Haris Zambarloukos, BSC, GSC on Belfast, working with Kenneth Branagh, Death on the Nile, Locke and more

Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos enjoys using filmmaking to study
the human condition. As a Greek who grew up in Cyprus, Haris was
immersed in the history of Greek tragedy from a young age. He went
to art school and studied painting, but found he was more
interested in the visual storytelling that filmmaking can do.
Haris' background in portraiture painting carries over into his
cinematography today- he favors using closeups in his work, because
he finds that the human face is the landscape of our emotions.
Haris' current film, Belfast, is his eighth collaboration with
director Kenneth Branagh. It's a deeply personal story about
Branagh's childhood experience growing up in Northern Ireland
during the civil war between the Catholics and Protestants known as
The Troubles. Haris and Branagh chose to shoot the movie almost
entirely in black-and-white. The two both love the format, and
Haris felt using black and white provided less distraction from the
character's emotions than using color would. They also decided to
use extremely limited additional lighting in the movie, relying
heavily on natural light in most scenes. Every scene was thought
out with depth of field and depth of action, and not just shot for
coverage. For the 2013 film Locke starring Tom Hardy, Haris'
friend, cinematographer Chris Menges, had tested the new Alexa Mini
and found that it was possible to shoot with just available light
in small spaces. This gave director/writer Steven Knight the idea
to write a script that takes place entirely in a car, with only one
character, and he asked Haris to be his director of photography.
Haris had just wrapped Jack Ryan:Shadow Recruit and was about to
shoot Cinderella, so Locke seemed like an interesting challenge to
take on. Knight had planned for only a 9 day shoot, with the entire
script shot beginning to end each night for three nights. The
additional actors, never seen on camera, all phoned in their vocal
performances live during the shoot. Capturing the intimate and
emotional performances in Locke gave Haris a deep satisfaction
about his decision to become a filmmaker. Find Haris Zambarloukos:
https://www.zambarloukos.com/ Instagram: @zambagram WIN an
autographed copy of Directing Actors, 25th Anniversary Edition!
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