“The central characters and their stories are fictional,” reiterates the director. “Urs appears briefly in the epilogue as a personal homage, bringing the film back to someone whose life helped set this project in motion.”
This curiosity for the many shapes of grief is translated in the film through magical realism. “Grief can change your experience of time, of a place, of what an ordinary coincidence means to you,” he says. “At certain moments, I wanted the film to enter that subjective experience, to find an image for something the characters couldn’t put into words. I was trying to photograph a feeling.”
Courtesy of Zurich Film Festival
Shooting in Nova Scotia, where the accident took place, “mattered enormously” to Mueller and his team. “The coastline is beautiful, but once you understand what happened there, you experience it differently. We wanted to capture something of the memory the landscape holds alongside its beauty. Our cinematographer, Claudine Sauvé, brought a remarkable sensitivity to that.”
Swiss programmers and industry experts have called “111 – Echoes From Halifax” “Switzerland’s most anticipated film,” a title Mueller doesn’t take lightly. “It’s humbling, and of course it brings a certain amount of pressure,” he says. “The tragedy remains part of Switzerland’s collective memory, so I understand why people are curious about how a film might approach it. Some will also come with very personal memories and understandable apprehension.”
The screening will be even more poignant since former Swissair pilots will be in the theater. “I’m conscious of what it means to invite them into a cinema to revisit those memories. My hope is that they feel the care with which we approached the story, and that there’s room afterwards to talk.”
The Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24 – Oct. 4.
