A Trader's Point Of View: Emmanuel Tenenbaum On His Short "Free Fall"
Director Emmanuel Tenenbaum is a French director who has been working with Quebec screenwriter Guillaume Fournier for years. Their films have been selected in more than 200 festivals, have received numerous awards (Grand Prize at REGARD) and nominations (Vimeo Best of the year), and have been broadcast on many TV channels over the world. Free Fall is their third short film, and their last opus before their first feature film.
Tom is a young trader in a London bank, whose recent performance has put his job on the line. When the first plane hits the World Trade Centre on the morning of September 11th 2001, Tom, convinced that it's a terrorist attack and not an accident, jumps into the biggest trade of his life.
This topical film has screened at 25 international film festivals and has won multiple Awards. We had the pleasure of chatting with Emmanuel about the film, its origins, creating the optimum atmosphere, finding a superb cast, and much much more!
I know you and screenwriter Guillaume Fournier have been working together for years. How did you two come up with the concept for Free Fall?
Because of my background in the corporate world, I am very interested in true office stories, and Guillaume has been very supportive of this. The two shorts we did together were indeed corporate tales. While researching for a new film, we stumbled upon a very interesting story in the extraordinary book Swimming with Sharks, by Dutch writer Joris Luyendijk.
After the 2008 crisis, Joris spent two years interviewing bankers in London, and published a blog for the Guardian. He collected extraordinary, often surreal testimonies (on the condition his insiders would stay anonymous). In the book, one trader in a top bank tells us how he found out before anyone else that the first plane in the World Trade Center was a terrorist attack, and how he made an enormous amount of money for his bank.
It was only at the end of the day that he realized he had friends in the towers. During the whole day, he admits not having thought about them a single second… He was so absorbed in the money game, that he totally forgot about them.
The 9/11 terrorist attack has become the new Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assignation in the U.S.; everyone remembers precisely where they were when it happened. Do you remember where you were or what you were doing on the day of the attack?
Of course! I was in my first year of college in France, and I was studying at the library. I got a call from my father, I picked up and asked the normal "What's up Dad, how are you?", and that's when he said those words I will never forget: "Haven't you heard? It's apocalypse in New York." I ran home and spent the night watching TV, like the rest of the planet.
As an American, it was a strange sensation watching things from the perspective of another country, in the film’s case the UK. Particularly when they’re celebrating and profiting on the incident, it evoked a spectrum of emotions. What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
I first want to reassure you by saying that absolutely everyone I know was deeply, deeply affected by the event, and I’m sure it’s true for all Europeans.
In the film though, more from a UK point of view, it is a trader’s point of view. In the beginning, we watch the boss putting extreme pressure on his team: it is obvious they are conditioned to not think about anything else than money, almost in a military fashion. As the film goes by, they get carried away and, blinded by the adrenaline of a successful bet and the millions flowing, they lose complete touch with reality.
Our objective was to show to the audience how those behaviors (and their impact on the world) can occur, but in a nonjudgemental way. The strange sensation you mention comes from the fact that a part of us is rooting for Tom, the protagonist. In a way, he’s trying to do his job and we understand and support him, but eventually his final actions feel completely unacceptable to us. In his position, we all hope we’d have done better.
The film is ripe with strong performances and features an incredible cast. How did you amass such an excellent team of performers?
Without a doubt, all credits go to Sophie Holland and Faye Timby, the casting directors. They have an incredible understanding for scripts, and over the years they have built a rich network. They were brave and kind enough to offer a short film — which is rare — to actors of such caliber who, to my big surprise, said yes. We’re all incredibly pleased with the final cast.
Did you do anything in particular to capture the frenzied energy of the traders on the phones?
The way we worked those scenes were by a mix of preparation and improvisation. Preparation because we had put a few stock names and numbers in the script, and the actors could train on them. Once on set, we added a lot more names, orders, and numbers, and we stuck them on some post-it notes on their screens. Then we did long takes of improvisation with each actor. They would just pass an incredible amount of orders in all directions, and then we had a lot of material for editing.
Can you talk a bit about the process of creating the film’s aesthetics? How did you and your cinematographer Antoine Roch arrive on the film’s final look?
I think it’s a combination of set dressing and cinematography. The set is incredibly important, it’s what makes the film feel real, and Catherine Mananes and her team did a formidable job on this. We had some challenges of course, especially with all the technicality around the trading charts, tickers and prices, but in the end, you would enter the set and say “wow, this looks like a real trading floor.”
Antoine Roch was obviously incredibly important to the film, too. Being a veteran cinematographer, he found the perfect balance between the speed of execution (we had 4 and ½ days for the whole shoot) and a premium look. For this, he designed a 360 degree lighting that would allow us to shoot in every direction, and he would use a stabilizator often. For the final look, we opted for a cold, blueish style, that reminds of both of a corporate world, and a story that took place 20 years ago.
What drew you to the visual arts? How did you get into directing?
If you had told me 15 years ago that I would end up being a director, I would never have believed you! My background is in biomedical science, and I worked for 3 years in the development of MRI scanners. However, parallel to my studies, I had done an evening course in a school in Madrid, as a hobby. Later on, I followed a one month course at the National Film and Television School in London, where I learned an incredible amount of useful things from teacher/director Brian Gilbert. And eventually, I decided to go full time on this, and learn more of the ropes, year after year!
What films or filmmakers have inspired you, your style, or your approach to telling a story?
In the last few years, Guillaume and I have been quite influenced by diverse film-makers such as J.C Chandor, Kathryn Bigelow, the Safdie Brothers. But this list could not be complete without the Coen Brothers, Steve McQueen, Jacques Audiard and Guillaume’s idol: Aaron Sorkin. By the way, if you ever cross J.C Chandor in the street, please let him know that I’d love to meet him!
If we meet him, we certainly will! Last question: Do you have any future projects in the works that you can share with us?
We are working on a concept for a feature film, and although it is still a bit early to give you a definitive answer, as we’re still exploring various ideas, one thing we are sure about is that it will be about greed and what it can do to us, humans. Ideally, we’d like to come back to a more humorous tone, as it was the case with our former shorts.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!