The Temptation of St. Tony

Director's Statement

I feel a little uncomfortable talking about what this film means. It definitely has a socio-critical aspect and makes a judgement. But I wouldn’t want that judgement to fall into being one certain definition... The film should be a mystery in and of itself: you enter the mystery and even while you are inside the space of the film, you don’t grasp it completely. The film has to open doors, not close them. It was deliberate to give the story a dream-like effect so you don’t really understand if you’re dealing with what is happening inside the character, in a vision, or in real life. The goal was to avoid fixating the coordinate axis of the visible universe in any definite way. In my definition, this film is most of all about the ontological problem - the problem of being - without giving any one answer to it. And salvation is tied to being because it is one of the possible solutions to the problem of being. In some ways, that’s what the film is about, but I don’t know if that’s all. And I’m not even sure if there’s salvation only or even in death. Overall, I’m not sure about a lot of things. If I knew the answer, then I would say it and maybe I wouldn’t be making films but would be standing, wearing a coat made of a potato sack and holding a cross in my hand.