What ‘A Sacrifice’ Director Learned From Father Ridley Scott

As she will get set to launch her second film, A Sacrifice, in theaters this weekend, Jordan Scott (IFC’s Cracks) recollects the very best recommendation she obtained from her father, Sir Ridley Scott, from one director to a different.

“I’m very fortunate that I can decide up the telephone and ask his recommendation on something and I’m going to get the very best reply. And his recommendation on all the things is simply: Preparation. Preparation. Preparation,’” Scott tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Impressed by Nicholas Hogg’s 2015 novel Tokyo, A Sacrifice from Scott Free Productions follows American social psychologist Ben Monroe (Eric Bana) as he investigates a neighborhood cult linked to a disturbing occasion within the German capital. Whereas he immerses himself into his work, his rebellious teenage daughter, Mazzy (Sadie Sinke), will get concerned with a mysterious native boy who introduces her to the town’s underground get together scene. As these two worlds head in the direction of an intersection, Mazzy finds herself in nice hazard, with Ben needing to race towards the clock to save lots of her.

After all, Scott’s finest laid plans for her thriller thriller got here unstuck after her authentic script had the movie set in Tokyo and planning to shoot in 2020. The pandemic breaking out in early 2020 and COVID fears shortly closed off any potential manufacturing in Japan.

“The world shut down after which it turned unimaginable,” Scott recollects. So the choice was made to shift manufacturing on A Sacrifice to Germany and have her complicated American father-daughter story and neo-noir thriller play out towards the backdrop of a neighborhood Berlin cult and that metropolis’s underground get together scene.  

“I all the time toyed with the concept it might work fairly effectively in Berlin. Hopefully, I’m not insulting anybody by saying East Germany was a collective society for many years beneath Communist rule. There’s a lingering psychology to that for sure generations, older generations,” Scott defined.

The script underwent main surgical procedure to painting cults and their members’ obligations for loyalty and self-sacrifice naturally develop up across the cultures from which they take root. The roles of the American father and daughter in A Sacrifice would see their two worlds ultimately collide in Berlin.

Stranger Issues actor Sink got here on board to play 18-year previous Mazzy Monroe after she had roles Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale and extra not too long ago in Searchlight Photos’ rock opera O’Dessa. “She’s an incredible actress. I barely needed to do or say something. We had a very enjoyable rehearsal course of. We talked endlessly concerning the characters and their psychology. That’s all she wanted and she or he simply turned Mazzy,” Scott stated of Sinke’s efficiency.

And the cult within the script for A Sacrifice received a radical German makeover, together with casting Austrian actress Sophie Rois as its chief, Hilda, and the explanations for its fanatic members to really feel a have to belong, with doubtlessly life-threatening penalties. “Cults play on the fears of the society that they inhabit. To me, proper now, one of many greatest risks all of us face is environmental collapse. And so she’s (Hilda) is taking part in on these fears inside the individuals in her group,” the director identified.

A Sacrifice, now in theaters, is written and directed by Jordan Scott and produced by Ridley Scott, Michael Pruss, Jonas Katzenstein, Maximilian Leo and Georgina Pope. The ensemble forged consists of Sylvia Hoeks, Jonas Dassler, Stephan Kampwirth and Lara Feith.

The movie is the second to return from a strategic gross sales partnership between U.Ok. gross sales agent Protagonist Photos and German outfit augenschein Gross sales after The Dive.