Interview with Peter Kerekes

Slovak documentary filmmaker, director, screenwriter and producer Peter Kerekes (1973) graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, majoring in documentary directing. He later worked as a doctoral student and university lecturer. His film 107 Mothers (2021), set in a women’s prison in Odessa, Ukraine, together with Ivan Ostrochovsky, won the Best Screenplay Award at the Venice Film Festival. His new film, the documentary comedy Wishing on a Star (2024), is about Luciana, a Neapolitan native who is an active astrologer and can change people’s destinies. After its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, the film has travelled to Toronto and is now coming to Cinematik.

Why the theme of active astrology?

I will answer in the second question.

How did you meet the Neapolitan astrologer Luciana de Leoni d’Asparedo? Did the idea for the film come first and then the meeting with her, or was it exactly the other way around?

I never wanted to make a film about astrology in my life. My Austrian co-producer Ralph Wieser, with whom I made “How History Cooks”, stubbornly invited me to dinners for three years and always at the end, between Tafelspitz and Kaiserschmarrn, he asked me: “Would you like to make a film about an Italian astrologer?” I heroically resisted for three years. I wasn’t interested in astrology, I didn’t even know what ascendant I was born in. After all, I was doing serious subjects and not some tabloid, I thought, and washed down my dinner with a great Marillenschnaps. But in the end I relented, agreeing to visit astrologer Luciana on condition of dinner in Cividale, Italy. No strings attached. When I arrived at her place, I was charmed by her personality and even though I didn’t understand anything (I don’t speak Italian), I knew I had to make a film about her. I spent a week in the north of Italy, visiting Luciana and her clients and gradually piecing together the mosaic of the film.

I read that you and your staff visited Luciana for up to seven years. During this time, have your beliefs changed in relation to astrology and its influence on our lives?

We had our first flap back in 2018, then covid came, we filmed on and off. And it was the best thing that could have happened to the film. People gradually changed and we got it recorded, even if it’s not a “time lapse” film. I didn’t stop doubting astrology, but I started believing in Luciana.

If you believe in fate, aren’t you worried that influencing it could bring with it unexpected risks?

Everything brings unexpected risks.

What surprised you the most during the filming, did any “magical” moment happen?

We filmed in various exotic places, we were in Beirut, Taiwan. But for me the most magical moments happened in her office. When she was talking to her clients and they gradually opened up to her. I don’t understand the language, so I didn’t know what they were talking about / I always got the translation a few minutes late, but I was all the more focused on the facial expressions, the gestures, the atmosphere. And it was in that most boring place of a table, a monitor and two chairs that the most interesting moments and surprises happened for me.

Would you be willing to take a birthday trip like the one the clients,Luciana, took in your documentary?

I’d be happy to.