122: Aftersun (with Rafa Sales Ross)

This episode contains major spoilers and deals with difficult subject matter, so please watch the film before you listen to this discussion.

Freelance film critic and programmer Rafa Sales Ross joins me from Scotland to discuss Charlotte Wells’ debut feature Aftersun, starring newcomer Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal in an Academy Award-nominated performance as Calum, a Scottish single father who takes his 11 year old daughter Sophie on a trip to a resort in Turkey in the late nineties, a story told partly through the use of MiniDV holiday footage but more importantly refracted from the perspective of a grown-up Sophie, now at the same age her father was on this fateful vacation and reconsidering her memories.

As a film critic who saw Aftersun at its tear-soaked screening at Cannes and as part of the programming team that later selected the film to open the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Rafa is uniquely equipped to speak about this powerful drama about what gets captured in the “mind camera”; parenthood, loss, depression, empathy, memory, nostalgia and the hard-won wisdom children experience when they transform into adults and finally start to understand their parents as people.

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Trailer for Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022)

Rafa’s interview with Charlotte Wells on Aftersun, for “Little White Lies”, November 15, 2022