Still: Future Me - Vincent Boy Kars

Yes, Vincent Boy Kars agrees, rising young Dutch actor Martijn Lakemeier (a Berlinale Shooting Star in 2021) does look a lot like him. That’s as it should be. Lakemeier “plays” Kars in the director’s intensely personal new documentary drama, Future Me*. 

The film, a world premiere in IFFR’s Harbour section, is the third in the director’s “millennial” trilogy. Like its predecessors Independent Boy* (2017) and Drama Girl* (2020), both also produced by Halal, the new feature deliberately and provocatively blurs the lines between fiction and documentary. Kars appears on screen as himself - and so does Lakemeier, in the same role.

“It’s a very good performance. He analysed me a lot,” Kars says of his doppelgänger, Lakemeier.

“[But] I chose him not because he looked like me but because I saw something of myself in him. It’s difficult to describe…”

The director talks of the actor’s “sensitivity” and “lightness.” His film, though, touches on some heavy subjects. These include Kars’ sometimes fraught relationship with his late father, who was deeply suspicious of his artistic leanings.

“And for me and my girlfriend, this whole film process was really intense. The storyline in the film is how it went in real life. The film became a problem between us,” he adds of the scenes which show him and Eva (or the actors playing the couple) arguing together. 

There is an emotionally awkward sex scene, shot with the help of an intimacy coordinator, in which Eva accuses her boyfriend of being detached and trying to “direct” every aspect of their life together, including their most private moments in bed.

“This scene is a metaphor for my struggle with intimacy and inability to surrender, and…about my drive for control and aestheticism,” he laughs ruefully. “But right now, we’re still happy together. You know, I had to do it [make the film]. There was no other option and I think she respects that.”

Meanwhile, the director’s brother found it difficult to watch an actor playing their father. 

“If you make such a personal film or if you write an autobiographical novel, I think it is always difficult,” Kars reflects. “But I think for my girlfriend and my family, they see what it meant for me and now it means a lot to them too.”

As the film shows, Kars spent time with a therapist. “What you see in the film is me making the first steps in a therapeutic process.” He agrees that making the movie was cathartic for him. 

Future Me also includes moments of “psycho-drama therapy” when Kars, his girlfriend and the actors playing them are seen on an empty stage. These scenes have a raw, emotional quality. Kars had no idea what would happen.

“It was not acting, it was being. I was just trying to be myself and to see what happens.”

The director pays tribute to his producer, Olivia Sophie van Leeuwen, who started Halal’s doc arm. “It was really, really nice working with her because she trusted me; she gave me my freedom but she also had opinions at the right time.”

Van Leeuwen helped him finance the project which potential backers sometimes found hard to categorise. “We make documentaries but we need fiction money,” Kars explains the challenge of working in this hybrid fashion. (He is now looking to rework some of the same ideas about bleeding documentary and fictional elements in “a TV format”).

Gusto is releasing Future Me in the Netherlands in March. The film will have its Belgian premiere at the Ostend Film Festival at around the same time as the Rotterdam premiere.

“It may be stupid to say but I did this film for myself, to express myself and experiment with the form. I did it the way I wanted to do it, without concessions,” the director ends.

IFFR takes place on January 25 - February 4, find the Dutch line-up here. Or discover IFFR on https://iffr.com/en.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund