Rudolf is a South African born director with an award winning body of short films that include screenings in Cannes, Venice and Los Angeles. Indoor Fireworks was the world’s first fully digital film shot on the groundbreaking 2K Viper filmstream camera that preceded the current digital filmmaking boom. After being nominated by the BBC as best new director, Rudolf directed his theatrical debut Dark Hearts in 2011 starring X-Men’s Lucas Till and Goran Visjnic (“ER,” Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), nominated as best film at the 20th Raindance Film Festival and distributed by Vertical Entertainment. In 2012 Rudolf directed his second theatrical feature Where The Road Runs Out starring Cesar winner Isaach De Bankole and Saturn nominee Juliet Landau, the first feature film ever to shoot in Equatorial Guinea, due for release this year. In 2013 Rudolf directed Selling Isobel, a dark thriller based on a true story about sex trafficking, starring Frida Farrel (Contract Killers), Matthew Marsden (Rambo), Alison Stoner (Step Up 3D) and Lew Temple (“Walking Dead”).
HFF: What is your film about, and how did the project come to be?
RB: My film is about a scientist who leaves the world of academia behind to learn the true meaning of friendship, forgiveness, love and getting closer to nature and the self.
HFF: What was your role in the production?
RB: Director and producer.
HFF: Why did you submit to the Heartland Film Festival? Have you been to the Festival before?
RB: This will be my first time, but I just love the ethic of Heartland and the fact that the festival chooses talent and heartfelt artistic values over politics like so many festivals these days.
HFF: This year’s tagline is “Shift Your Perspective” – what lasting effect will your film have on moviegoers?
RB: As the first feature film ever to be shot in Equatorial Guinea, it will hopefully leave them with the feeling that they’ve explored somewhere novel with the idea that people are essentially good at heart and if not, that redemption is always worth a shot with a kind heart.
HFF: What has inspired you to become a filmmaker?
RB: I love music, surrealism, symbolism and transformative storytelling, and film is the only medium that combines these.
HFF: What is something that you know about filmmaking now but you weren’t told when you started your career?
RB: Creativity and production are a walk in the park compared to politics and sales.
HFF: What are some of your favorite movies? What’s your favorite worst movie (you know it’s bad, but still love it)?
RB: Wings Of Desire, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Being There, favorite worst movie is Barbarella.
HFF: How many film festivals has your film been a part of? What do you like the most about the festival experience?
RB: This is my North American premiere after our San Diego international world premiere. I love being in a room full of cinephiles.
HFF: Heartland Film Festival moviegoers love filmmaker Q&As. Let’s say a Festival attendee wants to earn some brownie points—what is a question that you’d love to answer, but haven’t yet been asked?
RB: Why did you go to a country that is known more for its extremist regime than its locations in a region with potential Ebola and malaria to make a movie?
See Where The Road Runs Out at the 2014 Heartland Film Festival:
- Saturday, Oct. 18 – 7:30 p.m. at AMC Traders Point Showplace 12
- Monday, Oct. 20 – 7:15 p.m. at AMC Traders Point Showplace 12
- Friday, Oct. 24 – 1:45 p.m. at AMC Castleton Square 14
- Saturday, Oct. 25 – 10:00 a.m. at AMC Castleton Square 14
