It’s unlikely that there’ll be a more fitting title to any movie released this year than Damián Szifron’s Wild Tales. Ever since it competed for the Palme D’Or at Cannes last year, this Argentinian anthology of six short, absurd stories has injected a healthy dose of entertainment into practically anyone who had the chance to see it throughout its festival run last year. Since then, it’s become the most watched film in Argentinian theatres ever, and gave many an Oscar pundit good reason to believe that it would win Best Foreign Language Film (it didn’t, but the thought still counts). And if that wasn’t enough to make the question “What are you waiting for already!?’ ring even harder in the heads of all who still haven’t seen it, the film ranked at an impressive #4 in our Best 20 Films Of 2015 So Far. Just like the film itself, the message is loud, clear, and appropriately unsubtle: Wild Tales is an unforgettable ride.

Things literally take-off with a prologue-to-end-all-prologues: two flight passengers, Salgado (Darío Grandinetti, from Pedro Almodovar‘s Talk To Her) and Isabel (María Marull), are seated in the same row and begin your everyday quasi-flirtatious airplane chit chat. We find out that Salgado is a classical music critic, and Isabel is a model whose ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Pasternak, wanted to become a classical musician until his hopes were ruined by one particularly scathing review from none other than Salgado himself. Coincidence? You’d think so, until things begin to escalate quickly and hilariously. It’s worth noting that this prologue contains a freeze frame that will likely remain at the very top of my favorite single frames in 2015.

The overarching theme of violent vengeance is the clearest connection each story has, since none of the characters appear to be connected in any way. The stories to follow involve, in chronological order: a douchebag lone shark (César Bordón) who visits a late-night diner where the only waitress (Julieta Zylberberg) recognizes him as the man who ruined her father’s life, a surreal case of road rage where one flip of the finger and a verbal insult leads to outrageousness, a Falling Down-kind of day for demolitions expert Simon Fischer (Ricardo Darín, Argentina’s most recognizable actor) who gets trapped in the seventh circle of bureaucratic hell, an attempt to cover up a hit-and-run accident that shifts into a screwy example of avarice, and, finally, a wedding ceremony in which the bride, Romina (Érica Rivas), suspects her groom, Ariel (Diego Gentile), cheated on her with one of the guests. Absurdity ensues, everywhere. The escalation of each scenario is so intrinsically fun to watch that going any further into the plot details would feel unjust to those who’ve yet had the pleasure of watching these Wild Tales.

What makes Szifron’s film feel so fresh and deliciously Schadenfreudian in nature is the sense of humour instilled in every tale. Szifron’s screenplay isn’t exactly filled with quotable dialogue, and there’s not much emotional or psychological depth to any of the stories, but the structure of the storytelling, the incredibly smooth changes of tone, and the fantastically erratic situations and reactions are enough to make this an instant recommendation to anyone looking for a good time. The film is filled with laugh-out-loud spontaneity that’s often much too easy to spot in most popular comedies these days. One of my favorite examples is in the road rage story, when we see Diego (Leonardo Sbaraglia) driving to the love theme of Flashdance, and the music stops long enough for the crucial first moment with Mario (Walter Donado) to play out unhindered. Once Diego passes Mario on the road, giving him the one-finger salute and insulting him, he mutters to himself and Flashdance comes back in full force. It’s tough to explain in words just how well that switch with the music works. Then there’s the hit-and-run story, my favorite of all tales mostly because of how inconspicuously the tone changes from uber-serious to caustically satirical, expertly acted by Oscar Martínez in a scene when his Mauricio realizes that he’s getting swindled through his own scheme. Watch how Ariel reacts when Romina delivers the greatest monologue in the film on the rooftop in the final story, or how Lucien Belmond’s song “Ariel Libre” marks Simon Ficher’s boiling point as calm, collected, and demented.

Wild Tales is a movie for anyone who’s felt the pressures of their environment closing in on them, and who always wanted to do something about it. In other words, it’s a movie for everyone; a point that makes the film universally cathartic in many ways, adding so much to the immense enjoyment of watching it. Its anthological nature and skin-deep themes can make it an easy target for some to brush it aside as a glib experiment in shock value storytelling with no resonance, but it would take a special kind of expert to locate a single boring moment. Even though certain tales are clearly weaker than others (there’s a reason the restaurant tale is the first out of the gates after the opening credits), thanks to Szifron’s original screenplay, his genius use of music, and his actors’ determined performances (an outstanding mix of veterans and international no-names), Wild Tales works on enough levels to remain one of the most rewarding and raucously entertaining releases of the year.

Wild Tales is out on DVD and Blu-Ray this week from Sony Pictures Classics. You can read our interview with director Damian Szifron here.

Damian Szifron‘s Wild Tales already conquered Argentina, becoming the country’s highest grossing film in 2014 above both Frozen & Maleficent, and now the Argentinian filmmaker is prepared to make his first English-language movie. Deadline reports that the as-of-yet untitled mysterious thriller will be written, directed & produced by Szifron for Tri-Star Productions. Szifron’s Oscar-nominated most recent film Wild Tales is an engrossing anthology with bizarre comedic stories that take hard to predict twists.

Prior to Wild Tales, Szifron created two highly successful Argentinian TV shows. The first, Los Simuladores (The Pretenders), won him the Golden Martin Fierro Award (Argentina’s version of the Emmy), and both Simuladores & Hermanos y Detectives (Brothers & Detectives) have resulted in remakes outside of Argentina. Szifron has also directed the films The Bottom of the Sea and On Probation.

Catch Way Too Indie’s recent interview with Szifron about Wild Tales here.

After making a big impression at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, dominating Telluride in the fall, and earning an Oscar nomination in the Foreign Language Film category, Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales finally gets unleashed on North American audiences this week. The Argentinian film, co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar, is made up of six disconnected and absolutely bonkers short stories. Szifrón avoids a lot of elements one expects from anthology films these days; no framing device, no wraparound story, and no narrative links between segments. In a way it’s a more refreshing take on the omnibus movie, since it makes it easier to enjoy each story on its own.

But look a little closer, and these Wild Tales are all connected to each other on a thematic level. Part of why the film seems to work like gangbusters with crowds is because of what Szifrón has tapped into with these films. Wild Tales deals with people taking out their anger on the parts of society that can drive us mad. Whether it’s an unforgiving bureaucracy, a rude driver, the privileged elite, or a corrupt politician, there’s something immensely enjoyable about watching someone let these people have it. You laugh at the absurdity, but you can’t help feeling a little wrong for living vicariously through these characters. Szifrón’s knowledge of what makes us tick (or, in this case, explode) is what makes Wild Tales such a fun experience (we already called it one of our favorite films of the year so far).

Back at the Toronto International Film Festival, we sat down with Damián Szifrón to chat about Wild Tales. Read on for the full interview, where Szifrón talks about the film’s influences, his extensive preparation in creating the visual language of the film, whether he’d want to make more wild tales in the future.

Wild Tales opens this week in limited release, so be sure to check your local theaters to see if it’s playing.

Usually anthology films have a different director handling each story. It’s rare to see one director handling the whole thing. Was it difficult to convince people to let you handle the entire film?
I have great producers, and as soon as they read the script they encouraged me to do it. They felt it was very fresh, unique and powerful, and the actors were extremely supportive. Without reading the script, [distributors] were afraid because there are so many anthology films that haven’t worked. That’s the reason why they have several directors, so no one is controlling the energy of the whole thing. But as soon as they read the script and understood the kind of film I was trying to make, they were very supportive.

You started working in television. Do you find it’s easier to work within the anthology format because you have a background in short form, episodic storytelling?
It might be. I always loved movies more than TV when I was a kid. The first thing I did was a TV show that I created, and that gave me a lot of tools. I would say that I’m not afraid of short form storytelling. I truly think of this film as a single experience, and I like all of these short stories together better than in different episodes. I think of it as a rock album with different tracks. It’s like a roller coaster of emotions, or a road trip where you’re stopping in different towns. I like that experience as a whole.

So if your film is like an album, how important was the sequencing? Did you put a lot of thought into what order you wanted to present your stories?
It’s the exact order I wrote the stories, but that just happened. I didn’t decide on it. I tried different orders, and after screening the film I realized it was the natural order. I think there’s something that works on a subconscious level, so when I was writing one short I had to up the ante for the next one. It’s not that I wanted to be better, just different. One story takes the energy from the last one and transforms it into something else, so you’re still engaged and surprised. The change has to be there. If they were all extremely loud, you’d get tired by the third or fourth tale.

Your stories feel very literary, like they could have easily been turned into short stories. Did you originally write these as screenplays?
I thought of them as screenplays, as material that would end up on a screen, but I don’t deny that there is something literary about them. Writing these projects connected me to the pleasure of reading and watching films more than anything else I’ve written.

So would you say your influences here were more literary or cinematic?
I can connect with the discovery of some books when I was a kid or a teenager, and the happiness that those books brought to me. Some of the happiness is because of their brevity. I liked the way these great authors could set up a story, a conflict, and develop it with only the [essentials]. I learned a lot about writing scripts while working on these short films.

When you were writing, did you notice the interconnected themes as you went along, or did you always intend to write about these specific ideas?
At first, I thought they were disconnected. When I had three or four of them written, I noticed they were all linked thematically. They all belonged to the same universe, and were a part of something bigger. It was not intended that way. I think that you discover the themes of what you write, the true themes, at the end of the process. You think you’re writing about one thing, but then you realize that you were writing about something else.

So was a lot of this a discovery process for you?
As a writer and director, yes.

What do you think drew you to these themes of revenge, catharsis and destruction?
Probably anger with some aspects of our society and our behavior, as well as the pleasure in letting loose through these characters. In life, you must repress yourself if you don’t want to end up in jail or die, so you can’t fight everything that you want to fight. But the cost of repressing is high. It’s better to stay alive, but you always think about what you should have said or done. Through screenplays and art, you’re able to no longer repress yourself. You can go to the very end of a situation and translate that experience to the audience. And I think the audience laughs at a lot at the film, even when there’s blood and suffering, because they understand the pleasure and desire of reacting, of not repressing.

A lot of your stories have class relations built into them as well.
I spent a lot of time writing a science fiction trilogy before Wild Tales, and I think that thematically that science fiction trilogy concentrates on how this whole system works. Who are the beneficiaries? Who is it for? What are the causes and consequences, and how could it be changed? Wild Tales is more about the people that live in the system, but it doesn’t have a conscience about the system’s design. It’s not a grand statement. It’s just about the people. In a modern city or country, a lot of people get stressed or depressed, and a few people explode. This is a film about them.

Every time I read in a newspaper that somebody did something absolutely crazy and terrible, like self-immolation, I never think of them as someone with serious mental issues. I’m sure they have some [mental issues], but I always think of them as human beings, and how this world can drive some people to do such terrible behavior.

There’s no narrative tissue between these films. Did you ever have the urge to create some sort of connection?
I thought of it, but more because I was afraid of the audience not connecting to the stories as a whole. They were born as separate stories that are linked thematically. That’s the nature of the film, and ultimately I tried to respect that. It would have been very easy for me to invent a character that comes from one story to another, or have a falcon flying around the scenarios and watching them. I think that would have hurt the film. One of the pleasures of the film is that they are separate stories. I like the cuts from one story to another. Again, like an album. I like that one song ends, and another begins.

You had a lot of shots where you attached the camera to a moving object.
It became the language of the film.

I wanted to know how you developed that language for the film.
While working in TV, I got used to shooting one episode while writing and editing another, so it was natural to me to decide on set. I learned how to do that, and I think I can shoot anything by just arriving on set and choosing where the camera goes to tell the story. At some point I felt like it was not a tool but a defect. As a filmmaker I wanted and needed to spend a lot more time [deciding]. I think I saw an interview with Spielberg on TV where he said preparation is all, and that he had to know exactly what to do and think about it a lot. That, plus my own experience, made me want to have a lot more time to prepare as a director.

So when I shot this film I stopped writing what I was working on at the time. I only spent my time directing. I went to the locations by myself, and I often slept on locations. I wanted to feel like the characters, to be them from the inside. That’s how some of these ideas came up, like putting the camera in the very place that’s needed to make the situation more interesting and powerful. After that, I met an amazing key grip named Ariel Vélez. I think he’s a genius. I told him where I wanted to put the camera, and he said yes to everything. I knew I could dream of anything, and he would know how to do it without harming the camera. I think that my relationship with him and [cinematographer] Javier Julia allowed me to be freer.

Have you considered more Wild Tales?
I have more tales already written. I think I could do a sequel. I could call it Wilder Tales or More Wild Tales, but these tales are wild enough. The short form is a discovery, and I actually enjoyed doing this. It’s not what I’m going to do next, that’s for sure, but I would like to make another anthology. For example, Love Tales, or something like that. I don’t have the need, but if I feel like it, I will do it.

Wild Tales consists of six twisted short stories, all written by writer/director Damian Szifron. Most anthology films tend to use different directors for each story, but Szifron handles every single one here. Having one writer and director gives Wild Tales the benefit of a strong thematic core linking each segment together. What’s surprising is that, even with a singular vision, the results are just as hit and miss if multiple filmmakers tackled each part.

Things do start off quite strong. The first short, the smallest in length, involves a plane trip and a series of coincidences going from surprising to hilariously absurd. There’s no point going into detail about the plot of each short, as most of the fun comes from watching the surprises play out. To put it in general terms: usually each tale involves a person feeling wronged by someone (or something) else, resulting in an act of vengeance or catharsis with harmful results. Refreshingly, none of these stories share any connective tissue through narrative. Instead they unite through themes of vengeance and destruction, and that thematic thread gives Wild Tales an edge over other anthologies.

The writing also helps Wild Tales, even if it’s for a short time. The first three stories are deranged, morbidly funny segments, with surprisingly satisfactory endings. The problems start in the latter half, with the fourth and fifth stories as nothing more than predictable shorts with unsubtle political and social commentary. The final tale, about what might be the worst wedding in the world, tries to right the ship for a big finale, except it’s too obvious in its attempts to shock audiences. Wild Tales is a mixed bag, not especially surprising considering its genre, but when it works it’s undeniably great entertainment.