Making its US premier recently at Sundance, Jean-Stephane Sauvaire’s first narrative feature, Johnny Mad Dog, delivers a challenging and forceful view of Liberian child soldiers who are part of a rebellion to overthrow the government. Taking a break from the chill of Park City, we sat down with Jean to find out more about the equally chilling subject of his film, the rhythm of cinema, and how an intensely powerful and realistic film can be just as effective as a documentary in exposing important global issues.

What ignited your interest in filmmaking?

Maybe it was just the desire to tell stories you’ve never seen before – to tell stories that we don’t want to see – in this case, child soldiers. No one wants to show this reality because it’s brutal; it’s quite difficult to watch. I think cinema has to show the things that we don’t always want to see. I think [cinema] doesn’t only have to be entertainment, but can also show the world as it actually is. For me, cinema has the power to not only show the reality of the world, but can sometimes change it.

For example, we were trying to find a solution to help reintegrate these child soldiers… after the war. We screened this movie at the UN in New York. It was interesting for me because sometimes you screen it for movie people and sometimes it’s for political people. I really like that with cinema, you can do both. In this case, to screen the movie at the UN was important and necessary. I was really glad to do it because this movie can hopefully change the way they fight against the users of child soldiers, and create programs that try to reintegrate of these boys [into society].

Your first film, Carlitos Medellín, was a documentary about fighting kids in Colombia. But you originally wanted to make a feature film more like Johnny Mad Dog right?

Exactly.

So did you come across Emmanuel Dongala’s novel for Carlitos Medellín or after?

After in fact. I went to Colombia in 2003 and it was too dangerous to make the movie because they were in civil war. When I shot Johnny Mad Dog in Liberia, the war was over so it was possible to shoot, but in Colombia, they were fighting in the street. So I couldn’t really imagine doing a movie at the same time and getting the people I work with killed… [but] I really wanted to cover this situation in Santo Domingo Savio, so I decided to make a documentary. I just improvised…

When I came back to France I was quite disappointed, not to have made a feature film… Somebody told me about Emmanual Dongala’s novel Johnny Mad Dog and when I read the book I thought, “Ok this is great! It’s an amazing story and it’s really interesting to have the two point of views – one from the child soldiers and one from the girl during the last weeks of civil war in Africa.” My idea was to go to Liberia and to confront the reality of the book. Emmanuel is from the Congo… he knew all the events, and was one of the guys who suffered because of the war… so the book was quite realistic, but it was important for me to understand these boys’ reality…

It was in 2004, one year after the war, when I went there for the first time. I met these boys and told them, “I want to make a movie about child soldiers, so I need to hear about your experiences.” They told me, “If you want to do a movie about child soldiers, you have to do it here, in our country, with us. We are the ones who really know about this.” But at the time it was quite difficult because there was a transitional government running the country, we couldn’t get insurance to do the movie – so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to come and shoot my movie in Liberia.

It was also quite difficult to finance this kind of movie. It took time… [but] finally we shot this movie in January 2006. It was really the right time for Liberia because they had just elected a new president, a woman named Ellen Jhonson-Sirleaf, so it was a positive way to show the international community that a movie could be made in this country. It was also an opportunity for people to work as well as being a testimony of this war. So they really helped us… that was really important because you can’t do a movie like this in Liberia if the government doesn’t help you… For them it was also an important matter because it was the first movie ever shot in this country.

Did you ever feel the need for security during the production?

No, it wasn’t that dangerous. In the beginning the UN wasn’t really aware of this project… [but] doing a movie [like this] can be trouble, kids walking in the streets with weapons, we didn’t know what could happen. So they didn’t really help us in the beginning, but because the government was really pushing to do this movie, they didn’t want to go against them. We had to inform a lot of people – the whole population in the city – to tell them that the war was not coming again, but that it was a movie with fake weapons – and we would be shooting in the street – so don’t have to be afraid! We did a campaign like this with the government and the ministry of information… now when you go to Liberia, everybody knows about Johnny Mad Dog.

How was the production received? Even though you had the crew and the equipment all around, was the sound of gunfire an issue for the residents?

Well, we couldn’t use blank ammunition because of an embargo in Liberia – you can’t even import fake weapons. That was the main problem we had in the preparation. They told us, “There’s an embargo so you can’t import weapons, even for your movie.” So we thought, “How can we do a war movie without weapons?” Finally we found a solution… All the weapons in the movie are actually toys from Japan. They were quite similar to a real AK-47, they were quite heavy also, but they shot paintballs. It was even a bit difficult for the boys because they were used to the real weapons – they knew how to check the weapons and how to use them. But the guns didn’t make noise, so we could shoot in the street without the sound of gunfire scaring everybody.

You spent a lot of time casting for the kids right? What were you looking for specifically? Kids who were good actors or kids who had some experience as child soldiers?

At first, the condition was to find former child soldiers. So I met with former generals to introduce me to all the former child soldiers... I went alone with my camera to do some casting and sometimes I’d see fifty boys, but within two minutes, I could see that nobody really fit. They either weren’t photogenic or didn’t have the right personality… they came one by one in front of the camera and I told them, “You can do whatever you want… it’s up to you. You have all the time you want. Try to tell me a story about something.” Most of them were telling war stories about their own experiences. It’s interesting because you can see what they are talking about, how they play with the camera (or they don’t play), you can do some close-ups and see how they are in-camera. So it was very interesting, you see right away who is right and who is not.

For the boy who plays the character No Good Advice, I saw him in the street and I said, “Even if he wasn’t a child soldier, he’ll play in the movie because he has a great personality. He’s incredible!”

Right! And when he starts yelling at the older guy who’s carrying the pig, he gets really vicious!

(Laughs) Yeah he’s vicious! Later they learned to cry for certain sequences and the two actors who did it best were Johnny Mad Dog and No Good Advice. It was like a competition between them. So [No Good Advice] had to cry when Johnny killed his pig. I asked him to cry… but he couldn’t because of the wind. He told me with the wind [in his face] he couldn’t cry. He was really vexed. He thought he was a bad actor because normally he could do it.

It was interesting to see that the boys were really involved in this project. Most of them were living in the street, they had no family, they had no education, they had no structure… in fact, if you asked them if they wanted to do the project, they would go right away, and were willing to give you everything that you want. That was a problem during the war… because they would go, they wouldn’t think, and they would put all the energy they had into the war – it was the same in the movie, they were really focused. They were there four hours a day, taking acting classes. That’s why I think they were so intense in the movie, because it was so important for them to be good.

The boy who played Johnny was fantastic! His face really gave the impression that he had been through it all before and now he’s a bit numb to it. Then towards the end of the film you can really see his struggle with what he’s going to do next after the fighting is over.

That’s another problem with these boys. What do you do when you are fifteen years old, you have no education and the only thing you know is how to fight? The war is over and there’s no one to take care of you. And everybody’s afraid of these boys, because they are living in the street… people are afraid because they know that these boys are capable of doing anything to get money. They can’t even go to school because they are in the same class as boys who are eight or nine years old. It’s really difficult for them to find a place in society…

Working with animals or kids is notoriously challenging for the director. Was there something that helped you to really draw out their performances? Or did they seem to fall into it naturally?

Naturally I think, yeah, because in Africa now they watch mostly Nigerian movies… you know, the rising [Nigerian film] industry known as Nollywood. [In Nollywood] they make cheap (low-budget) movies and soap operas – the watch these more than American movies. But in these movies they’re usually overacting. They’re not realistic at all! So I said [to the kid actors], “You don’t have to act like that… please!” (Laughs) In the beginning they were overacting because of the camera, and the culture of these kinds of movies. For them, to be a good actor was to overact. So I said, “Please, just be yourself, be realistic and don’t overact.” these kinds of things. During the preparation, I would film the improvisations they were doing... So in the evening we would watch the improv on the TV… it was really helpful for them to see [their performances].

We were also watching some war movies, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and The City of God – so they could see something different than Nigerian movies. I think City of God was a good example for them. They saw that the kids in the film weren’t overacting, so they really understood to do it in a realistic way – just to be themselves…

But sometimes it was quite difficult. When you have fifteen boys and you have to wake them up in the morning, tell them to go get dressed, tell them to get their weapons and say let’s go shoot – but then you have to explain everything to them because they don’t know exactly what they will be doing that day. If you have professional actors, you know that they’ll know the sequence, you know they’ve read the script, you know that they will do their job, but with these boys you don’t know. They just wake up, go to the set, and they wait for me like, “Ok, what are we doing today?”

So after three or four days I thought, “My god. It would be nice to work with some professional actors…” but then after another two or three days it became easier to work with them because you can’t do the same things with a professional actor. The boys didn’t act like the way a professional actor would – they have something different. The way they walk, the way they talk, the way they use the weapons – everything’s different then it would be with a professional actor.

So the boys’ performances were not as polished or techniquey like a professional actor but that helped it feel more honest and realistic?

Right exactly.

The cinematography of the film is really nice. It’s great how some shots are really loose and erratic during the chaotic fighting scenes, but then also a few scenes felt very deliberate and beautifully composed. How did you come to work with your cinematographer and how did you work with him to develop the look of the film?

I knew him because… he was a really famous steady camera guy in France. I was working as an AD and we met working on a movie called Savage Night (he was doing the steady cam).

It was important to me to use a steady cam for this movie, because [the kids] are really small. So if your camera is on your shoulder, you’ll be too tall to film these boys. If you want to be at the boys’ eye level, you need to be lower. So you have to use a steady cam. It was really important to me to follow along with the boys… to do something more visceral.

I also used a book from a sociologist who talked about how war affects your senses. For example, if you are in a war, you are so tense that you hear everything, you see everything – all your senses are at a very high level. If somebody starts to shoot at you in the street, maybe you’ll go hide under a table and sit there for five minutes, but it will feel like it’s been two hours. Or you’ll be running away from someone shooting at you, and although it may only last thirty seconds, you’ll feel like it was a lot longer…

So I’ve tried to use this kind of rhythm in the film. Sometimes it’s very fast. The first sequence for example, is very chaotic because everyone is scared, even the boys are scared to attack – so it’s chaotic. Sometimes you’ll have a long shot, like with Laokole and her brother… it’s a long shot, nothing happens, there’s no noise… just someone shouting very far away. I’ve tried to use the rhythm of the war, to make the scenes uncomfortable…

So you were trying to recreate the way your perception changes in war. Sometimes things are fast and crazy but then there are moments of calm…

Exactly, and if you try to do that… you would do it with the sound and with the camera. That’s why I used the steady cam…. I talked with the cinematographer a lot about the rhythm of the film, because for me, cinema is also a question of rhythm. The rhythm of the acting… the way you film and the way you edit – it’s all a question of rhythm. If you have the rhythm and the story, I think the movie will work.

When I was in Liberia doing the preparation, I shot a lot of pictures. After we discussed them, we used these pictures as reference for the cinematographer too. He was researching what kinds of lights he would use and I told him, “ I don’t want you to have a lot of lights. I don’t want to lose time putting lights up everywhere.” When we were inside of the house for example in the last sequence, I said, “Ok, you have two hours, you can put up lights but not too much.” He really used minimal lighting…

We also used an HD cam, because it was important when I was shooting a sequence, to start from the beginning [and continue] until the end. So maybe… five or six minutes without cutting. If you take the first sequence for example, from the moment they go outside, to the moment where the boy kills his father… We were shooting the sequence in its totality from different points of view – sometimes following Johnny, or sometimes following No Good Advice. Then after you can edit it the way you want – as if it were a documentary.

It was not possible with these boys, to cut in the middle of the sequence and say, “Ok, start again in the middle!” It was like choreography. I’d do some rehearsal with the boys and with the people who act as civilians, so everybody knows what they’re doing the day of the shooting. Because if they don’t know, you’d come the day of the shooting and it would be a nightmare because… you’d have like fifty or sixty people to explain it to. So when we came for the shooting, everybody knew what to do. Then you can be more focused on the camera… and you can work within the choreography.

Since you were running whole scenes at once, did you bring in extra cameras? Or did you only shoot with one?

Only with one. Sometimes we added a second camera, in case of problems with the main camera. But we had only two assistants for the camera… you have one assistant for the focus and one assistant who tries to find the right light and contrast… Sometimes I used the second camera, but we didn’t have a DP to use the camera. So I was doing that, but it was so intense working with the fifteen boys, it was quite difficult for me – when you explain to everybody what they have to do and then taking the camera to go film – sometimes I’ve done it, but it’s important to see the general point of view of everything that’s happening.

In the casting process you mentioned that you heard different stories from the kids about their experiences… Was there a specific scene in the film, or maybe something that you decided not to do that really affected you emotionally?

Well, the movie is not as violent as the reality was. It was more violent in the real war, but there are some things that you can’t portray. For example the cannibalism, they were cutting off heads, or opening someone’s stomach and finding a baby inside – these kinds of things, you can’t put in because it would become a gore movie, and I think we don’t have the reference to understand those things… During the war it’s so chaotic that people do whatever they want.

For example, I remember they told me a story about a woman. She was with her husband and her two kids and they had to cross a bridge. At the entrance of the bridge were some rebels and they cut off her husband’s head off right in front of her. Then they said, “If you want to cross the bridge, you have to take your husband’s head, if you want your kids to stay alive…” So what’s your choice in this case? You just have to do it. Imagine this woman’s position, they had just killed her husband and she had to cross the bridge carrying her husband’s head to protect her life and the lives of her children. These kinds of things I think, “How can you put that in the movie?” It’s too violent and we can’t really understand it…

You’re last project was a documentary, did that affect your approach to editing this film? Was there anything during editing that was particularly challenging for you?

I was really present during the editing. It was quiet difficult because you have to choose the right moments in each sequence. When you [edit] a film in a classical way, you have the sequence and the script [to put together the first cut], so you know you’ve got this shot or that shot to choose from. In the case of Johnny Mad Dog, we had a lot of [long takes] so we had to choose the right moments. At first I was working with an editor who really didn’t understand that. I was not with him at the time, so when I got back from Liberia and saw the edit I said, “This is not the movie I want to do. It’s not the editing I want to do.” So I tried to do it by myself… but you can’t do it alone because you need somebody to talk to [about the film] and to advise you. So then I found the right editor and we [worked] really close together to find the right moments to cut… like a documentary – to find this intensity in the editing.

It’s important to play with the audience. Sometimes I add some sequences I really want to have longer, but if it’s too long people can be too affected [by it]. After a year [in Liberia] you don’t really realize how violent the film is [to other people]. So when you do the editing, to you it’s not violent… but then you show it to the people and they say, “No, it’s too much!” So you cut and you do something that’s not-so intense… The producer, Mathieu Kassovitz, really helped me in this way – to make a movie [that’s] not too long and not too difficult to watch…

Even yesterday... a woman left after [only watching] ten or fifteen minutes. She came up to me and said, “We are so naive in the States. I didn’t know about these boys fighting, but it’s too hard for me, I can’t watch it.” She starts crying and says, “It’s too much. It’s too violent. I don’t want to see this reality. I know that it exists, but I can’t see it.” And I totally understand that, but I said, “I’m doing a movie about war with children, I can’t do a soft movie, I can’t do entertainment. It has to be violent. It has to be provocative because this is reality, and if you want to fight against this reality, it can’t be entertainment.”

The movie is extremely powerful, and when we say we “enjoy” the film, we’re referring to how it was crafted. They way you approach this difficult subject artistically, shows your special attention to the details while crafting the film.

The details are important in a movie. Going to Liberia to do this film… was really important for me in terms of the details. The songs they sing for example… I can’t invent these kinds of songs. So [the details] come from reality. When they say, “If you don’t want to die, don’t be born,” or “No men, no war,” – all these things are details which were not in the script. I found [them] because I went to Liberia. I wouldn’t have discovered these things if I shot the movie in another country. What’s interesting to me about making movies is going to see the reality, and then trying to recreate this reality on screen. I really like that.

Do you have any nuggets of wisdom from this last experience that you’d like to share with new filmmakers out there?

I’d say you have to be patient. It took five years to do this movie – from writing the script to the end – so you have to be dedicated and willing to sacrifice to do this job. It’s not a usual job, so it gives you a lot of happiness but it’s not so easy, and you have to sacrifice most things. Since twelve or thirteen, I dreamed about making movies… now I’m in my forties, so imagine all the time it takes to make the first feature film! It’s quite long. So the only thing is to always keep in mind what you want to do and to be patient. Anybody can make a movie if they’re patient… It’s just a question of time and patience. That’s the only advice I can give! (Laughs)