Radical Filmmaking & Killing Penises: An Interview with Miguel Llansó on Infinite Summer

Miguel Llansó is a maverick filmmaker. He doesn’t give much of a damn about what the Hollywood big pocket thinks about his films. After all, a Spaniard doesn’t end up relocating to Ethiopia and then Estonia if they are too concerned with the established ways.

Llansó’s debut feature film Crumbs is a low budget sci-fi romance set in a postapocalyptic Ethiopia. He reached new levels of recognition and notability with Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway where CIA agents in the future are tasked with destroying the Soviet Union. It’s an impossible sci-fi thriller that is a co-production of Estonia, Ethiopia, Latvia, Romania, Spain, and the UK. There are very few filmmakers with as globalized of a palette, let alone an output, as Llansó.

His new film, Infinite Summer, set in the Estonian countryside, marks another turn in his young and unpredictable career. It’s a queer film. It’s a summer love film. It’s a sci-fi comedy. It’s a technophobic take on our future. It’s thrilling. It’s erotic. 

The shy and sweet Mia (Teele Kaljuvee-O’Brock) looks forward to spending summer break with her childhood friend Grete (Johanna-Aurelia Rosin), returning to Tallinn from university in London. Grete brings Sarah (Hannah Gross), a Canadian friend who dreaded going back to the Great White North for the summer, back with her. The two college women enjoy each other’s company at a cost to Mia. Avoiding a new woman-crush on Sisi (Sissi Nylia Benita), Mia instead spends regrettable time on an augmented reality dating app with a creep named Dr. Mindfulness (Ciaron Davies) who gives her a strange respiratory device that induces strange video-gamey hallucinations and altered-reality (and, um, tentacley) orgasms. 

I reached out to Llansó over Instagram and we scheduled a time to chat over Zoom. Our interview was really more of a conversation about his life story, how he ended up in the Northernmost Baltic country, radical filmmaking, and killing penises (yes, you read that right). 

Llansó is one of the most out-of-the-box directors working today. It’s fitting that our time together was also fully unhinged.

The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. My review of the film can be found here.

Joshua Polanski: Before we get to Infinite Summer, I have some questions about your life story and how you ended up in Estonia. You're Spanish and you're currently in Spain, correct?

Miguel Llansó: I'm spending this year in Spain.

JP: But you've lived in Ethiopia and Estonia. Why both of those places?

ML: Everything that starts with “E.” Next is Egypt or Ecuador. 

It was a coincidence. I spent so many years in Ethiopia. It was a very conscious choice to go there to discover the world of Ethiopian culture. We ignore what is really happening there in the West. There's almost no information. It's always pissed me off that I couldn't access any Ethiopian movie, and I went there to challenge that, to discover, to learn basically. 

I came back from Ethiopia and spent some years in Madrid. Then I started touring with my first film, Crumbs, and I met my partner at a festival. That made me move to Estonia. Estonia and Ethiopia cannot be further away from one from the other [spiritually]. Estonia is quite cold [and], in a sense, dark. A different spirit for sure.

JP: Your partner is Estonian?

ML: Yes. My partner is Estonian.

JP: And you're teaching at the Baltic Film School, right? 

ML: Yes. I'm teaching at the Baltic Film School and it is a very great school. I like it. For being in a small city, the students are from all over the world and it creates a very interesting atmosphere. It is a good job. I got the job so I could move with my partner, so it was a great solution.

JP: And what are you doing back in Spain?

ML: I'm having a sabbatical because after seven or eight years, you can ask for a sabbatical year to focus on [your] own films and research and writing. So I'm enjoying that sabbatical.

JP:  Is there a specific project you're working on during the sabbatical?

ML: Yes, I'm working on two films. One is about the first Disney show in the Soviet Union in 1988. They took the Mickey Mouse mascot and everything to the Soviet Union. 

The other [is] a film that happens in Ethiopia about a space project by Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s and 1970s. It's a bit of a retro-futuristic project. Both projects [are] very linked to what I did before [in] trying to understand power, how people deal with power. [I’m] coming from an anarchist mind. I hate power. [In both stories,] with both Mickey Mouse and Haile Selassie, people face very dark and very strong forces of power.

JP: I saw you liked my anti-fascism post on Instagram.

ML: Yeah, definitely. It's the right moment. What is happening is really discouraging and everything seems to be collapsing in the sense that even supporting the United Nations seems revolutionary at the moment. I never imagined that. I thought the UN was a bunch of pussies, but now it seems like they are like Che Guevara.

JP: We're a long way away from what happened in Sarajevo. 

Do you think that this political sensibility of yours is informed by your experiences living all over the world, being an immigrant, and engaging in global cinema?

ML: I'm an immigrant. [I stand on] two grounds. One is traveling and trying to understand people as equals. Everywhere that I go, I try to learn from the people in Ethiopia, in Mexico, where I also lived for a year, and in Estonia. 

And the second [ground I stand on] is [that] I grew up within the Madrid punk or underground punk scene. That also informed me in the way that I [am skeptical of] the construction of power, identity, and everything. Everything should be challenged. I am basically anti-dogmatic in that sense. These two things, if you combine them, is where I go if you [ask] me what does it mean to hate power or to hate and be against any structure that has been formed and is suppressing and is there forever. From art to politics.

JP: Thanks for sharing. 

I wanted to ask you about Baltic cinema. As an outsider to the Estonian film industry, what are your impressions of the industry? Where do you see the energy? 

ML: I have very contradictory feelings. On one hand, I can perceive people trying to do amazing and free things. On the other hand, the reality is that Estonia is very small and everything is commented on and everything is perceived as something national.

That kind of kills any counter-cultural spirit or underground culture because the moment that you do something, it's going to start commentary, especially if you're Estonian. 

If you are Miguel and you are a foreigner, nobody gives a shit. The premiere of Infinite Summer in Estonia didn't go very well. It was a disaster for many reasons. Maybe the film didn't connect, but it didn't connect because I'm not an Estonian person. I'm not into Estonian circles. I'm not. There is a certain sense of nationalism that pisses me off a lot that has to do with this feeling of belonging to an ethnicity, a nationality. 

I used to like people and their cultures, but I'm becoming a destroyer of cultural identities. I think it's a terrible thing when cultural identities become something conservative, when they become folkloric. There is a certain sense of belonging or folkloric belonging that is connected to what we [can] call the Estonian cinema. And even if the themes are diverse, there is this feeling of a certain ethnicity and I don't like it. But the same will happen with a Spanish film. What is a Spanish film? What are we talking about Buñuel? Are we talking about Almodóvar? What are we talking about? I really don't want to take nationality as a common ground. I will take the thought, the position of the filmmaker but never the nationality. 

JP: Let’s move to Infinite Summer. Your aspect ratio is your canvas. I’m curious about the canvas you chose. 

Especially starting at the zoo with this metaphor for enclosed spaces, I was a bit surprised by the aspect choice being ultra-wide screen rather than something more narrow and confining like the Academy ratio. It works, but I’m curious what attracted you to the wider aspect ratio?

ML: We were discussing with Israel [Seoane,  the cinematographer] a lot about this because I wanted to have a more narrow space and actually I wanted to shoot it in 16 millimeters. Because it takes you to an old place. I don't like to place my films in the current times. I wanted to take the film into a known place even if it happens now. I never bring elements that can tell you, “Okay, it's 2025.” That was one of the discussions [along with] the aspect ratio and the film grain. 

We decided that since we were not going to [use] 16[mm], we were going to use another technique that moves away from the current time, which is the use of anamorphic lenses. We decided to work with anamorphic to bring a 1970s-80s spirit. And anamorphic makes sense in a wide format, which also conveys a bit the spirit of summer and the landscape. The landscape was important: not only the claustrophobic spaces but also certain landscapes. That's why we decided finally to work with a wide aspect radio like in Crumbs. In [that film,] we did the same, but it was more justified because we were going to travel through Ethiopia to find these abandoned places. The landscape was even more of a character than in Infinite Summer. 

JP: We talked about globalism earlier. Given the globalist themes in your films, I wasn't terribly surprised when the detectives were Interpol rather than the Estonian police or anything like that. Was it always Interpol? 

ML: It was always Interpol. I think Interpol is not used very [often] in films. Everybody is more attached to the CIA [and] FBI, even if they are operating in Latin America. And they did so much in the 1970s! But I was sympathetic to Interpol. They are totally away from film. Nobody is using Interpol very much. It's a little bit like Esperanto.

They are not really powerful in the way [the other agencies are.] They probably solve a lot of cases and everything, but [the] image of Interpol isn’t as controversial as the CIA.

Also, the film is in English and in Estonian, and I wanted to bring the aspects of both cultures. As you say, it’s globalized, mixed, and everything is in the middle. Interpol was a conscious decision.

JP: Let’s talk about the color palette. There's a lot of pink and purple and lavender, which, of course, has a psychedelic touch to it. It also has a queer aesthetic with the bisexual lighting look that I'm sure you've seen. How important was seeking out a queer aesthetic to the visuals?

ML: It was totally essential. I'm a male., I'm 46, [and] I was going to do a teenager film and it has to be queer in all aspects. A certain disintegration of myself, a certain fragmentation of myself. 

Many people will say if you’re not gay, don't make a gay movie; if you are not female, don't make a female movie; if you are not black, don't make a film about black people. That’s stupidity. It’s a process of learning. You have to be in a position [where you’re learning from others.] 

The film is based on my own experience when I was 20. I was very shy and I didn't know how to interact in this period when your friends from childhood don't fit with you anymore and you have to find new friends. I remember at one of these parties somebody called me a plant. We were always going with the same people and I was always in a corner and after 10 or 12 days in the same corner, this guy said “this guy is a plant.” I didn't know how to interact with the people. But in this case, I wanted to bring femininity and queerness. In the erotic space this film has, I first wanted to kill the penis.

When I was writing my first versions, the machine had a strong male presence. The machine wanted to somehow trick the girls, possess the girl, and it was my penis force talking there. And they said, “No, no, no, no, it shouldn't be a male. It should be a female force.” It should be a feminine force that is dragging these young women into a common space. So, I tried to get rid of everything that resulted in the strong, violent male perspective of domination. Of course, I am a male and probably many things are not [fully eradicated]. I didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve, but it was for me a process of exploration as well. A process of trying to understand how this mechanism works and how my erotic mind works and trying to get rid of things that had to do with possession, had to do with certain violence, with penetration. The tunnel finally is some sort of a vagina. It's not a penis coming out. 

JP: I’m curious if that changed the tentacle-thing at all because, to me, that's the most phallic thing left.

ML: It's more a masturbating hand. It’s the hand that gives pleasure and the hand is universal. You don't have penises and vaginas, but you have the hand and the hand is for everyone. Everybody—women and men and queer people—we all have the same hands. It's a universal measure of pleasure.

JP: That's great. To stay on the topic of sex, sexual expression and even intimacy more broadly is connected with technology in your film and that's normally very negative. Not always: the Interpol agents use AI to help locate the criminals. I’m curious about how does this reflect your own outlook on technology? Are you a technophobe?

ML: I'm totally a technophobe. One of the reflections I had when I was doing the film is that my students and the team here use a lot of apps to meet people. At a certain point, I asked them if they're going to meet these people in reality and some of them told me, “No, this is my Tinder-guy and we talk online.” That was it. In my generation, the aim was to meet the person and then go for a drink or this and that. 

Things changed a lot during the pandemic. Now everybody in Madrid is going out. Nobody wants to Zoom anymore, no more virtual going out. It was not like that before the pandemic. People really were into the virtual space and certain eroticism or a certain intimate connection through these spaces. For me, it has horrible connotations. 

JP: Would you use AI in the filmmaking process?

ML: Not really, no. I'm not very much into AI. I understand that sometimes it creates a wonderful thing. My friend Pat Tremblay from Montreal is making incredible movies with AI, which are a kind of horror and they're creepy and they are about strange worlds. I never seen a world [these] to be honest. The result is amazing. It’s really, really strange what he's producing. It's like if the AI mind was kind of a monster child, a Frankenstein and he's tried to educate the mind and the result is really creepy and strange. I have never seen in the history of cinema an image rendered that way. I'm not against how it renders or it can render visually with work and everything that could be creepy, strange and spectacular. But I'm more against using technology [to remove the people]. I like to work with people. 

I don't like to make a film for three years in front of a machine. I want to go to Ethiopia, meet these people, make them play a game with me—the game of film where people can imagine who they are and use the landscape and change it. This is what makes me happy.

I'm more interested in the glitches and the imperfection of AI and mistakes and that machine decomposing and failing than I am in the power of that machine. I don't care, to be honest.

JP:  What are you watching right now or recently that’s moved you?

ML: After making this film and entering into Hollywood and the world of suburbia and [spending] too much time in America, I decided to step away and leave that thing forever. Considering what is happening in the world, I am focusing again on the colonial dynamics and the liberation movement. I’m watching, for instance, yesterday I was watching God and the Evil in the Land of the Sun [more commonly known as Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil]. Third cinema from Brazil in the 1960s. 

I’m watching a lot of 60s movies. I’m watching Blaxploitation movies like Blacula and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. I’m also watching films from Africa that I haven't watched before like Badou Boy. I think in the early 60s and 70s there was a subversive root. We should come back to that subversive moment because what is happening in the world is really terrible. It is against freedom. In those subversive moments [in previous times], there were solutions to problems that were there and we thought they disappeared in the last 40 years but they didn't. They’re coming back. They’re coming back.

JP: What does it mean for you to make a subversive film?

ML: To feel the freedom again. Everything is possible. It gives hope. Power cannot write everything. Power cannot write the way you have to make a film, the way you have to live, the way you have to choose your politicians or create the environment that you want. Start with art. If we are not able to think in a subversive way, in a way that changes the classical structures or the structures that have become a pattern, how are we going to change the rest of the things in our lives? We have to start from art and we have to start queering, changing, provoking. 

Provoke to really shake the ground. Right now, it’s considered very provocative, very radical, to be empathetic. We need to come back to neo-realism and to the stories of these working class heroes in Bicycle Thieves. We need to come back to this idea of solidarity—to come back with this idea of community, solidarity, imagination. There are a lot of horror films at the moment and they’re based on paranoia and surveillance. We have to come back the opposite. We need more realist films where friendship and solidarity are the driving forces.

JP: Maybe that's a good point to end on. Thank you Miguel. 

ML: I’m very glad you connected with me and that we had this conversation because I had the opportunity to respond to very interesting questions. Sometimes when you are doing interviews, they're so fast and everybody more or less says the same. In this interview, we were talking about different and very interesting things.

JP: Thank you. If you want, I can ask those same questions. What films inspired this one? What was the hardest scene to film? 

ML: [Laughing].It was very good as it was. Thank you.