A CONVERSATION WITH THE FILMMAKER
What was the starting point for this project?
 
In 2014, I was working as a freelance translator and studying philosophy and political science at university, preparing for a PhD in one or the other. But I was 27 at the time and my whole life I’d been torn between making films and exploring other avenues: there were times I wanted to become a lawyer, then I thought I’d work in diplomacy or journalism. But I never did commit to any of them, I always tried to keep a foot in all tracks. And I think it was the realization that these tracks were naturally narrowing down towards one of these PhDs that freaked me out. I knew, deep down, that I would regret not trying to become a filmmaker. So I had to give it a go.
Is that where this idea of 5 parallel lives came from?
 
I think everyone wonders how their life could be if they'd done things differently. I certainly do. And I'm also amazed how some of the most important things in life - where you live, what job you have, who your best friends are, who you fall in love with - if you think back they often all hinge on tiny events that could so easily have not happened, or happened just a bit differently. This is why I'm interested in free will - how much of our lives do we control? So the film was not only a way for me to experiment all these lives but as a project itself, it's an experiment in free will: could I just decide to take control of my future and dictate who I was going to become? I knew it wouldn’t happen overnight, but I had to believe I was going to do it, and then just go for it.
What equipment did you buy?
 
Back in 2014, a Canon 6D DSLR, with three lenses, a 24-105mm, a 50mm and a wide angle 14mm. I also got a tripod, a second-hand Glidecam, a shoulder mount and a suction-cup rig to attach the camera to a car. And a backpack, to carry it all!

So how did the shoot happen?
 
I travelled to the five locations in the film - Helsinki, Jerusalem, Paris, London and Los Angeles - and it was just like continuously walking into the unknown. It was all improvised, with no permission. I'd usually handle the camera except for shots I'm in, in which case someone else would do it - friends, family, strangers, whoever was there. There are some shots in Jerusalem where literally some kid we met in the streets moments before is holding the camera, and others where the camera is operated by Stéphane Le Parc, a French cinematographer. And somehow, it all comes together.
Why did you choose to act in the film?
 
Originally it just grew out of necessity. I wanted to make a film that showed the 5 alternate lives of the same character, each one living in a different city. I had even started writing a screenplay, about some fictional character. But when I turned to actually thinking about how to make it, I just didn’t have the money to bring an actor with me everywhere, especially given how flexible, time-wise, things were going to be. So the only real solution was for me to play this character. And once that settled in, I just thought I'd make the most of it and drew on my own life to blur the lines between reality and fiction.

So why these 5 cities: London, Paris, Jerusalem, Los Angeles and Helsinki?
 
Again, I didn’t really choose them, they chose themselves out of convenience. Like a lot of small-budget filmmakers, I reverse-engineered the ends from the means. I asked myself: where can I go? And picked places where I had friends or family, who could host me and also help out with the shoot. And then I wrote believable stories to fit the locations. The first 18 years are the same for all the characters, and then they branch out into different lives. Some are pretty much exactly what my life was like at times: I’ve been a bartender in London, I’ve had an office job and worn a suit every day like the life in Helsinki. What mattered really was they were all consistent. 

​In Los Angeles, you are in a homeless shelter. Why did you choose to show this life?
 
I wanted to confront the character to success and failure, and the strongest image for this character was to have him fail in the one place that is the symbol of filmmaking success: Hollywood. What if he went to Los Angeles to try and make it but failed and through bad luck lost everything?
How did you come to shoot at the Midnight Mission?
 
It was tricky, because I didn’t know anyone in Los Angeles and Skid Row is not an easy place to just show up and ask to shoot a film. I sent out some e-mails to homeless shelters, only a couple replied. I went to The Midnight Mission and met Joey who at the time was a resident and in charge of the volunteers. We connected, he saw that this project was coming from the right place and vouched for me. I went there regularly for about a month to volunteer and get to know the people, and then we shot for a couple days – the camera operator for those scenes, Toby, was also at the time a resident of the Mission. They're both living proof the Mission does great work, and for me, as an outsider, it was an unforgettable and humbling experience to be there and get to know them.

The film features some established intellectuals in the US and UK - why this choice?
 
I wanted the film to be a reflection on difficult subjects, like free will and choice and our place in the universe, and I felt there's no one better to give insights on questions of philosophy and science than philosophers and scientists. I didn't want the same information to be conveyed by characters or narration alone. And I knew that adding their voices to the backdrop of the fictional stories would be an unusual experience, something you don't see often, and I wanted to test some narrative boundaries. 

Why do you think this film speaks to people?
 
Because it deals with questions that we all wonder about - what if I had done this? why am I not happier with my life than I should be? how much of my own successes and failures am I responsible for? These are consuming questions, especially in western societies, and even more so in the last 20-30 years. Generation Y, Millenials, we’re part of a generation that has really been given access to the world and infinite opportunities but also, and I think this is crucial, we are told from a young age, by parents, peers, culture, that we can do and be anything we want, that we should expect this level of control and achievement. 
​But things aren't so easy in practice: people struggle to choose and when they do, they often aren't as satisfied as they think they should be. That's why you get the so-called "quarter-life crisis", where people between 25 and 30 panic because they don't know what to do with their life, they don't know whether they should get married or keep looking, have a kid now or later, go into this field or this one, pursue their dream or risk regretting it forever. For sure, there are bigger, more vital issues in the world today. But if we consider affluence and freedom to be good - and I think we do, we want all societies to have more - then these problems need to be addressed along the way. And I really think this is one of the most pervasive psychological ailments of our time: this inability to be satisfied with what you have. The disappointment that your situation isn't as good as you think it should be. Because if you blame yourself, it can lead to anxiety, even depression. It's nasty because once you get a hold of it, you see it's brewing to some degree in most of us, and we have to learn to address it.
What other films inspired you in making “psi”?
 
There are a few. "Mr. Nobody" by Jaco Van Dormael in the subject matter. I'm also a huge fan of Godfrey Reggio's "Koyaaniskatsi" and Ron Frick's "Baraka" and "Samsara," for their contemplative imagery. But the two films that most inspired me were “Another Earth” by Mike Cahill and "The Tree of Life" by Terrence Malick. The former gave me the belief and motivation to go out and make my movie DIY. The latter awoke something deeper in me and in some ways I wrote psi as a response to it. Psi really asks many of the same questions – but it approaches them differently.

You speak of contemplative imagery: there are some world-famous artists featured in this film – Kapoor, Arman, Gormley - why this focus on art and architecture?

I wanted people to take the time to look at the world differently. And this goes by showing them things they may be familiar with, like public works of art or architecture, but holding their gaze on them so they see them in a new light. These works connect the cities and then become visual metaphors for themes of the film. I wanted people to feel transported, to go on a real journey.

Music also plays a big role throughout the film - how did you go about that?

I didn't know any composers, so I found an article online on a young French composer called Alexis Maingaud who'd just won his first award. I listened to the music and loved it, so I sent him an e-mail, explaining what “psi” was about. We met over coffee and clicked. We worked very closely over a year on the edit and the music – and both evolved together. Alexis is an amazing composer. He was willing to go places, to go from epic Hollywood symphonies to more experimental, modern classical pieces. The range he’s shown and the quality of the music given the limited resources is incredible. 
So on the production side - how did you produce it and how much did it cost?

During the whole shoot I was still working as a freelance translator so that’s how I funded it. Some of my friends and family chipped in from time to time to help out. It cost roughly $25.000, spread over all these years - and that includes equipment, travel, accommodation when I had to pay for it, some people I paid for their services.

Why produce this way?
 
I wanted to get the ball rolling. This film would never have been made if I had applied for funding beforehand given my lack of experience. And so at first this was a way for me to prove to myself that I could do it, and also prove that it was possible to make a film without millions or any official backing. Plus, this shoot was for me a very personal process - I explored the cities alone most of the time – and that gave me a lot of freedom and control. I had a vision for my film, and I didn’t want to compromise. So for better or worse, the final film is a direct result of this process. 

​Finally, Psi is also a series of talks and a written making-of. Why?
 
With the 9 experts I interviewed, I had over 12 hours of conversations, a tiny fraction of which would make it in the film (2 experts were cut from it). That was just a huge waste because the material is fascinating. So I thought I’d make a series out of them. As for the written making-of? I started writing it because people I met, especially young filmmakers, were usually curious about how this project was made. And so the best way for me to answer them was to compile it all and share the experience in writing, as a kind of long-form blog. The whole thing is a triptych – and that’s Ψ.
​And so why Ψ?
 
First of all because I like the letter: visually, it’s a metaphor for the core idea of the film, of a life splitting into branches – echoing this concept of a triptych. But more importantly, the Greek letter Ψ is the symbol for the wave-function in Schrödinger’s equation of quantum mechanics, representing the probabilities for the different possible outcomes to a given situation. When an observer makes a measurement, only one of the possibilities becomes actual, and that’s what is called the collapse of the wave-function. That just seemed fitting for a film about choice. In a way, every day, every moment even as we continuously make choices, we are all like giant quantum wave-functions waiting to collapse and be actualized one way or another!