GET READY TO THUMBLE! Coach Steve wants to take his last chance to win the Austrian thumb wrestling championship. Unfortunately the competition seems overwhelming. In Return of the Thumb, first time feature-length director Florian Convey has created a refreshing comedy about the life or death sport of thumb wrestling – a brilliant, straight-faced satire that is thoroughly hilarious and entertaining throughout.
See the North American premiere of “Return of the Thumb” on February 16, 2019 @ 9:15 pm at Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street) as part of New York City’s 8th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival. Winter Film Awards Nefeli Soteriou recently spoke with Florian Convey about the film.
The new sport is claimed by a few — author and humorist Paul Davidson believes that his grandfather Bernard Davidson invented the thumb war in the 1940s. American copywriter Julian Koenig said to have invented thumb wrestling in 1936 as a boy at Camp Greylock. The Return of the Thumb, a narrative of 102 minutes, describes the quest of thumb wrestling coach Steve who wants to overcome past failures and win the thumb war championship.
What were the stepping-stones that contributed to you becoming a filmmaker? Was it a personal decision or life circumstances?
Right after high school I went to acting school, where I was able to also attend dramaturgy and storytelling classes. After a couple of years as a stage actor, my interest grew more and more towards film. I was fascinated by the different approaches of how to tell a story. But since nobody wanted to tell the stories I wanted to tell, I decided to attend film school, to get the technical know-how. I then started working at a TV commercial production company, where I learned a lot about how to tell and edit a story in less than 30 seconds.
How did you come about choosing to direct the Return of the Thumb?
The idea of a movie about thumb wrestling was born about 10 years ago, when at a party people started to organize a midnight thumb wrestling tournament. It was a weird but amazing experience. Since that evening I was fascinated by the potential of this sport. In 2012 at film school we had to shoot a short film. I pitched my idea about a worn down thumb wrestling coach to my colleagues and so we shot the short Thumb of the Tiger.
Over the years I felt that I wasn’t done with the story of coach Steve and I missed out on a lot of opportunities. So in 2016 I started writing the script of the feature film Return of the Thumb.
I wrote the script myself and only a few people had insight to this process. I used improvisation, especially with my great lead actor Markus Giefing, to find the humor balance. Also, when I wrote the script, it was very important to me that the thumb wrestling sport should be taken seriously. I wanted it to be a tough, full contact sport, with different fighting styles and techniques, like boxing and MMA fighting. I spent a lot of time inventing different thumb moves, giving them all kind of names. It was a fun process, because I’m a huge sports fan.
Were there budgetary constraints? What was the pre-production process?
We were shooting on a very low budget. Because of that, we were only able to shoot on weekends, which was challenging. Everybody was working during the week and we had to find the right dates where everybody had time for full two days of shooting. Fortunately crew and cast were so passionate about the project that we always found a way. Once everybody was locked in on the set, we had a lot of fun.
We were shooting over the span of a year, so pre-production was omnipresent. In total we had 16 shooting days, so 8 weekends, with a couple of weeks off between the shooting days.
We shot on two Canon C300 to get the mockumentary style and to stay mobile. For the long shots, slow-mo’s and VFX shots we used the Blackmagic Ursa Mini.
What was the most unexpected problem that you had?
The biggest challenge was to excite the crew for this movie. I saw a lot of questioning faces when I first pitched my feature film idea of a story about a thumb wrestling coach. And because we were a low-budget production, we were really depending on the passion of everybody involved. I received quite a few rejections. Fortunately that changed over time. After the first rehearsals and meetings the crew and the cast started to understand the vision and by the first day of shooting everybody was eager to start.
Do you thumb wrestle yourself?
Yes I do. In the film I play Lukas the forgotten thumb-wrestling champion from 10 years ago, so I was intensely working on my thumb game. It’s actually really exhausting, especially when you fight an angry 300-pound bodybuilder.
What is your next project about?
My next project is about a girl who wants to participate in the world’s largest impersonator-contest. But her parents won’t allow her to do so and she has to find her own way to the contest. It’s a comedy road-movie with a lot of great characters along the way.
Nefeli Soteriou
Nefeli Soteriou’s background is in Film and Media Arts, Creativity Coaching with Coaching Psychology, Behavioral Coaching for Mental Health, and Education. With significant, real-world experience as a Life Coach and Filmmaker, she specializes in helping filmmakers with every aspect of the filmmaking life, from completing unfinished films to handling the stresses and pressures that they face.
About Winter Film Awards
New York City’s 8th Annual Winter Film Awards International Film Festival runs February 14-23-2019. Check out a jam-packed lineup of 89 fantastic films in all genres from 32 countries, including shorts, features, Animation, Drama, Comedy, Thriller, Horror, Documentary and Music Video. Hollywood might ignore women and people of color, but Winter Film Awards celebrates everyone!
Winter Film Awards is an all volunteer, minority- and women-owned registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2011 in New York City by a group of filmmakers and enthusiasts. The program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the NY State Council on the Arts.
