- The main stage is the beach of Acapulco, a resort city in Mexico. Is it a place of personal memory?

= Acapulco has been my favorite place in Mexico since childhood. As the closest beach to Mexico City, it is a place that gave the feeling of a safe paradise. However, over the past 15 years, violent scenes have begun to be directed. Acapulco is now one of the most dangerous cities in the world. What a pity. I also have a personal experience, when I went to the beach of Acapulco with my girlfriend, recalling the nostalgia of my teenage years, and was surrounded by soldiers guarding the beach. It was scary and confusing. I don't go there anymore (Frequent collusion between drug gangs and the police has resulted in state governments stripping autonomous police forces and policing the military.-Editor)

- <Sundown> requires minimizing the information about the character and psychology and focusing on the surrounding environment. The audience must get used to silence and observation. Was the narrative style applied posthumously after thinking about the subject and character, or was it one of the most important conditions from the beginning?

= The rhythm of <Sundown> is the result of pushing your initial intuition. I believe that it is more cinematic when something is expressed on the screen without words. I like it when not everything is told through images, sounds and dialogue. In other words, I believe in the audience who thinks and feels in each scene. This is a slightly different story from pursuing a minimal plot. To put it bluntly, I like the one where multiple incidents happen. Even in <Sundown> , a lot happens in 80 minutes, but it's just not presented in a normal storytelling way . Tim Roth is also an actor who likes to act outside of the classic narrative style, so it worked well. This preference of ours is not meant to test or prank the audience. Rather, I tried to present a way to read from as many perspectives as possible while seriously thinking about how people would react in each scene.

- Were the dialogues minimized from the scenario stage?

= Yes. From the beginning, I thought of a British man named Scott or Neil who spoke no Spanish. Since there are not many people who can speak English on a beach in Mexico, which is not a luxury resort, I thought of a scene where there was little conversation, and I thought from the beginning that an unexpected love story would arise for a man. In that respect, <Sundown> is a movie that is implemented very closely to what was written in the script. However, since Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg are completely unpredictable actors, I felt that almost every scene during filming was new. It's not that the actors interpreted the script in a different direction, but rather they felt that way because they were actors who were faithful to the script but were far from tradition in the first place.

- Why did you repeat the image of the sun, the peeling skin in extreme close-up shots?

= It was written as a symbol with strong ambivalence. I hoped that the sun would stand above my head with life and death, a positive and destructive force, some power that would subdue the main character, Neil. Several symbols are used simply and directly. The same goes for the dead fish Neil looks down on in the opening shot. It was up to the actors to decide how to connect the semantic networks I had confused. All of these images were very important from the scenario stage.

- Following < Chronic >, you collaborated with actor Tim Roth. I want to say that there is a transcendent face of Tim Roth that can only be seen in Mitchell Franco films. How was the partnership between the two of you?

= In 2012, I first met him in Canada when I received an award at the Toronto International Film Festival for < After Lucia >. As soon as we met, they became friends and suggested that we work together, and we made <Chronic> . <Chronic> is a story with deep personal nuances written while watching my grandmother's last few months, and watching Tim Roth, who played a caregiver in the play, was touching and overwhelming . For the next 10 years we became good friends. During that time, we became really close, so when we were working on <Sundown>, the atmosphere was different from before. Because I knew a lot about him, I wanted to challenge and induce something to stimulate the team while writing the screenplay. Either consciously or unconsciously. Just as it is difficult for loved ones to work together, it seems that we also worked harder on <Sundown> . It was a time of arguing, not wanting each other to be more ambitious, deeply engrossed, and self-indulgent.

- Combining the minimized scenario, inner character, and limited stage, you can imagine an atmosphere where improvisation is quite allowed during the shooting period. What if there was a different aspect to the filming process for <Sundown> compared to your previous works ?

= Compared to <Chronic> and < New Order >, I definitely enjoyed more freedom. This is because we spent enough time filming in chronological order while staying at a hotel right next to the beach. Of course, filming in chronological order is the method that has been followed in all past films. In <Sundown> , I kept reshooting whenever I wanted for about 3 weeks, making impromptu attempts, and reflecting the momentary change of day and night . This approach could sometimes upset the actors or crew. But I'm not so worried about following the schedule. It has always been so. (laugh)

- What are the advantages of shooting films in chronological order?

= In the process of building the story and characters, sometimes the director can get lost, but if you are walking forward in order, it will be easier to find a new turning point. Fortunately, both the staff and I are not from film school, so we are free from outside customs. I could make a film on a more reasonable budget, but I still like to shoot in chronological order and I prefer the environment I have control over to do so. Sometimes choices that seem inefficient in terms of time, energy, and economy make better films.