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Hot Spot opens nationwide on August 21st, 2026 via Focus Features. NYC MOVIE GURU: Between entertaining the audience, provoking them emotionally and provoking them intellectually, which of those three elements was most challenging to tweak in the editing room? Agnieszka Smoczyńska: When I'm working on a movie, I try to grab the audience's attention with how I tell the story. With Hot Spot, I tried to provoke the audience to ask questions to themselves at the very end. For me, as a filmmaker, when I was working on Hot Spot, I knew that I also had to find the language of this movie---by language, I mean, how I wanted to tell this story via images, visuals, and to communicate with the audience. Hot Spot isn't about following the plot of the movie, but it's rather to experience the world, to allow yourself to feel the emotions, and to confront your own anxieties and own fears. So, it's "Experience Cinema." You have to watch it by yourself on the big screen because the way we were shooting it, we wanted to create the world on the big screen. For me, it's totally different on a small screen sometimes because you can focus on the dialogue, but sometimes you want to tell the story through visuals and to capture the emotions in a time. This is what my challenge was. NYC MOVIE GURU: How would you define the term "cinematic" as a filmmaker? AS: Cinematic for me is that the whole sense of telling the story is through images and the visual narration. So, you use not only actors, not only psychological elements, not only dialogues and not only information to tell the story, but you try to create emotions via the way you mise en scène the story---what do you show? In Hot Spot, locations were very important--where we want to shoot it. We chose Greece because it's the place of the birth of European culture, but now there is no greenery, no forests, and there are fires. The whole landscapes are empty and black. So, our locations are not only locations where the characters are, but they're also characters that also give you emotions, so they also, somehow, tell the story. NYC MOVIE GURU: How do you think the advancement of modern technology is affecting the quality of human relationships? AS: If you are connected with advanced technology, like us in this Zoom interview, if we didn't use this technology, I'd be isolated and you would be isolated. But, at the same time, we can connect, talk and share our experiences. You can tell me what you think about the movie and I can tell you what I wanted to give and get from the audience and to communicate to them. But if we are always connected and, as Zen [in Hot Spot] says, we miss loneliness the most, we can't hear our thoughts and can't be with each other. If you are with your close person, you want to be only with him or her---not to be connected to the outside world. So, I think that Hot Spot, in terms of the advancement of technology, is also about communication and the loss of communication with you, as a human, and what does it mean to not merge with machines. I would like the audience to ask these questions. NYC MOVIE GURU: Would it be fair to say that Hot Spot is not only a sci-fi movie, but also a horror movie in a way? AS: Yes, I think that Hot Spot has horror elements. For me, it's also horrifying, but also fascinating. So, what I like in creating it is that it's not simply horrifying. The Head in Hot Spot doesn't control you all the time. Nowadays, you can do things, but if something goes wrong, they can get you. So, it means the same thing with The Head. If you say some key words or some information in the system, you can be followed. So, this is also interesting to me about Hot Spot and the modern world. NYC MOVIE GURU: Which film(s) do you think would pair well with Hot Spot in a double feature? AS: There were many movies that I was connected to sometimes. Of course, it was Blade Runner, but Hot Spot is not Blade Runner. I remember when I was watching that movie as a teenager. With all of these movies, if you start to think about yourself within the world that you live in and when we ask, as a society, "What is the goal? What's our aim?" So, I don't want to put one exact title because there are plenty of them about it and also plenty of books about it. I would rather think that all of these movies and books are where you start to think about yourself within the world, society, your family, how you feel for your family, and for your loved ones. It's also about a mid-life crisis, so it's about the moment when you lose control of your life. So, there are many elements important to me which I would like to resonate with the audience. Main Page Interviews Menu Alphabetical Menu Chronological Menu ______________________________________________________ |
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