‘At The Sea’ Director Kornel Mundruczo & Actress Chloe East On Working With Amy Adams, Communicating Through Dance & Why The Berlin Competition Project Was “Personal” & “Therapeutic”

For director Kornél Mundruczó his latest feature At the Sea, which stars Amy Adams and premieres In Competition in Berlin tonight, is an incredibly personal film. 

The Hungarian director, who says he is “still in my cultural exile”, reveals that the idea for this “hidden drama” was born after he left his home country. He had been critical of Hungary’s right-wing government and failed to get financial support from any of the local film bodies, so he decided to take his career abroad.   

“After I left, I started to recognize that I was changing so much and also the people I knew [in Hungary] had changed so much,” he says. “I started to see how fragile all of these relationships are and how much work you have to give them to keep them as is.”

The project, which is penned by his long-term collaborator Kata Weber, stars Adams with a supporting cast including Murray Bartlett, Chloe East, Brett Goldstein, Dan Levy, Redding L. Munsell, Jenny Slate and Rainn Wilson. Ryder Picture Company, Alexander Rodnyansky’s AR Content and Hammerstone Studios produce the project in association with Ashland Hill, Proton Cinema, LB Entertainment and Jeff Rice Films. 

At the Sea serves as Mundruczó’s second film in a loosely interpreted triptych alongside his Pieces of a Woman and upcoming Ellen Burstyn and Pamela Anderson starrer A Place To Be. The three films explore states of crisis across three phases in a woman’s life: early adulthood, midlife and later life. 

“The same characters do not reappear in the three movies but it’s very important for me and Kata to articulate that there is this phantom thread,” he says. “With At the Sea, we started to wonder how we could put this middle-age identity crisis into a movie because there aren’t many movies about this topic.”

At the Sea sees Laura (Adams) return to her family’s Cape Cod house after rehab. Once the face of her late father’s renowned dance company, she built an identity tethered to his legacy and the cost of growing up in his shadow. Laura’s functional alcoholism, long ignored, finally reached a breaking point after a drunk-driving accident with her young son in the car. Now sober, she comes home changed, but to a family unprepared for this. 

“While it’s about the crisis of a middle-aged woman, everybody – men and women – all have this transformation in middle age when your identity changes,” says Mundruczó. “We all come to a place where we think about life after death and reflect on how you can connect with those closest to you. So, on that level, it’s a very personal film.” 

The film’s breakout star is Chloe East, who plays Adams’ teenage daughter Josie, who had stepped into the caretaker role for her younger brother while her mother was in rehab. Forced to grow up fast, she also has a rebellious streak and harbors resentment for her mother. 

East, who has had roles in Heretic with Hugh Grant and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, admits that when she read the script, Josie was “not the type of character that I often come across.” 

“She’s such a multifaceted, very different character,” she says. “I also felt very personally connected to her and I felt very protective over Josie. I felt like I had a lot that I could pull in from my personal life, and I felt like I needed to play this character without seeming super maniacal. The whole thing felt like a big therapy session.” 

Dance played an integral role to the film. Adams’ character is a former dancer and Mundruczó says that she and her daughter use to medium as a way to “express themselves without dialogue.” “

“They communicate only through those silent moments, which is the language of this story,” he says. 

East was able to draw on her own childhood experiences to bring Josie to life in these scenes. “I grew up in a family where not everything was fully fleshed out and talked about,” she says. “I did a lot of dance growing up and I felt like that was my main way to communicate and really express myself and tell everyone how I was feeling. So, I was really grateful to read the script and feel like I was acknowledged as an actor.” 

“The dancing is very tricky,” admits Mundruczó. “We had to find the balance because we didn’t want it to be too Broadway or too contemporary. It was difficult to find the exact language for what was happening. It’s not perfect, but it’s dense and represents the state of mind of the character in that moment.” 

Choreographer Meg Minter was brought aboard the production to tease out these specifics that Mundruczó was searching for in his scenes. “She’s a very special person,” he says. “She’s very spiritual and she joined us on the shoot and created this amazing dance with Amy and Chloe. For the final dance, I wanted to shoot it not as a dance sequence but rather wanted to focus on the character. I didn’t want it to get too rhythmical.” 

East, however, trained in a very technical dance space and admits that she found the dancing scenes very challenging. “This kind of dance didn’t have a structure. You had to really let go and it felt very vulnerable but, again, was a very therapeutic experience. I think part of that is just letting go and for Josie, too, she has to let go. You can’t think in very linear, structured ways. I always felt I could express myself through dance, but I didn’t know I could do it in this way.” 

Mundruczó says Adams’ performance was “unbelievably brave” and credits the actress for her rawness and fearlessness in a role that he feels is “very rarely seen in Hollywood.” 

“Her performance is almost like a statement that you can do that,” he says. “She was really straightforward and wanted to be raw, simple and alienated. From a director’s perspective, she is a pure artist, and she knows more about the character than you.” 

For East, playing Adams’ daughter was a bonding experience for her. She says Adams was “a scene partner who you could trust” and felt like she could connect with her on and off camera. “She’s just so nuanced,” says East. “I look back at this whole experience and I have so much gratitude for the whole thing.”