Filmmaker Ira Sachs on His New Film ‘Little Men’ [Exclusive Video]

Filmmaker Ira Sach’s on His New Film, ‘Little Men’ by Uinterview

Ira Sachs, the filmmaker known for the acclaimed Love is Strange, once again explores relationships and their complications in his new feature, Little Men.

Ira Sachs Video On ‘Little Men’

Set in Brooklyn, New York, Little Men follows the new friendship that grows between teen boys Jake (Theo Taplitz) and Tony (Michael Barbieri) as their families feud over financial and real estate matters. Casting the roles of Jake and Tony came first for Sachs, who knew that they would be the heart of the picture he had set out to make. In Taplitz and Barbieri, he found his perfect pair.

“I needed to find two kids that you would remember. Theo Taplitz, who plays Jake, came through an audition; when he sent the tape in, I looked at it and I felt like I was watching a documentary about this character, it was so authentic. And Michael Barbieri is a real New York kid,” Sachs told uInterview in an exclusive interview. “I knew these kids would be memorable. I also knew they were very different. One was like out of a Bressan film and the other was out of Scorsese.”

Little Men is a consciously multi-generational film that begins with the death of Jake’s grandfather. Sachs, 50, hoped to explore the relationships between familial generations – and to create a movie that would, in the end, appeal to all of them.

“I’m a 50-year-old, middle-aged man, I have 75-year old-and 80-year-old parents, I have four-year-old kids, I’m very aware of being somewhere in the middle. […] I’m interested in those dynamics between generations,” Sachs explained. “I also wanted to make a movie that was about childhood, but from a very mature perspective. At the same time, I felt if I did that well, it’s a movie that kids and adults could enjoy and connect to.”

Sachs’ approach to filmmaking includes making an effort to get at the truth of his characters’ – of every age, and to allow the characters to be honest with each other.

“For me, honesty has been something that I’ve always struggled for, and in much of my life I feel I didn’t attain in any way, shape or form and that was in a way the subject of my previous films,” Sachs said. “The central relationships in Love Is Strange and Little Men are quite successful. It’s really those couples facing the world. I hope my films are realistic and empathetic, but also they’re about the struggles all of us have in being those things.”

The commitment to reality extended to the socioeconomic statuses of the families involved in Little Men‘s central conflict. Sachs hopes that with no clear villain or hero outlined by status, the movie will organically captivate its audience.

“In this case with Little Men you have a battle between two families who are both trying to hold on to what they have. And we made a pretty specific decision as writers that the rich characters would not be too rich and the poor characters would not be too poor, and in fact they’re both very similarly educated as people. So what that creates is a kind of moral suspense,” Sachs said. “You can’t easily choose as an audience member which side you’re on. I think that’s what keeps the movie exciting.”