Los Angeles-based director Jun Höskulds won the Best Director Award at the Marbella International Film Festival that closed this Sunday, September 12. She did it with her feature film TwoTwo, a rare bird , starring excellent Morgan Makana and Joel Ballard , both nominated for best actress and actor respectively.

A film that recreates a multidimensional reality to which the protagonists have access due to various crossroads and that changes their lives as they conceive it.

This is an atmospheric and hypnotic film with shots that go from the immense to the gaze of detail and transfers emotions without the need for dialogue.

Hoskulds handles an aesthetic of loneliness and estrangement that drenches the viewer until it abducts him into a story that raises to the true nature, the origin, of the material world. A question that she tackles while entertaining, because the mere interpretation of Makana, the music and the walks through Los Angeles already deserve a viewing.

It is, however, a film that admits several readings and that is full of small winks and signs. There are those who will leave the cinema without knowing what has happened and that is that they can go from many things. Few spectators leave the room with the same impression or the same experience, something that its director already knew beforehand.

Jun was with her husband S. Husky Höskulds, sound designer and mixer for her feature film TWO TWO, winner of five Grammys and like Jun, a wonderful conversationalist.

Q: How did the idea for this story come about?

A: I lived in New York for a long time until I moved to Los Angeles where I only knew the main neighborhoods like Hollywood or Beverly Hills, but did not know Downtown.

However, I ended up living in there, which for me had an aura of mystery, something special. While looking for places to live I discovered an old, abandoned hotel, and I became obsessed with this building. I began to visualize a woman, a ghostly character, who was there and was walking alone through the streets. From that point, from that primal image, the story unfolded. But the hotel didn’t make it into the movie.

The ending was the hardest to find, but when I had it, it attracted the rest, like a magnet.

Q: The characters seem more evolved, more “connected” to use the term of the story itself, the more detached from the material they live. Is that so? Is that detachment the way to connect with something higher?

A: That could be one way, but I think there are many ways. Every moment, every second, situation, is an opportunity to connect.

Q: Your film also talks about loneliness, in fact, in some shots you could say that it “breathes” loneliness.

A: Absolutely. It’s not fun to be alone in the world, but it’s another way to hook yourself up and clarify your vision.

However, some characters in my film are solitary, and others lonely, they didn’t choose to be alone.

I’ll tell you something about me, I don’t know where it comes from, but I’ve been obsessed with moving. I moved about fifty times in my life. I love empty apartments, getting in and out of them. Sometimes I could stay 6 or even 3 months and needed a new place. When you move you can recreate yourself, redraw yourself, like starting from scratch.

Thus, places can also be characters. Downtown Los Angeles is a character in the film.

Q: There is an idea that stands out in the film and it is that of energy vampires .

A: (Husky Hoskulds) Most relationships are one-way and difficult to manage. There are people who steal energy and do not return anything emotionally.

In the story there is the idea of ​​feeling “loaded”, and I think there is an easy way to get there as the protagonist does, or it can be a complex and mysterious process.

Q: (Husky Hoskulds) How can we receive the messages in this reality. Just as the characters of “Two Two” receive messages and signals

You have to be open to it, attentive.

Q: Have you had references when planning Two Two?

For me it has been something subconscious, I read a lot, I see many movies and it all adds up, although I could not say one thing in particular. I did not want to do anything that resembles something else, on the contrary, I knew that I am doing something strange and maybe a little crazy, maybe some people understood it and many others did not.

It is a movie that if you watch it several times you discover new elements. It has layers.

Q: Could you tell us about your experience directing and being a woman.

A: In my case, I have not had a difficult experience due to being a woman. I consider myself a very clear, strong director and I am usually confident on set. However, I am also protective and motherly. There are advantages to being a woman director. The first thing I do with the actors is to make feel protected, so that they relax and know that they are safe and not going to fail because I am there to support and protect them and in this way, they trust me and take risks. This is very important. After a while no one notices whether or not I am a woman, it is an aspect that disappears.

In fact, there were many women on the team, the director of photography, for example, as well as the production designer… and it is something that has happened organically.

Q: Husky has won five Grammys

A: Yes, and he has helped me with my music since I started composing five years ago. The music for the film was composed by me because with music I found it possible to transfer delicate things, details that cannot be put into words. So I do it with music.

Silence is as important as music (Answers Husky)

A guitarist I worked with a long time ago said that the most important thing is the space between the notes. When I work with musicians who are not that talented or are a little insecure, you can always tell because they play all the way from the beginning to the end. The good ones listen to the others, they wait, they leave space.

This is the same in a movie, when you don’t have music in a certain part and then it comes in, it highlights a feeling strongly. If the music is there all the time, there is no drama.

You have to be brave to know when to be silent.

Q: In this film, what would you like to convey to the public?

I would say that “Two Two” is a double trip, one for David (one of the protagonists) from one reality to another and a different journey for the audience. A trip to the interior. The central question is:

(Husky) If you had an experience within another reality different from the one we conceive as such, what would you do? Would you have enough faith and the courage to stay there, even knowing that you inhabit another world?

(Jun) In any case, I would not like to explain too many things, it is what I have tried, that it will be an experience, that each one receives what they can and that after having seen the film they continue to remember and think.

I would like this idea to be a TV series because there is much more to the story, there is a before and an after what is filmed.