’d be one of the things we did. And after my grandmother died, he didn’t want to go see films anymore, and I couldn’t get him back to the cinema… until Top Gun: Maverick came out. He was like, “Yeah, we’ll go see that one!” [laughs] And now we do it again every fortnight. We host a screening together here at home.
But once we set the film on the island, and in Greece, Theo’s character started to take on a bit more complexity and diverge away from myself. So, we built on things that were happening in Greece at the time and continue to happen. He became a refugee. The island of Kythera is beautiful but has a number of shipwrecks around it as well. We started to build that into his character. And when Nicky came on board, the character took on like a really buoyant personality, because Nicky is just the most happy, kind person you’ve ever met.
Nick: That’s interesting because I think the polar opposite personalities of Hector and Theo obviously lend to the drama of the story. But, I’m curious to know what it was like for you having to direct that intentionally antagonistic chemistry between the two actors?
Jacob Richardson: I fell Costas in particular can just turn it on when the camera’s on. And when the camera’s off, Costas is just hanging out with you. Nicky goes into his process a bit more. If he’s got a day where he’s got a big monologue, or he’s got to be antagonistic, he’s just sort of in his zone. He’s listening to music, hanging around by himself on set.
But if there’s a day where there’s a bit more camaraderie in the story, he is his bubbly personality. But later in the evenings, or on the weekends, we were hanging out with Nicky all the time. Nicky and I would play basketball every weekend together, so that was a fun time.
Nick: You spoke earlier about your personal connection to these characters, and I spoke to a director who said when it comes to telling emotionally moving stories, they focus on finding universality through specificity. Is that something you considered when creating the story for The Aegean?
Jacob Richardson: Yeah, that’s a good question. I feel like all the themes of the film are universal. Like, it’s set in Greece, produced in Australia, with actors from all around the world.
So, I think what resonated with them, and what I resonated with, was a lot of the universality of the themes. The grief and loss we’ve all experienced in some way, shape or form. And then also the idea of hope. The whole idea of the film was to make something that, by then end, felt hopeful. That you leave the cinema feeling upbeat.
I think part of that comes from making sure that while you know the themes that are prevalent are perhaps specific to this story, the theme of hope is universal too.
Nick: Can you have hope without heartbreak? Especially in a narrative sense?
Jacob Richardson: Yeah, definitely. I think the heartbreak here is very much what you mentioned earlier, in the show, don’t tell. That’s how I wanted to represent the heartbreak.
A lot of inspirations from a film perspective were things like Patterson, Wim Wender films, Jim Jarmusch films. Things that immerse you into that person’s life.
For Hector, it’s not just the repetitiveness of his days, but the idea of being on this big island and incredible landscape but being so alone. So, for the audience, we tried to also give them that experience a little bit and put them into this space. There’s a lot of wide, panoramic shots of the island without Hector in them, or without any characters in them, so that you’re experiencing that too a little bit.
Nick: I think an integral part of the film is Allister Harrison’s score. It makes itself very apparent right from the opening scene, and really does feel like a character itself. What was that collaboration like between yourself and Allister?
Jacob Richardson: Al and I have been friends since 2006, so it’s been years and years. He’s the best musician I know. And there was no one else I was going to pick for it, if he was keen to do it. And he was very keen to do it!
We met up a lot before I went to shoot it, so we were already working on it back then, and he came up with so much music. It was a lot of trial and error. It was a lot of soundboards that he would put together, and then I would try and get an understanding of what we then wanted the film to feel like.
I suppose that was also all before the editing and before the script. It was a good idea to do the soundboard, even before we went to film. And the film can end up being very different depending on how you cut it and how you grade it. Whereas with the music, you could really get the feeling of the film.
But working with Allister was great. The good thing about knowing him for so many years was that I could just tell him if I didn’t like something, or if I loved something. But the only issue was that he composed so much music for the film, we wound up cutting probably a third of his score. He just kept coming up with incredible ideas.
Thank you so much to Jacob for his time! The Aegean is playing at the Brisbane International Film Festival on October 27, and the Greek Film Festival in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in late October.
