‘The Guilty’ Director Antoine Fuqua and Star Jake Gyllenhaal On Sparse Storytelling And Shifting The Film From Denmark To California – TIFF Studio

Directed by Antoine Fuqua, The Guilty follows Joe Baylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is reluctantly answering emergency calls due to a demotion he received prior to a disciplinary hearing. When he receives a cryptic call from a woman who has been kidnapped, he tries to piece together the few clues he has to help her. As the mystery unfolds, Joe must confront his own past and the decisions that led him to this demotion.

“I was really moved by, initially, the type of storytelling,” says Gyllenhaal. “We’re used to seeing films nowadays where everything is thrown at us; we see everything in the frame, including the kitchen sink. It feels like we’ve used everything at our disposal and sometimes these wonderful movies come along where huge pieces of filmmaking that we are used to are taken out and more tension is created because it leaves room for the audience’s imagination.”

“It was really more about the character, about Joe, and what his journey would be if he was here as opposed to in Denmark,” says Fuqua. “We talked a lot about what the journey is that he is going through, and what we both cared about. We talked about mental health, we talked about our system, we talked about mythology, like Dante’s Inferno… so, LA made sense because it’s such a labyrinth to me, and I find it really interesting.”

Click on the video above to watch Fuqua and Gyllenhaal discuss the film.