Yorgos Lanthimos should be on your radar. The 42-year-old director, born in Athens, Greece, is a visionary unlike any other in modern cinema. Bringing strange and surreal worlds to the big screen with such confidence, his past feature films “Dogtooth” and “Alps” have won numerous awards (as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film). “The Lobster” is his third feature film, first in English, and in true Yorgos fashion, he finds the perfect balance between sharp-edged satire and romantic fable in such a way that is such to make “The Lobster” among the best films of 2016. We sat down with Yorgos at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills earlier this week, and we talked about his directing process, Colin Farrell’s weight gain, and his on-set nervous breakdown. We begin:

Visually, this film is very loud; I’m wondering what a “Yorgos” script looks like? Do you create mood boards, that include pictures? 
Not at all, actually. Our scripts are very sparse and simple. I mean, they don’t even have descriptions of the characters or their emotions, what they’re going through, etc. They just describe the action and dialogue. The way I like to make films is to take one part of the process at a time. When we’re writing the screenplay, I’m very much focused on that and trying to feel confident about it.

I only start making a film when I feel the screenplay is there and I feel confident it can be made into a film. I never think about what it’s going to look like, who’s going to be in it, where we’re going to do it or any of those things. The next step is thinking about what fits this film visually, and what actors can make the characters on the page more complex and interesting. Then it is filming and editing where I make more decisions, I try different kinds of music and find the language there.

Can you talk about the different societies that have very strict rules? Neither place seems like an enjoyable place to live.
That’s the thing, I think the irony is that there is not much contrast. What I was interested in is showing the irony of one character who escapes from one system believing that he can be free in a different system. Even the Loners themselves, they’re supposedly free because they’re going against the system but the irony of it is in order to create this other system they have to have their own rules as well. That ends up being very similarly oppressive. I like that irony. I think it poses questions about whether you are ever free to think or feel the way you want.

“I like that irony. I think it poses questions about whether you are ever free to think or feel the way you want.”

How did you choose Colin Farrell? 
I always liked Colin. Any actor who can star in In Bruges to A New World to Total Recall has range and can do great things. I like to watch interviews that actors do when I’m thinking about casting to get a different sense of them, apart from their film roles. I saw that he could be someone who could enrich the character.

Did you ask him to put on the weight?
I did! We discussed it the first time we spoke. We met on Skype, and we didn’t have much to talk about. I don’t like discussing the screenplay too much so we talked more about practical things. He asked me what I thought David looked like. I told him that I thought he would be slightly softer, someone who has lived a long life with his wife and was comfortable. He said, ‘Oh yeah I was thinking he could be very thin’ because he was trying to avoid putting on weight. I just thought that if he was extremely thin, that would make him feel much more miserable as a character and more depressive.

“I just thought that if he was extremely thin, that would make him feel much more miserable as a character and more depressive.”

David initially turns down the proposition from the biscuit lady, even though he only has 45 days to find a mate. What does that say about his character?
He wasn’t as desperate at that point but became more desperate later down the line. Then he became so desperate he wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. What I’ve now realized about the film, watching it after we made it, is that he was very offended when Ben Whishaw’s character started lying to be with someone. I think that hurt him as a vulnerable and honest character. But in the end, he resorts to that himself.

This film is very bold, there are a lot of unique ideas that have never been seen before. That said, I’m sure there were a lot of challenges in creating the world of The Lobster. 
Well, this time around we were creating a bigger world. There was a larger scale that was necessary to achieve. Making films that do not necessarily fit in a box makes it hard to convince people to invest in them. So yeah, that part of the process was hard. For me personally, moving from making very small films in Greece essentially with my friends and having them offer their services or whatever they could to make those films and entering into a more proper film structure meant that I had to work very much like the characters in the film– with very specific rules.

This time, it wasn’t as flexible as it was when I was just making films with my friends. On the other hand, there were a lot of benefits coming from it. I was able to work with more means and able to achieve what we wanted to achieve. I was able to work with great actors who were very committed and supportive.

“There were times you would distance yourself from the film and just be like, ‘What the hell are we doing?’ We had camels walking around, crazy animals…”

What were your most memorable moments from this experience?
I was stressed the whole time. I don’t know what to pick, I was having a nervous breakdown the whole time. It’s always like that. There were times you would distance yourself from the film and just be like, ‘What the hell are we doing?’. We had camels walking around, crazy animals… There were instances like that where we would just start laughing about the situation.

1 h 58 min. Rated R for sexual content including dialogue, and some violence. Now playing in select theaters, including the ArcLight Hollywood.