Hany Abu-Assad says his new movie ‘The Mountain Between Us’ is one of the most honest films he has made because of the extremely challenging conditions everyone had to endure on location.
The 55-year-old director helmed the survival movie which shows Kate Winslet and Idris Elba as photojournalist Alex Martin and surgeon Dr. Ben Bass and their efforts to survive in the wild following a plane crash.
Hany and his cast and crew worked 10,000ft up the Canadian Rockies and even though everyone had to deal with freezing and dangerous conditions, it is these challenges that "drive" him to make movies.
Speaking to Business Insider, the filmmaker said: "To be honest, this is what drives me to make movies. I want to have a challenge. And an honest picture. Because if you do it in a studio with a green screen, you won’t be making honest decisions about your shots, lens, lighting. But when you are on location, every decision is an honest decision because you are hungry, you are cold, you are all in the same situation. The actors didn’t need to pretend. We couldn’t get food up there. Everyone had energy bars to chew on."
The location shoots for ‘The Mountain Between Us’ – which is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Martin – required the two stars to endure subzero temperatures in the mountains in Pemberton, British Columbia, Canada, and the filmmaker admitted he did at times feel "really guilty" because he wanted to push everyone to get the perfect shot.
He said: "One day we had walked and set up the shot and were ready, but then I was like, ‘This is not the right angle, we have to move the camera another half mile’, because I wanted to get the mountains in the background. You should have seen my crew shouting at me. ‘You can’t do this!’ I felt really guilty. The line producer was yelling at me, ‘Hany, you can’t do this!’ And I said, ‘We started already, let’s continue.’ We all had to work together to make it possible and they did it."
Hany Abu-Assad is proud of challenging disaster movie
