FAQ — Medea

A film by Matan Tal

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1) What is this film about — in one sentence?

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This film is about the relationship between reality and fiction — between life and art — and the ancient, unresolved question of which one shapes the other, as I explore it through my own filmmaking language and personal moment in time.  

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2) What genre is this film (and how would you describe its form)?

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I consider Medea a short narrative fiction film.
In my view, it contains some experimental elements, but structurally it remains a fairly standard narrative short — deliberately so. I wasn’t interested in breaking form everywhere, only where the film itself demanded it.  

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3) Why did you make this film?

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I made Medea at a very specific moment in my life.
As I often say when speaking about this film, I was filled with anger, vengeance, and urgency.

At that point, I had been rejected six times from film schools. The sixth rejection was the breaking point. I realized that formal film education was no longer an option for me — I was too late in my academic path, and I knew I would never study film production through an institution.

So I decided to stop waiting.
I told myself: I’m going to make a film myself. I’ll gather the crew, write the script, and make it happen — without depending on any system.

When I made that decision public, people reached out. The actress Kama Berman contacted me and told me she was inspired by my spirit of resistance and independence. Originally, I had a different script in mind, but her message pushed me to write a role specifically for her.

That’s when Medea truly began — as a story of rejection, vengeance, and self-authorship, written directly from my own experience.  

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4) What is the central idea or question the film explores?

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The central question of Medea is an ancient philosophical one that I return to often in my work:

Does life influence art, or does art influence life?
What comes first?

In the film, the actress wants to play Medea. She is rejected — and gradually, her life itself begins to resemble the tragedy she longs to embody. By the end of the film, those layers collapse into each other. Reality and fiction become indistinguishable, which is precisely the territory I wanted to explore.  

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5) What should the viewer pay attention to while watching?

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In my view, the viewer should pay close attention to the actors.

The performances are the backbone of this film.
Kama Berman and Eldad Ben Torah carry Medea with an intensity and precision that made working with them a real pleasure for me as a director. Their performances are where the emotional truth of the film lives.  

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6) What is your approach to editing in this film?

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For Medea, I worked closely with editor Noam Taub — this was his first film editing project, and we collaborated very tightly.

For most of the film, the editing follows a conventional narrative logic. That was intentional. I wanted the structure to feel stable enough that the rupture at the end would truly register.

The final montage is where the film becomes something else. I consciously combined footage from the actress’s life with a scene from Andy Warhol’s Bad, merging screen reality and lived reality until they begin to reflect — and contaminate — each other.  

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7) How did you approach sound and voice (music / voiceover / silence) in this film?

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From the beginning, I wanted the sound to feel like an autonomous presence.

The music carries a menacing quality, almost as if it exists independently of the characters. I was also very attentive to the echoey nature of the spaces — the theater, the bedroom — allowing the rooms themselves to shape the emotional atmosphere.

For me, sound in Medea isn’t decoration. It’s a psychological force.  

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8) How much of the film is scripted vs discovered during the process?

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Medea is 100% scripted.

I wrote the script in an almost obsessive way. At the time, I had a balcony, and instead of writing inside my apartment, I locked myself outside on the balcony for hours. Not metaphorically — physically. I knew that if I stayed inside, I’d find excuses to get up, eat something, distract myself, or escape the work.

So I locked myself out with a desk, a chair, and nothing else, and I stayed there for two or three days until I had a draft. Seven-hour stretches at a time. No improvisation, no discovery phase, no “let’s see what happens.” I wrote because I had to move forward.

Every scene was scripted. Every shot was planned in advance. What wasn’t scripted — and can never truly be — were the qualities of the actors themselves. Those emerged during filming, and that’s where the film gained its final texture. But structurally, nothing in Medea was discovered by accident. It was built deliberately, under pressure, out of necessity.

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9) What makes this film “experimental” (if it is) — and why did you choose that?

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If I describe anything in Medea as experimental, it’s the ending.

That decision wasn’t ideological. It wasn’t about “being experimental.” It was about responding to what the film itself demanded. The story required a formal rupture, and I followed it there — nowhere else.

Aside from that, I see Medea as largely conventional, even if it carries a strange or liminal quality.  

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10) What films, artists, or influences shaped this work (directly or indirectly)?

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The most obvious reference is the Greek tragedy Medea, though not in dialogue or structure — more as a conceptual echo.

I was also directly inspired by Andy Warhol’s Bad and by his method of filmmaking — the way life, art, and production all existed in the same space.

Beyond cinema, I drew inspiration from 19th-century paintings of actors in character — images of performers frozen mid-embodiment. Those visual references shaped how I thought about performance and presence in the film.  

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11) Who is this film for — and what kind of viewer will connect with it most?

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Medea is for viewers who are interested in how meaning is created through editing.

It’s for people who care deeply about acting, and for viewers drawn to films that exist in liminal spaces — not fully conventional, not fully experimental.

In my experience, that in-between territory is the only place where something genuinely new can emerge in cinema. Viewers who are curious rather than comfort-seeking tend to connect with this film most.  

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12) Where can I watch the film, and how can I contact you for screenings or programming?

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Medea is available to watch online — on my website and on platforms such as Vimeo or YouTube.

If you’re interested in screening the film, programming it, or discussing it in a curatorial context, you’re welcome to reach out to me directly via email. I’m always open to conversation.