Raquel Laguna/ SUCOPRESS. ERIC BANA and SYLVIA HOEKS attended the A SACRIFICE Los Angeles premiere. We spoke with them on the red carpet. Writer and director Jordan Scott and producer Michael Pruss were also in attendance. A Sacrifice is an emotionally turbulent story that follows American social psychologist Ben Monroe (Eric Bana) who is investigating a local Berlin cult connected to disturbing events. While he immerses himself in his work, his rebellious teenage daughter, Mazzy (Sadie Sink), becomes embroiled with a mysterious local boy who introduces her to the city’s underground party scene. As their two worlds head toward a dangerous intersection, Ben will need to race against the clock to save his daughter. A SACRIFICE in theaters on June 28th.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Tomorrow we'll have my own.
00:02Do you have any more time than that?
00:03Of course.
00:04Okay, good. I have more time than you.
00:06Yay! I love stuff like this.
00:08You're here.
00:09Well, Tom's on my team.
00:10I'm going to be very busy.
00:12Okay.
00:22What attracted you to this project in the first place?
00:25And what do you like the most about Ben, your character?
00:29I love the script.
00:30I love the thriller genre.
00:32And this was a different setting,
00:34something that I hadn't done before.
00:36I love shooting in Germany.
00:37I love the city of Berlin,
00:38so it was amazing to go back and shoot something there.
00:41I love the character of Ben,
00:42you know, this social psychologist
00:44whose daughter ends up in jeopardy,
00:46partly because of his...
00:48He feels partly responsible because of his line of work.
00:50And so getting to work with Sadie and Sylvia and Jordan,
00:54our director, was just, yeah, an amazing experience.
00:57What do you like the most about your character
01:00and why this movie was perfect for you?
01:05What I like most about Nina as a character
01:08is her strength and her drive.
01:11I think to always find something to hold on to
01:14and next lead in her case.
01:18Yeah, not give up,
01:19even though it's not always the right thing
01:20that she's searching for.
01:22I like that in her spirit.
01:23And I think the reason why I like this film so much
01:26and the script when I read it and I met Jordan
01:28was that I felt I could identify with the sense of loneliness
01:32that every character felt in the movie.
01:34And I felt, especially after COVID,
01:36a lot of people are experiencing so much loneliness.
01:39And I think that will be what the audience
01:43can identify with in this movie.
01:45How is Jordan as a director?
01:48As a director, she's wonderful.
01:50She knows what she wants, but she's super lovely.
01:53She has a wonderful way of directing you.
01:56And also giving you the space and the trust
01:58to bring your own ideas.
02:02Did you do any kind of research about cults
02:05and all this stuff?
02:07I did.
02:08Well, I watched a lot of cult documentaries,
02:10which is one of my favorite things to do anyway,
02:12so it wasn't really homework.
02:15I love True Crime.
02:16There are many.
02:18And then we sort of spoke about the book that it's based on,
02:22but I didn't really read it
02:24because Jordan felt it might be better
02:26to just focus on the script.
02:28Because they're similar stories,
02:30but she wrote the script,
02:31and I think we agreed it would be better
02:33to just focus on the script.
02:35And then we just talked a whole lot about the character.
02:38I met with Eric, rehearsed.
02:42And then I just, you know,
02:44I always write the character out on my own,
02:46just create a whole backstory is what I like to do.
02:49Just have a whole bunch in my backpack,
02:51go to set,
02:52and then I don't necessarily have to use it,
02:54but I'll just have it there.
02:56That's kind of what I do.
02:57We've been working on it for a very long time together,
03:00and we've been trying to find the perfect project
03:04to do together for a while.
03:06And, yeah, it just kind of has become our obsession.
03:09It became our obsession.
03:11But the book is fantastic.
03:13And, yeah, it was just, you know,
03:17it's such a terrifyingly universal story
03:22that we were kind of able to transpose it elsewhere.
03:28Well, like all movies,
03:30we had a limited budget to do it,
03:32so some of it was really about stretching our resources
03:35as much as we could
03:36and, you know, really making sure
03:38that we put all the money on the screen,
03:41you know, as we say.
03:43But we had fantastic support in the city of Berlin,
03:46had a great team there.
03:48And I think, you know, oftentimes,
03:50the challenges of a film like this
03:52are making sure it feels authentic.
03:54You know, there are bad versions
03:56of what it means to be a cult and this and that,
03:58but we really did our research.
04:00I mean, Jordan spent hundreds, probably thousands of hours
04:03understanding cults, reading about cults.
04:05I did as well.
04:06And just make sure it was honest, you know,
04:08because in Japan there's a word called hikikomori,
04:11and it means a child that never comes out of their room
04:14because they're so obsessed with their life online.
04:16And suddenly this life online can almost steal them away
04:19from their real life
04:20and their relationships with their family and their friends.
04:23So we really studied that
04:24and what that means when you're an impressionable young teenager
04:27like Sadie's character is in the film.