Sex Education star Emma Mackey has described starring in Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk as a “baptism of fire.”
The movie premiered at the Berlin Film Festival today and is the debut directing project for She Said scribe Lenkiewicz.
Mackey said filming was tough but she heaped praise on Lenkiewicz. “We had to come in on a baptism of fire – it was hot and we didn’t have much time – but [Lenkiewicz] created that environment and surrounded yourself with the right amount of people.”
Based on the novel by Deborah Levy, Hot Milk sees Mackey play Sofia, who embarks on a journey to a Spanish clinic in a search of a medical cure for her mother Rose’s paralysis. Rose is played by Fiona Shaw and Vicky Krieps stars as Ingrid in the movie, which is distributed by Mubi.
Mackey said there was a “huge amount of trust” on set, which “helped me feel freer.” The BAFTA nominee broke out in Netflix smash Sex Education, in which she plays Maeve Wiley. She led Frances O’Connor’s Emily Brontë adaptation and had a role in Barbie.
Lenkiewicz, whose writing credits include Disobedience and Ida, used her Berlinale press conference appearance to weigh in on the controversial assisted dying debate, which is currently a big topic in her native UK as a new law makes its way through parliament and is touched upon in the movie.
“My father was chronically depressed and age 62 he chose to check out of this crazy world,” she said. “And I think he could have had a far easier time of it if certain laws had been different although that was hard. I feel strongly that we hurtle into the world in birth and in death, and if we are compos mentis we should be given a choice if it’s a clear cut case of palliative care or sickness. But people will come away [from the movie] with different conclusions.”
The Berlin Film Festival runs until February 23. This morning, jury president Tilda Swinton revealed she plans to take a break from acting for the remainder of this year.
