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| Auganic |
The 2025 Golden Globes will be announced tomorrow night, but gold comes from a different and somewhat unsettling place in Krit Komkrichwarakool’s short film Auganic. A prizewinner at the Deadcenter Film Festival, it’s the offbeat story of a gay couple who are in dire financial straits when one of them, an artist by trade, unexpectedly discovers a special ability. Cashing in on it could help them out of their predicament, but at the cost of compromising his privacy, and as he goes through a series of increasingly objectifying examinations, their relationship comes under pressure.
“Auganic is an LGBTQIA romantic drama about this gay couple who came across this special ability while they are having sex,” explains the Thai-Canadian director. “This phenomenon came along with financial promises that would test the boundary of their relationship, and they learned the meaning of what love and sacrifices mean to them.
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| Kenny Brain and Matt Dejanovic in Auganic |
“When it comes to the inspiration of this film, I think there's a couple of aspects to it, because I don't think this film is just about one thing. For me specifically, it started with my relationship with my work as an artist, which is being told through the main character, who is an artist as well. It was during the time that I came from Thailand and I moved to Canada to start a filmmaking career. The first thing that we have to do is to get a work permit and then become a permanent resident. At that time there wasn't much going on in the film industry that I could use as my path to my residency, so I fell back into my graphic design background a little bit, and that's not necessarily something that I wanted to do anymore.
“I felt like it was very daunting time in my life, but looking back at it now, I feel a sense of pride in my growth during that time. I wanted to replicate that moment in time in my life in a film somewhere, and I didn't want to just write about my own experience. So I started to look back at my dream journal and see what interesting ideas I came up with over the years. And I found this one. I'm not sure where exactly it came from. I thought it was an interesting avenue to explore within the context of romantic relationship. It reminded me a little bit of the folktale The Golden Goose. So that's why I combined the two ideas together.
“It's a very absurd idea and I felt like I should have done it as a comedy. That makes sense. But then as I started developing the script, as well as collaborating with everyone, we found that it's much more about these two people and not so much about the plot of the film. It's more a metaphorical representation of this relationship and not the other way around. It's actually a more sensitive story, and that's why we decided to leave most of the comedic side and focus on the romantic side and what these two guys are going through together. I think there's still a little bit of humor within the film, like those deadpan comedic moments that I think work well just because we're not focusing on so much on the comedy.
“I had worked with Kenny before on my previous film called Planktonic, which is a magical realism theme as well. I knew already what he can bring to the table, and this role, when I was writing it, I already pictured him taking the role of Nick. So we had a conversation a few months before we shot, and I asked him if he wanted to do it and he said yes. Then we started doing auditions for the remaining roles, including one of the leading roles, Kai. And we found Matt through his audition tape. I asked him to come in to do a chemistry test with Kenny, because this is a film about a married couple, after all, so the chemistry is very important. So we did that, and then we found our guys.”
The production took place in Vancouver, and Matt had only just moved there at the time.
“That was during the pandemic still, so I was going through my own existential crisis,” he explains. “I saw the premise and I was like, what the hell? And I think there's a lot of writer directors who will maybe make something provocative for the sake of being provocative, so that was kind of my initial impression of it. But then Krit had sent me the script, and I realised how much thought and care and how humanistic this story was. I fell in love with the script instantly, so I worked really hard on that audition.
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| Kenny Brain and Matt Dejanovic in Auganic |
“I think that's the mutual agreement between a director and an actor. An actor is kind of like, ‘I'm going to give you my soul.’ And Krit gave his soul to this script. And everyone behind the scenes really put so much into this project. I think that's something that definitely comes through in the film.
“I always resonated with the melancholy of Kai, and because it's a story about artists and artistry and everything, it wasn't necessarily a huge reach for me to get inside of this character and understand that really weird, surreal thing he was going through – even to have the sense that he has some sort of gift. The imposter syndrome of Kai was something I really resonated with and how that can sabotage you as a person. When those kind of things happen when you, when good things happen in life, I know for myself that there can be a psychology that starts to self sabotage and almost like wants to stifle that.”
For his part, Kenny admits that he would have been apprehensive about the subject matter if he hadn’t worked with Krit before.
“I knew the vision he has and the storytelling abilities that he has. And I also, even though it was a little left field, subject matter wise, the script itself I think is also relatable. I think it's very relatable. It's about two people, it's about connection. It's about stressing and strife and life and what can either pull people apart or bring them even closer together. So when I was reading the script personally, I had skin in that game. I've been in a certain similar situation with a past ex, you know what I mean? He was an artist. During the pandemic, we had money troubles, so it wasn't so far fetched for me to step into Nick and be that comfort system, that safety net for somebody who was going through something similar.
“I think it was about that caretaker role. You build this life for somebody and you have this connection, this love that you're trying to foster and you're trying to build, regardless of the worldly pressures that are around you – in this case, you know, having to sell the farm and having to support your partner in their passions as well, even though it's not necessarily lending to being in a financially stable place. I think Nick was just trying to be the best that he could possibly be for his partner and allowing him to be who he wanted to be.”
“I think we got really lucky with these two guys,” says Krit. “They have natural chemistry already. They got along really quickly, at least in my opinion. And yeah, like I said, this is something about a married couple, a gay married couple as well, and I think it's important that it translates authentically on screen.”
The film is full of visual contrasts, especially between the richly coloured and textured environment of the farm where the two men live and the cool clinical spaces where Kai is examined and studied. I ask Krit if he can tell me more about that aspect of its design.
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| Kenny Brain and Matt Dejanovic in Auganic |
“When I started working with my cinematographer, Joseph Schweers, and my production designer, Skye Dyken, we had this conversation about what can we do visually that translates to the audience that this is a very slow lifestyle kind of small town,” he explains. “Especially for these two, which serves their story. We found the power in the simplicity of it all. So we want to try to give the audience a little bit more time to breathe, give the characters a little bit more time to absorb all this information.
“When it comes to both cinematography and the production design, we tried to keep it very grounded. We wanted the farm to feel very homey, very lived-in, and essentially we wanted the audience to feel like this is the house and the farm that we want to save, in contrast to the medical examination room, which is very cold, very distant, very bleak almost. So we wanted to build that contrast between the two as well as not doing too many shots. Doing very focused angles, staying on one angle longer than normally. I think that helps to build the authenticity within the story.”
