{"id":111033,"date":"2025-10-29T21:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T21:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/111033\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T21:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T21:32:07","slug":"satisfaction-digs-up-buried-trauma-of-couple-on-greek-island-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/111033\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Satisfaction’ Digs Up Buried Trauma of Couple on Greek Island Holiday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cThe Brutalist\u2019s\u201d Emma Laird<\/a> and \u201cDunkirk\u201d star Fionn Whitehead<\/a> are British composers whose frail bond begins to unravel on a Greek island holiday in Alex Burunova\u2019s \u201cSatisfaction,\u201d a psychological drama that has its Greek premiere Nov. 2 at the Thessaloniki Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film, which bowed earlier this year at SXSW, marks the narrative feature directorial debut of Burunova, who also wrote the script and shares a producing credit. Produced by Perfect Circle Films, Driven Equation, Carte Blanche and Constant Production, it will compete for the Golden Alexander in Thessaloniki\u2019s main competition.\u00a0U.K.-French sales-production outfit\u00a0Alief\u00a0is handling world sales, with UTA repping North American rights.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSatisfaction\u201d follows the tumultuous relationship of Lola (Laird) and Philip (Whitehead), two musicians vacationing on a remote, windswept Greek island during the calm of the off-season. Gradually, a palpable discomfort in their relationship comes into focus, a troubling rift that the duo is careful to dance around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat changes when the couple bears witness to a frightening scene of domestic abuse, followed by a chance encounter with a beautiful stranger, Elena, played by \u201cHoly Spider\u201d star Zar Amir Ebrahimi<\/a>, that upsets the delicate balance of power between Lola and Philip. Old wounds are reopened, and the couple\u2019s long-buried trauma threatens to finally emerge into the bright Mediterranean sunlight.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSatisfaction\u201d had its genesis in a theater play Burunova directed a decade ago, which followed a couple on vacation \u201cstruggling to address the invisible weight between them,\u201d she says. In the process of defining that unseen burden, the director realized \u201cit was something I had buried in myself for years, something I wasn\u2019t ready to face.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt would take eight years and more than 100 drafts for Burunova to confront that trauma through \u201cSatisfaction,\u201d a film she calls \u201ca letter to my younger self.\u201d Saying that she felt compelled to write the script to \u201cmove through my own experience,\u201d she describes it as an attempt \u201cto\u00a0take something painful and turn it into a story with a beginning, middle and end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTrauma happens to everyone. Everyone has pain,\u201d Burunova tells\u00a0Variety. \u201cTo truly heal from trauma, just facing it isn\u2019t enough. You have to embrace it as part of your story. You have to embrace it as part of who you are and have this real acceptance and be able to say that this happened, and it made me who I am, and for that I am stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSatisfaction\u201d is set between an unnamed Greek island and East London, where the young couple met two years earlier. There, up-and-coming composer Philip is captivated by the sight of Lola, a rising star at the Music Conservatoire, playing the piano at a house party. Their unexpected connection is complicated by the arrival of Lola\u2019s girlfriend, Angela, played by Adwoa Aboah (\u201cToo Much\u201d).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFionn Whitehead (l.) and Zar Amir Ebrahimi star in \u201cSatisfaction\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Perfect Circle Films<\/p>\n

\n\tThe intimacy between the duo nevertheless intensifies, with \u201cSatisfaction\u201d interweaving the heady whirlwind of their London courtship with their growing estrangement in Greece, picking up the thread at a point where Lola is trapped in an increasingly toxic situation \u2014 something Burunova compares to \u201cStockholm syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLife is the stories we tell ourselves. Life is the stories we tell ourselves\u00a0about\u00a0ourselves,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd it\u2019s easier to tell yourself that this is fine, and I\u2019m okay, and this is how it should be, or this is what I deserve. And unfortunately, a lot of people who find themselves in situations like Lola, they tell themselves that they don\u2019t deserve better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s easier to stay in this unhealthy thing than to face the truth and face the pain and face the fact that you were wronged by someone you loved,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt\u2019s this process of self-erasure, where in order to protect the person you love, you\u2019re willing to betray yourself and tell yourself, \u2018I\u2019m fine with this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLola\u2019s growing estrangement \u2014 not only from Philip, but from herself \u2014 finds a fitting backdrop on the remote Cycladic island of Antiparos, whose \u201cvast seascapes and empty landscapes,\u201d says Burunova, \u201cmake you feel so small and insignificant.\u201d The director \u201cfelt a really strong emotional and spiritual bond with the island\u201d from the moment she arrived, she says, adding: \u201cWhen I stepped off the ferry, I had this really strong [feeling of] d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, like I\u2019ve already been there, and I\u2019ve already shot the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe elements and the natural environment of Antiparos are pivotal to \u201cSatisfaction,\u201d with sound designer\u00a0Javier Umpierrez\u00a0(\u201cMemoria,\u201d \u201cLa Cocina\u201d) recording hundreds of island sounds to help him craft the film\u2019s rich auditory landscape. That\u2019s paired with the\u00a0lush photography of Hungarian cinematographer M\u00e1t\u00e9\u00a0Herbai (\u201cOn Body and Soul\u201d), who captured the island\u2019s raw natural beauty \u2014 including the dramatic churn of the Mediterranean, whose powerful ebb and flow, evoking as it does flux and transformation, offers a fitting metaphor for a film \u201cwhose DNA is change and evolution,\u201d according to Burunova.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s a hopeful message for a story of trauma. We can get stuck in our trauma, but we don\u2019t have to,\u201d she says. \u201cAs human beings, we are constantly changing, evolving, shifting. And thank God, because we get to rediscover ourselves and rewrite our story. And then we write the story of who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Thessaloniki Film Festival runs Oct. 30 \u2013 Nov. 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Brutalist\u2019s\u201d Emma Laird and \u201cDunkirk\u201d star Fionn Whitehead are British composers whose frail bond begins to unravel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[67382,93,67383,61,60,270,67384,67385],"class_list":["post-111033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-emma-laird","tag-entertainment","tag-fionn-whitehead","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-thessaloniki-film-festival","tag-zar-amir-ebrahimi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}