“We have a close relationship with the Greeks,” Willem Dafoe said with a laugh at a press conference held at the Athens Conservatory yesterday to mark the release of his new film “Inside,” in which he is filming in front of a Greek lens. Vassilis Katsoupis joins Thodoros Angelopoulos (Dust of Time) and George Lanthimos (in the upcoming Poor Girls) with whom the great American actor has worked; definitely special: “He seems so kind and sensitive, but I have to tell you he was pretty tough on set. In fact, he was very direct and understandable, the kind of partner you would like to have,” Dafoe said of the Greek director, and the latter responded to the compliment: “The terrible thing is that with Willem we had almost all the scenes from the first boot. . It’s a little embarrassing for the director, but it gave us time to try other things. Ideas came to the table and he never said no.

Anyway, apart from the vulgarity, the chemistry between the main characters of the film was evident even in yesterday’s meeting. Both Katsoupis and producer Giorgos Karnavas (Heretic) have detailed the process of creating the rather unusual psychological thriller that took The Outcast to midtown Manhattan. For his part, Willem Dafoe, who played an art thief stuck in a high-tech loft full of such things, spoke about how this (and every) character became part of himself: “The audience that exists in all roles is obedience to some rules. The character inevitably gets inside you and is there even when the camera is not working to bring him out. For example, the shooting was six weeks. During this time, I did not have another life, so this fictional one begins to occupy you. Not in a hurry, but naturally. We also decided from the beginning that the script would be filmed in chronological order, so we wouldn’t need wigs, false beards, etc. to show the passage of time. I literally lived with him day after day. My body was telling us how long this guy had been there: my nails, my hair, my beard.”

The American actor starred in the movie “Inside” by Vassilis Katsupis.

However, the transformation of the hero in “From Within”, in addition to the physical, is predominantly spiritual in nature. “The fact that at some point he also creates his own art, interacting with what surrounds him, I think also saves him, regardless of the film’s ambiguous ending. In fact, he was forced to face himself. I really like this idea and how it moves the story forward. It worries me when some say that he has completely lost his mind. He didn’t go crazy, he just went inside – “inside” as the name suggests – which he’s probably never tried before.”

Vassilis Katsupi’s film will be shown in cinemas from next Thursday.