Abel Ferrara on ’Siberia,’ His Willem Dafoe Partnership, His Upcoming Ethan Hawke Thriller, More

Abel Ferrara began shooting Siberia, the latest film in his incredible multi-decade career, well before the pandemic took over the globe. But in many ways, Siberia feels like an examination of what can happen to all of us when we’re forced to reckon with ourselves and our fickle subconscious in the pure isolation of solitude (i.e. stuck inside in a pandemic). The experimental, truly buck-wild film stars Willem Dafoe (one of Ferrara’s most prolific muses) as a man who has chosen to live his life isolated from most, tending bar in a remote outpost of Siberia. But as he’s compelled on a journey into a literal cave, he travels through many metaphorical caves of dreams, desires, fears, and out-and-out madness. If you combined the cerebral thrills of David Cronenberg with the out-of-their-mind sprints of Darren Aronofsky, you might get something close to the hallucinatory Siberia. I was lucky enough to speak with the legendary Ferrara over Zoom, and well, I was just delighted by our chat t