Your film started as a documentary about your mother but became a story about her absence. How did your camera's perspective change once she was no longer there to be filmed?
The whole process began with a simple desire to document the way my mother was facing her illness. She moved to the countryside and turned to alternative methods of healing, and throughout that time she remained incredibly optimistic, full of life. I felt a strong need to preserve that energy, which was deeply inspiring to all of us around her. At that point, I can’t say I had a clear idea of making a film, certainly not one like Wind, Talk to Me.
After her passing, as I began sharing memories of her with my family, I felt her presence very strongly. I realized I wanted to make a film about that presence rather than about absence, but the two are inseparable.
It became important for me to capture how different generations and members of the family each carry grief in their own way, and how, when we share that loss together, memories can become a kind of new reality.
You asked your real family to act in this movie. Was it harder to be their director or to be their son/grandson while the cameras were rolling?
While watching the footage I had filmed with my mother, I kept thinking about her way of being, how her wisdom belonged entirely to her, and to no one else. I found myself reflecting on everything that shaped her into the person she became, and I felt a strong need to embrace all of that within the film. The deepest influences on her life were her family and the natural environment she grew up in, so I knew that it would be impossible to make a film about her without them.
This kind of film, blending different forms and involving real people opening up about something deeply intimate, and even including my dog Lija, made the process especially demanding. Being, at the same time, a son, a brother, a grandson, an uncle, and also the director, was a real challenge.
Every stage of making this film was filled with uncertainty, but also with confronting a very familiar pain. As complex as it all was, what guided us through it was our love for my mother, and the desire to create a work that feels worthy of her life.
The story of the injured dog is very moving. Do you think taking care of the dog was the family’s way of taking care of each other?
From my earliest memories, my family has always had a deep relationship with animals and plants. As farmers, they devoted their everyday lives to caring for both flora and fauna. My grandfather Buda took care of the animals and the orchard, while my grandmother Ljilja tended the garden and the food we ate. And yet, as much time as my grandfather spent with animals, I had never seen him form a truly close, affectionate bond with any of them. That changed when I adopted Lija.
Lija came into my life a few months after my mother passed away, and very quickly she became part of the family. When I adopted her, I thought I was the one saving her, but it turned out that we saved each other. All the tenderness and love that had remained locked inside us suddenly found a way out through her.
In that sense, taking care of Lija became a way of taking care of each other. She helped us release what had built up inside us, and gently guided us toward moving forward.
The house in the film feels like it has its own soul. If the walls of your family home could talk, what is the one secret they would tell us about your family?
I don’t think there are any big secrets in my family, and even if there are, they certainly aren’t important ones. No one in my family has ever looked at life through the lens of modern ideas of greatness or permanence. They all grew up in rural surroundings, where very little is needed to feel content.
Most of them have never flown on a plane or traveled far. Everything they needed was already there, as long as we were together and taking care of one another.
Maybe that is the only real secret to the values of life.
The title is Wind, Talk to Me. When you are standing alone in nature, do you really feel like the wind is a message from the people we have lost?
In the final dialogue, my mother speaks about how she talks to the wind as if it were a person. She says that the wind is eternal, and that we need to learn how to build a relationship with ourselves, to truly listen to our inner voice.
I can’t say that I speak to the wind in the same way, but I do hear it every time. And within its rustling, I hear my mother’s words. I feel her in the wind, just as she once felt the wind within herself.
I want to know the names of some of your favorite artists, those who have deeply inspired you in creating your own art.
For me, a single great work does not make a great artist. What draws me in is a constant need to transform emotional and intellectual experience into something creative, to give it a new form. It’s about a process in which our deliberate thoughts are unexpectedly reshaped into something intuitive, creating a form that continues to carry and radiate that invested energy.
I am deeply moved by a lifelong dedication to expressing experience, to accepting the incomprehensible as it is, to sharing an intimate process, and to transforming the personal into something universal.
Some of the artists who have left a profound mark on me are Andrei Tarkovsky, Abbas Kiarostami, Mary Ellen Mark, David Gilmour and many others.
