Childhood Memory Reinvented: A Story Behind Creating 'Aftersun'

In 2022 the world saw the debut feature of an Irish film director Charlotte Wells for the first time, a movie she agreed to be a tribute to her late father. (‘I read online that somebody described this film as a eulogy, and I suppose it is of sorts of eulogy to my dad, but by definition, he’s not here.’) Despite she never really confirmed nor denied whether this work of hers is autobiographical, it would be wrong to claim the film’s nature is purely fictional. In this article, we are going to discuss the true story behind Aftersun and what inspired Wells to create it.

The plot follows Sophie, an 11-year-old girl who spends her holiday with her father Calum in Turkey. They do a lot of activities together and it seems like everything is great…unless we pay strong attention to the details, some of which are quite subtle, realising Calum’s mental state might be at risk.

Charlotte Wells does not say a lot about how much of her personal life was presented in the film – instead, she makes viewers wonder, leaving them with the chance to make conclusions themselves and shape their personal opinions.

During her talk with the presenter from Academy Conversations, she claimed: ‘I still assert that it is a piece of fiction but it’s true that my own memories and experiences formed the basis of the script, formed the first skeleton outline that I worked from when I wrote the first draft and I think more than anything the emotion expressed in the film is mine and that’s to me what makes it the most personal. Like, I wasn’t on this holiday, these days did not play out as they do in the film, but I think that my relationship with my dad was the foundation of these characters and so there is much of me in this.’

Despite the story being inspired by Well’s memories throughout her childhood, she allowed Paul Mescal (Colum in the film) to be able to ‘invent’ the dad character himself. ‘We had one conversation where I was like, this is my sense of the character and what he’s experiencing… you can have this information, you can take what you want from it, you can bring what you would like to it but just so you know where I am starting from, and then obviously that, you know, gives Paul some foundation that he can build on.’ – Wells for Deadline Hollywood)

As we can see, for some directors, including Wells, building a character or a story using the ability to design something new without getting rid of the original narrative’s essence is more important than making it entirely realistic. Her trust in Mescal’s capacity to bring something new to the table and yet keep playing the character she knew personally proves it.

‘I think having already screened the film a little bit, people see to feel emotionally connected to the arc of the film and so I don’t feel a pressure to kind of dictate what people are taking away because I’m quite happy with the feeling that they seem to be connecting to and I do tend to think about films in terms of feeling versus any more concrete, you know, expression…’ ( Wells for Deadline Hollywood)

We do not know much about Well’s childhood or her father, which might seem like quite an omission, however, creating a piece that displays the director's true feelings towards the matter rather than just blindly presenting us with the facts is much more crucial - maybe, in terms of filmmaking in general. When it comes to the art of Cinema, we do not want to be committed to the idea of understanding it, because it ruins the sense of familiarity we seek when watching a story on screen, and Charlotte Wells’s first feature is great evidence of it.