My vision for the film stems from the initial creative impulse that started this project—visual, musical, and rhythmic. I wanted Universe25 to feel like reading the writings or sketches from a journal you might stumble upon by the Thames on a rainy winter’s day, or the scattered ramblings of an unknown and questionable author. I wanted the film to feel both poetic and abrupt, yet also elusive and jaunty. My primary goal was to conjure an original mood.
The story, plot, and characters that would eventually populate Universe25 came later. Specific tonal anchors guided me throughout the process.
I was particularly drawn to creating a film that is explicitly polystylistic. Inspired by the work of composers Luciano Berio and Alfred Schnittke, as well as the poet Fernando Pessoa, I wanted style and tone to become subjects of deliberate manipulation, quotation, and play.
I never had a complete screenplay for this film. Instead, I wrote and developed material as we shot. This approach, inspired by documentary filmmaking, allowed the rushes to inform what I wrote next. I believe this process yielded story material that I could never have written in advance. This method was influenced by devised theatre and the work of filmmakers like Mike Leigh and Wong Kar Wai.
I also had the opportunity to edit scenes and write music while we were still shooting, which was incredibly stimulating. Post-production and production collided, and all conventional order dissolved, allowing a free and organic creative process to unfold. This process spanned over four years—it was difficult to bring it to a close, as it felt like it could continue infinitely. The first scene was shot in November 2021, and the final scene in February 2024.
It’s important for me to emphasize that I consider this film a musical drama. Composing the music for Universe25 was an essential part of the process; the marriage of music, image, and text is ultimately why I am drawn to cinema as an expressive medium. During production, I sketched numerous musical ideas, but in the end, I discarded all of them and composed the entire score in a four-week frenzy. The final score, written for a string quartet, was crafted to bring the film’s emotional landscape to life.
I hope the audience allows themselves to be whisked away by the movie, immersing themselves in Mott’s adventure as he navigates this strange world—the underbelly of urban life, the follies of love, and the macabre reality of mortality. Making this film has been an incredible journey of creative discovery, and I am thrilled to finally share it with the world.
