C.L.E.A.N.
Inside a remote rehab sanatorium, four newly arrived patients, each one with a specific emotional damage, go through hell by discovering and enduring the vicious methods of the sinister doctor's treatments, attempting to stay alive.
We had the chance to chat about the film with director Aurelio Toni Agliata.
Why is filmmaking important to you and how has your life been influenced by it?
Honestly, when I was 8 years old i decided to become a filmmaker. I did not know at that time that this was a profession. I just knew that there is somebody behind the movies creating them. So I wrote my first 8-page script at the age of 8 and filmed it with the old Super-8 mm camera of my father. It was an 8 minute movie called “The Star Pirates”. From then on it was very clear to me what my aim is. It took some time to understand the way to become a director. But in that case, I would say where a will is, there’s a way.
And yes it changed my life completely and it still is changing it every single day. It is a source of never-ending energy that moves my life. That gives me the privilege of being creative every day. Day by day. Its what makes me feel alive.
As a filmmaker, what is the greatest obstacle you have faced and how have you adapted or solved it?
The greatest obstacle, when you do not come from a filmmaker family are the limitations of the mind. Limitations of what is possible in life. Making movies for the biggest part of the society is something understandable. Something magic that only can be done somewhere in Hollywood. Somewhere in hidden studios. Somehow, I think it is okay that people think like that because it preserves the audience to see movies as products. Movies are dreams are magic. They are a transition to another dimension of thought and feelings. It is good that they have a mystical distance to the method of production.
Can you tell us a little about your new movie and what motivated you to create it?
Well C.L.E.A.N. is a movie that was created by a whole team of people, like all movies. But in this particular case it was a movie that wanted to be understood, how to be realized. It was as if that movie had already a soul before being filmed. Like a capricious Diva demanding us to learn and to understand what it wanted to say. How it would like to be presented. It was a journey that we accepted while shooting it. And we where great together fighting to find the very inner trough of C.L.E.A.N. It was like being on an old sailing ship entering a mission to find the new land. We knew that there must be something. But we had the feeling that we where the first ever sailing this route to new land. We crossed an ocean and arrived there as a crew. One team that has become a family by giving birth to a movie with a very own atmosphere, texture and emotion.
How did you find your cast and crew and how did you maintain a strong relationship with them on set?
Well the cast and crew were mainly composed by my friend and producer Vjekoslav Katusin. He was the initial for all that.
What advice would you give to someone who wants a career in filmmaking?
Be sure that you really really need to do that. That you can not live without doing it. That you must do it in first row for your deepest inner. That it hurts if you do something else. And then: head up, straight forward and JUST DO IT. Be sure that you go that way by being a good person and respecting the others around you. Be sure that making movies makes you become a better you. It is your life. And your life is not there to realize the dreams of others but to realize your own dreams. What ever you do... become who you really are...
