Interview with Caroline Bevaart & Harald Swinkels, the Dutch directors of “Drawback”, awarded Best Narrative Short (Grand Jury Prize) of Fall 2023.

Award-winning Caroline Bevaart & Harald Swinkels talk about the amazing 20-minute “Drawback” (Netherlands), a short film that follows Simon, a lonely comic strip artist with an unattainable love, and Rachel, a woman he sees regularly in the grand cafe where he works on his drawings.

Whenever Rachel comes into the cafe, Simon feels an irrepressible urge to put his work aside and secretly sketch portraits of her. One day, Simon is offered a pencil by a distinguished gentleman in the back of the cafe. Simon discovers that by drawing with this pencil he has the power to change the course of his life. He uses it to win Rachel over, but is genuine love makeable?

Harald Swinkels and Caroline Bevaart are writers-directors with a passion for storytelling, combined with meticulous attention to music, sound and the use of light color. Together they form a creative duo, bringing a simultaneous female and male perspective in their cinematic storytelling. Harald and Caroline co-founded film production company Exosphere. “Drawback” is their debut film.

Cal Film Festival: What made you decide to make this film?

Caroline Bevaart & Harald Swinkels: We have long been fascinated by the inauthenticity that people display in order to participate in the world around them. The tension between real and unreal, authentic and inauthentic, and the consequences of suppressing someone’s true personality fascinates us and will be a recurring motif in our work. Our debut Drawback subliminally questions whether life and even love can be “made”, wrapped in a dark, expressionistic love tragedy. Drawback ‘s message could not have come at a more appropriate time. We felt compelled to tell this story in our first movie. We believe that the history of mankind never had before so many people leading such unreal lives. In their social media lives, on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, where the hashtag “PerfectLife” seems to be in place every day. But inauthenticity ultimately gets in the way of living a meaningful life with genuine love.

Cal Film Festival: What budget did you have and how did it affect the production?

CB & HS: Because we took a rather alternative route to filmmaking (director Harald worked as an entrepreneur for 20 years to be able to self-finance our first films), we had a relatively large budget of €1 million. We wanted Drawback to radiate with a high level of craftsmanship and a sense of nostalgia. In addition, we felt the need to meticulously execute the color palette for each act, as well as to pay extreme attention to the use of lighting and music, not only to tell the story, but to enhance the performance of the actors on set. Therefore, Drawback had to be a movie made in a studio environment – to make this happen, we built our own pop-up studio and lived in it for almost a year.

Cal Film Festival: How long was the shoot and what were the main challenges on the set?

CB & HS: The official shoot lasted 20 days. The main challenges were the destruction of an outdoor set by a violent storm, which forced us to rearrange the entire schedule (and suddenly the final scene had to be shot at the beginning), and a night shoot with a galloping horse that had to run past the camera in a tiny interval of time.

Cal Film Festival: What impact do you expect to have with “Drawback”?

CB & HS: We hope to make people think about the “makeability” of life. And hopefully the success of the film will open doors for our next projects.

Cal Film Festival: Are you happy with the final result or would you change something?

CB & HS: As perfectionists, we could go on working until the end of time, but that is true for any of our projects. We always say “you never finish a project, you merely abandon it”. But we are definitely proud of the result of Drawback and its international success!

Cal Film Festival: What are your overall career goals and what’s next?

CB & HS: Our ultimate and audacious goal is to create intelligent blockbusters: to both thoroughly entertain audiences and, almost imperceptibly, make them think about profound personal and societal issues. We are currently working on our first feature film, a coming-of-age psychological thriller.

Cal Film Festival: Do you have any advice for other independent filmmakers, particularly for the newcomers?

CB & HS: We consider ourselves newbies as well, so it feels a bit presumptuous to come up with advice. However, we can share our work-life philosophy: Take your work seriously, but not yourself 🙂

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