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Midsommar director Ari Aster: 'I often cling to dead things'

His wickedly hilarious films are the stuff of nightmares but the man behind the gory Hereditary has his own terrors to conquer

Midsommar is an agonisingly lovely horror film about four American students bungling an invite to a pagan celebration in Sweden. It is highly likely to give you nightmares. The film’s writer/director, Ari Aster, is currently having one of his own: battling reporters determined to discover his own demons. “I’m cripplingly neurotic when it comes to these interviews,” he says. “For me, these are just total minefields.”

Hereditary, his breakout debut from last year about a miserable family, featured two beheadings and a sobbing Toni Collette literally climbing the walls. People sensed that this soft-spoken, charmingly awkward young film-maker might have been inspired by a past he didn’t want to share. After much grilling, Aster has learned to reveal small intimacies (a stutter when he was young, a solitary childhood) while palming the truly personal.

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from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IXCtO9
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