By Yun-hua Chen.
It started when I went to a concert by an artist who was quite similar to the one portrayed in the film. The whole experience of watching her on stage was very intense. So I began writing something based on that, and over these 11 years, the core idea stayed the same….”
What happens when strange people and creatures emerge not only from the mind but also from the body? Alexandros Vougaris, aka The Boy—a legendary musician and director in the Athenian cultural scene—has both concretised and abstracted, interchangeably, the psychosomatic experience of being a traumatised musician. His protagonist, Margo, confronts a dark family past and inner fears while isolating herself in her Athenian apartment.
In They Come Out of Margo, which blends various cinematic textures, formats, styles, stop-motion, fluid imagery, and shifting colour schemes, Margo seems to enter a state of free fall—a claustrophobic journey into memory, psychological states, and both the visible and invisible threads connecting her to the outside world.
As the narrative builds toward Margo’s 40th birthday, her lived experience begins to merge with that of her older sister, who is no longer alive. In this moment, the film experience fuses with musical and psychedelic sensation—a true feast of images and sounds, charged with a raw, almost untamed energy of artistic expression and wild psychological intensity.
Film International spoke with director Alexandros Vougaris about his world of filmmaking and musicality.
Music is such an important element in your filmmaking…
In this film, the subject naturally draws us to music because it centers on a musician. But I’m always thinking a lot through music. One of the films that had a big influence on me for years, maybe not directly on this one, is Distant Voices, Still Lives by Terence Davies. It’s like an a cappella musical, and in it, music unfolds the narrative and characters in a way—not in a conventional way, but in a unique kind of way.
And what was the starting point of this project?
Actually, I usually begin from something personal, but in this case, it started when I went to a concert by an artist who was quite similar to the one portrayed in the film. The whole experience of watching her on stage was very intense. So I began writing something based on that, and over these 11 years, the core idea stayed the same, but it also changed a lot. It became many different things over the course of working on it.
The music is very varied too—you included different kinds of music, even a song about Athens. How did you go about assembling the soundtrack?
Yes, together with my partner, we thought of the film as having three different soundtracks. There’s the music Margot creates as a musician—those are songs I composed. Then there’s the music playing at the party—these English-language tracks, which were written by my partner. And finally, there’s the film’s actual soundtrack. So we always approached it as three distinct soundtracks that collide and interact, sometimes shifting very quickly from one to another.
Visually, the film also has a mixed form. You use a lot of stop-motion and film material, with very different textures. What was your thinking when designing this?
From the start, we preferred to work with film, for many reasons. In this specific film, I wanted to include as many textures unique to film as possible—images that could only be created on film, almost like visual artifacts. Regarding stop-motion, I had begun experimenting with a pixelation technique a few years ago. I first tried it in a music video, then in a short film, because I wanted to see how tiring it might be to the eye. Normally, pixelation and stop-motion is done in a very specific way—like in Švankmajer’s films, frame by frame. But the way we do it is rougher.
So I wanted to test, step by step, whether it works. Eventually, we decided to include it in this film too—partly because Margot, the main character, never leaves her house. We wanted to create different and powerful emotions and experiences, as if everything one feels from being in the outside world was compressed into the apartment. That’s one of the reasons the film has a somewhat “violent” visual quality.
It was difficult for a woman to be both an artist and a mother. That’s still often the case. The immense creative drive and the societal pressure to become a mother—those two forces often collided and led to breakdowns….”
And physically, Margot is inside—but it also feels like her inner world is being externalised. Do you play with layers of inner and outer reality?
Yes. In the film, it’s not clearly stated, “this is in her mind.” It’s more mixed. The way I think about reality, relationships—all of it—is fluid. That’s not to say I don’t appreciate films with a more conventional narrative structure—I do. I love those films. But my own perception of realism and daily life is always changing in terms of space, time, and subject.
Even in one single day, I’m not just one thing. For example, right now I’m here, presenting this film—so part of me is here. But part of me is also thinking about the past 11 years and how the film developed, and about what my collaborators brought to it. A part of me is thinking about my daughter in Athens, about my aging parents who need care. So it’s never just one thing—it’s many things, constantly shifting across shapes and time. That’s what I try to reflect narratively in my films. Trying to create space for films of that way.
And something concrete comes out of Margot as well—which I found fascinating: the concept of something emerging from something else.
I think there’s a more literal way of interpreting that—as her longing or fear of becoming a mother. The same applies to creating songs or characters. I believe many filmmakers don’t think of their characters as entirely real people, but also not as entirely invented. They occupy a space in between.
There’s a film I’m thinking of—Storytelling by Todd Solondz. After Happiness, which made him well known, he made Storytelling, where there’s a sequence in which he asks forgiveness from the characters he created in Happiness. So we create people we want to see, or we create things that frighten us. It’s also tied to psychological fears, to psychosomatics. I’ve struggled with all that in my everyday life for years, so there’s a piece of that in the film too.
What really interested me was that, after seeing that first composer perform—the one who inspired the story—I began reading about other female composers, novelists, and filmmakers, especially from the ’70s and ’80s. What I noticed as a recurring motif was that many of them had nervous breakdowns around age 30 to 40, often triggered by something related to motherhood.
At that time, it was difficult for a woman to be both an artist and a mother. That’s still often the case. The immense creative drive and the societal pressure to become a mother—those two forces often collided and led to breakdowns. That idea stayed with me. The final screenplay includes many small references to those women—snippets of their words, experiences drawn from various musicians and writers.
I also felt the film was about loneliness and projection—loneliness as a creator, and projection in the sense of an alter ego.
Indeed. I’m here with my collaborators, and we’ve worked together for many years. But at the same time, these films begin with me and end with me. They’re shared, but also solitary in their making.
One of the actresses—the one who plays Margot’s nurse, her friend—said something lovely when she read the script. She said she thought of the film as a farewell party to darkness. A farewell to certain thoughts about darkness and all that comes with it. And personally, that’s quite true for me.
Was there any improvisation or co-creation with the cast or crew?
Not really. We don’t rehearse much—maybe once, briefly. There’s a very tight screenplay, but I always leave some scenes without a defined purpose or dialogue. I believe that in most films, audiences are so focused on following the narrative that they’re not free to feel. Whenever there’s a scene where the plot pauses, you can actually feel time passing.
In many great films, the most important scenes are the ones that seem insignificant on paper. Take Taxi Driver—the mirror scene. If you read that in a script, you’d probably think, “Cut this, what is it?” But it was an improvisation, and because it interrupts the narrative, it works powerfully. So in my own work, I always try to create space for these kinds of scenes—ones that allow time to expand. Those moments are usually improvised.
The actress who plays Margot—you’ve worked with her on almost every recent film of yours….
Yes, the last four. Our collaboration is very meaningful. What I appreciate about her—besides the fact that she’s a great actress and we work well together—is that I see myself in her. I also see my mother, my partner, everyone important to me. I can see them all reflected in her. That’s a major reason. And of course, when something works, I like to work with people again and again.
How did you come to filmmaking in the end? You started out as a musician, right?
I grew up in a house like that. My father is a filmmaker. My mother is a novelist and screenwriter. My sister is a filmmaker too. So I didn’t have to fight for it—it was always around me. I was always interested in it, so it came naturally.
How are you developing your next projects?
Right now I have two films I’ll be making this year. For the first time, the process is different. The eight films I’ve made so far were all created in a way similar to this one. But these new projects are more—how should I put it—“normal,” in terms of filmmaking. And I’m eager to try that. As a viewer, I really enjoy watching both unconventional and more straightforward narrative films, in addition to really strange films. I respect them all.
Genre films, as well?
Yes, genre films—absolutely. Science fiction, comedy—I grew up with films of all kinds. I’m not exclusively into arthouse cinema. I want to see whether I can work in that style as well. Creatively, it’s a completely different situation, and I find that really interesting.
You seem very prolific. Has it been difficult to get your films made?
I think it’s very difficult. I’ve always had a fear of not doing things. I’m afraid that if I stop, I’ll be too scared to start again. So I tend to work constantly, workholically, sometimes to the point of not being able to prepare things as thoroughly as I might like. But I don’t mind. Some of my favorite films were made that way. John Waters didn’t meticulously prepare everything. Early Almodóvar didn’t either. I think it comes down to the kind of person you are. I mean, I love Kubrick—he’s the god of all filmmakers. But as a person, I could never be Kubrick, for many reasons. My way of doing things is different.
Yun-hua Chen is an independent film scholar and critic and associate editor of Film International Online. Currently, she serves on the board of the German Film Critics Association.