Veteran director-producer Marc Turtletaub returns to feature filmmaking this year with Borges and Me, which screens this weekend in one of the primetime Out of Competition spots at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. 

Directed by Turtletaub from a screenplay by Oren Moverman, the film follows a young graduate student at the University of St Andrews who embarks on the trip of a lifetime across the Scottish Highlands accompanied by the legendary poet Jorge Luis Borges. The picture is an adaptation of Jay Parini’s popular memoir Borges and Me: An Encounter. 

Fionn Whitehead and Luis Gnecco lead the film alongside a band of popular Scottish actors, including Alan Cumming, Freya Mavor, John Gordon Sinclair, Morven Christie, Peter Mullan, and Stuart Bowman. Check out a clip from the feature above, and below, you can read our interview with Turtletaub ahead of this weekend’s screenings in Edinburgh. Turtletaub discusses how he stumbled upon Parini’s best-selling novel and how he mounted this large-scale production in 61 locations across Scotland. Turtletaub also teases his next feature project.

DEADLINE: Marc, how did this project come to be? Where did you find the book?

MARC TURTLETAUB: We have book scouts. We have other producers send us material. We develop our own. But this one I just found in a bookstore. I was actually on vacation in Hawaii, walked into a bookstore, and saw it. The book was a few years old at that point and looked interesting. I knew a little bit about Borges, but not as much as I do now. I started reading it and fell in love with it. 

DEADLINE: In all those years, did no one else try to adapt the book? It feels like a ready-made story. 

TURTLETAUB: There was another team that had tried to put it together, but it hadn’t happened, so they were open to us coming and getting involved. It’s a road movie, so the first thing I did, even before we had the rights to the book, was get in a car and drive from St Andrews up to Orkney. I took the exact route from the book and tried to stay in all the same places. As we were going, I would identify possible shooting locations.

DEADLINE: This is a road movie, and it’s rare for films of this scale to be made in the UK. Was it a difficult process to build this production? 

TURTLETAUB: We make our own movies and then sell them, so we have that big advantage. The film was a co-production between four countries: Holland, Belgium, the UK, and the U.S., so we had an interesting mix of financing. But you’re right, these kinds of movies are rare these days. But we had a great line producer who introduced us to the best crew in Scotland, and having these great Scottish actors join made it a real pleasure.

DEADLINE: Yes, this is a great cast. Luis, who plays Borges, is amazing. I believe he is from Chile?

TURTLETAUB: Yes, Luis Gnecco. He starred in Neruda, the film about Pablo Neruda, so he seems to specialize in these great writers. I fell in love with his work. He was probably the best-prepared actor I have ever worked with. He read just about everything that had been written about Borges. He found a movie that I didn’t even know existed, which Borges had written. He saw live interviews with Borges. He met someone who knew Borges and interviewed him. In the script, there is a line where Borges says something in Anglo-Saxon, so Luis learned Anglo-Saxon. So that’s the guy that showed up, truly marrying talent with preparation. He was a real treat. And then Fionn Whitehead, who was the lead in Dunkirk, was great as a foil to this wild Luis Gnecco. And then we were able to get all these great Scottish actors: Alan Cumming, Peter Mullan, Freya Mavor, people that were signing on because they liked the project, and we were quite fortunate.

TURTLETAUB: He loves filmmaking, and we welcomed him. He was on set every day. In fact, one day we were shooting the scene where Freya Mavor sings a song. Jay was there and, within an hour, wrote the lyrics. So he was a great supporter. The screenplay was written by Oren Moverman, who is a good friend. Oren wrote another movie I made called Puzzle, and he’s going to be working on the next one that I’m going to make. So we have a good relationship. When Jay read the screenplay, he said to Oren, “This is a masterclass in adaptation.” So we knew he liked it, which was important to us. 

TURTLETAUB: The next one is based on a book written by the British author Ben Reeves. It’s called Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt. It just came out and, in its first week, was on the New York Times bestseller list, so we think it’s quite special.

DEADLINE: Marc, you’ve done a lot in your filmmaking career. Is there anything left that you’d like to tick off your list?

TURTLETAUB: We really love what we’re doing. I want to continue doing it well. I’ve been able to pass on the leadership of our company to Tim Foley and Michael Clark, and that feels great because one is my son and the other feels like my nephew. We’ve worked together for almost 20 years. And we’re looking at new things as a company. We’re working on a low-cost 3D animation, and we’re excited about that. That’ll be something new for us. This past year we shot an independent TV pilot without a distributor, with Nicole Holofcener directing. It’s called Worried and follows two sisters living in New York. We’re looking forward to lining up a distribution for that. So those are two new things the company is doing, and for me, it’s just about continuing to do what I’m doing and helping support the next generation.

Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.

Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, and don't get your facts wrong.

Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );