PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Julio Maria Martino, director of the film Country of Hotels.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

A conversation with Julio Maria Martino, director of Country of Hotels. The film is screening on March 12 at this year’s online edition of the Manchester Film Festival, and revolves around a number of people who find themselves spending time in a mysterious and decaying hotel. In this interview, the director talks about the style of the film, surreal, absurd and darkly comic, and talks about the influences of such people as David Lynch and Samuel Beckett. He also talks about the challenge of shooting a film that mostly takes place in one single hotel room, his collaboration with screenwriter David Hauptschein and the cast, and how he believes this film reflects these days of lockdown, despite the fact that it was made before the start of the pandemic.

Country of Hotels tells the stories of the desperate souls who pass through the doors of 508, a room on the fifth floor of an anonymous, decaying hotel. We are taken on a surreal and blackly comic journey down its lonely corridors and behind its out-dated furnishings and stained surfaces. The story plunges us into the ever-turning carousel of haunted lives who check in and check out of the establishment.