ScreenAnarchy is pleased to have your exclusive first look at the trailer for Christian Hallman's debut feature film, the psychological horror thriller Sensoria. We are also debuting the poster and Christian has given us a pair from stills from the production.
While we traded e-mails in preparation for this exclusive I shot over a couple questions so he could share with us some more about his project. You can find those questions and answers with the two images below. Once we have been able to watch the complete film I know we will have more questions for him.
Every apartment has a past...
"Sensoria" follows Caroline Menard, a woman in her late thirties, who has lost almost everything she cares for in the world and is searching for a new beginning. She moves into an old apartment and starts to realise that she is not as alone as she thought she was. Just as she is searching for something new, something is searching for her...
Slowly, strange and unexplainable things start to happen, and it escalates until the walls of reality come crashing down on her. What was supposed to be something new and better becomes a living nightmare...
I think you are going to like what you see. You can sense the influences from contemporary masters like Polanski and DePalma. There do appear to be some quality scares and creepy moments coming our way. Be careful where you watch it though. It is slightly NSFW as there are some 'Swedish berries' in it. You can also click on any of the images for larger versions.
Christian is one of the good guys, a familiar face on the international fantastic film festival circuit, whom many of us at ScreenAnarchy have had the pleasure of meeting with over the years. He is a champion of fantastic film not only in Europe but around the World. He is involved with the Lund International Fantastic Film Festival in Sweden and the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation. The EFFFF awards the Méliès d'Or Award, for the best European feature length and short films from European filmmakers each year, at the Sitges Film Festival in September.
Combine all that passion with an extensive background in film production and Christian is someone who definitely has paid his dues and is finally being rewarded for his efforts. We are happy to support him with his narrative film debut.
Christian wrote Sensoria with Måns F.G. Thunberg. Frank Ilfman, composer of the scores for Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado's films Big Bad Wolves, Rabies, and their ABCs of Death 2 segment, composed the music and score for Christian's film. The film stars Lanna Olsson as Caroline.
The film already has secured Scandinavian distribution and Christian and his team are developing a film festival strategy. Hopefully we have some festival dates to announce in the coming year.
Where did the idea come from?
We wanted to make a film which focused on story and character. A film which was small in scope but large in emotional ambience. A story much in the tradition of Polanski, DePalma and Lynch with a 70’s feel to it, but in a contemporary way and with a Scandinavian twist to it. Måns F.G. Thunberg, my co-writer and collaborator, outlined and drafted the story about two years ago, and from there the two of us wrote and re-wrote the script.
What challenges did you face during production?
About 70% of the film takes place in an apartment, that was a huge challenge in terms of storytelling and pushed both me and my director of photography to come up with creative ways of using the camera almost as a character. We shot the film on a Panasonic GH4, but since we wanted more out of the image, we used the Odyssey 7Q from Convergence Design as our recorder which allowed us to shoot full cinematic 4K in 10 bit 24p and also allowed for us to get synched time code. The reason for shooting with the GH4 was to be fairly small and fast and also we were shooting in very cramped places.