Australian star Jacob Elordi shared some insights into his creative process and passion for acting during a brief stop on Saturday in Berlin, Germany for the world premiere of his upcoming period series The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
“I have no real interest in making movies for the sake of entertainment or for making money,” Elordi said. “There’s a feeling that I get — that everyone gets, I think — when you watch a film and I call it cinema. When you experience cinema and you’re in a room and it does that thing to you — that kind of profound, unnameable thing that moves you and confirms you on this planet in this life — that’s what I chase, I guess, as a performer. I want to be a part of that. Usually, it stems from the filmmaker. So I’m really just a super fan who’s following his heart.”
The in-demand actor’s upcoming Amazon Prime Video miniseries The Narrow Road to the Deep North, in which he stars opposite Odessa Young in a sweeping love story spanning decades, premieres this week at the Berlin International Film Festival. The series’ first two of five episodes are screening in the fest’s special gala section.
Directed by Justin Kurzel, whose period crime feature The Order was a genre favorite at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is based on Australian author Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize-winning novel and has been adapted for the screen by writer Shaun Grant.
Set against the shadows of World War II, the series tells the epic story of Lieutenant-Colonel Dorrigo Evans (Elordi), a medical officer who is taken prisoner by the Japanese and forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway. Evans is haunted by the memory of his affair with his uncle’s wife, Amy (Young). Thoughts of it both sustain and torment him as he spends his days trying to preserve life in a world beset by death. The story is told over multiple periods, journeying from Evans’ childhood to his young manhood experience in the prisoner-of-war camp, to later in his life, as he works as a respected surgeon and is celebrated as an Australian war hero.
Elordi said Kurzel, a fellow Australian, is a director he’d been following since his teenage years.
“When I first started watching films, I remember seeing Snowtown (Kurzel’s 2011 directorial debut) when I was maybe 14 or 15,” Elordi shared “And I just wrote his name down and knew that I wanted to work with him someday. He kind of introduced me to the idea of cinema, really.”
Elordi said Kurzel sent him a letter proposing that he star a series he was developing that would become The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
“It was a letter that I was kind of waiting to get, which I thought would never come,” Elordi added. “So when that came into my inbox, it was sort of an absolute no-brainer.”
The producers have described the series as “a love story to sustain audiences through the darkest of times, an intimate character study illustrating the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity, and an investigation into a marriage and an unforgettable love affair.”
Elordi and Young (Mothering Sunday, Shirley) are joined by an Australian and international cast featuring Ciarán Hinds (Belfast) as the older Dorrigo Evans, and Olivia DeJonge (Elvis), Heather Mitchell (Love Me, Upright), Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High), Show Kasamatsu (Tokyo Vice), Charles An, and Simon Baker (Limbo, Breath).
Amazon Prime Video will distribute the series in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, with Sony Pictures Television set to distribute internationally. The series was acquired by the BBC for the U.K.
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