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Talents From ‘Holy Spider’, ‘Ballywalter’ & ‘Boiling Point’ Discuss The Screenwriting Process & Balancing The Writer-Director Relationship: “Sometimes It’s About Digging Sideways” — Storyhouse
Ali Abbasi, Mounia Akl and Stacey Gregg on how they achieve their best work and balance the writer-director relationship at Dublin's Storyhouse.
The second day of Dublin’s Storyhouse screenwriting festival kicked off with a bang on Friday as established writer-directors Ali Abbasi( Holy Spider), Mounia Akl( Costa Brava Lebanon) and Stacey Gregg( Ballywalter) all discussed at length the process of how they achieve their best work and how they balance the writer-director relationship. Abbasi’s Holy Spider is a film noir based on the true story of the “Spider Killer” Saeed Hanaei who saw himself as on a mission from God as he killed 16 women who were sex workers between 2000 and 2001 in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad, and Abbasi said that when it came to making the Palme d’Or contender he was drawn to the “sensational” element of the project. Akl went on to reflect about the experience of working on her debut feature, Costa Brava Lebanon, about a free-spirited family that escapes the overwhelming pollution and social unrest of Beirut by seeking refuge in a utopic mountain home they built for themselves.
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