[SXSW 2024] THE BLACK SEA Directors Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden and Producer Izabella Tzenkova Talk Cinematic Freestyling

By Sean Boelman

Filmmaker Crystal Moselle is one of the best in the business at making discoveries. First, she gave us The Wolfpack. Then, she gave us the ladies of Skate Kitchen and Betty. Moselle’s latest discovery is Derrick B. Harden, who not only stars in her latest film, The Black Sea, but co-directs it with her.

Having debuted in the Narrative Feature Competition at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, The Black Sea is inspired by Harden’s experiences. It tells the story of an African-American man who is stuck as an outsider in a community in Bulgaria, where he finds an unexpected sense of belonging. It’s a slice-of-life film that’s equal parts funny and poignant, and heralds the arrival of a tremendous new talent on the scene in the form of Harden.
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We at disappointment media got the chance to speak with Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden, along with producer Izabella Tzenkova, about their latest film. Here’s what they had to say:

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disappointment media: Ms. Moselle, you have a knack for finding real people and real stories and telling fictionalized versions of them. What intrigues you about this style of storytelling?

Crystal Moselle: It's the people. And with Derrick, it was so easy because he is naturally a director, and he's so charismatic. We just build the story around the person. I think that that's what we've been doing for years. Isabella and I made Wolfpack and Skate Kitchen together. And Derrick and I went to Bulgaria, and he had an amazing experience. I like collaboration. I don't like just to follow people and chill back. I'm too collaborative. I have too many opinions. Whenever I do a documentary, I'm like, “I really think that if you do this with your business, you'll make more money,” or whatever. I don't like to see people suffer. I want people to thrive. And I think that collaboration is the best way to do that. I think it's a more responsible way to make movies.

disappointment: Mr. Harden, this is your first performance, and I think you knocked it out of the park. What made you want to step up in front of the camera?

Derrick B. Hardin: The camera was on. I took two steps in front, and then it felt good, and I said, “I could do this.” It's the whole idea of collaboration and creating something meaningful with people who have a heart. Crystal, of course, was the main reason this project was happening. Then, the phone call to Isabella was the glue — Isabella opening up her whole world. And we made a film in 16 days. And here we are, we started shooting in like, August?

Izabella Tzenkova: In mid-August we were shooting, yeah.

Hardin: I remember the first call between the three of us. It was all new for me, but it was a reunion for them. So they were like, “We’re back, sister!” And it was on my birthday, so I remember that call. I was like, “Crystal, can it wait till tomorrow so I can do my birthday?” and she was like, “No, no, no. Izabella wants to do the call, so we gotta do the call.” And yeah, I’m forever grateful to Izabella for saying yes to a script that doesn’t exist.

Moselle: There’s no script because we were shopping a pilot around, and then the strike happened. We just felt we wanted to do this experiment to show that Derrick could perform because we wanted him to play the main part of the pilot that we came up with. So we just came up with this sort of loose idea and learned about it in Bulgaria, like where it would go. Everything was improvised. I had been doing a lot of teaching with this class that I do, so I had been doing a lot of improv classes and was really into it. And Derrick, literally everywhere we go, becomes the kind of unofficial mayor of that place. He always meets everybody and knows everybody. I knew that if we went back to this Bulgarian town, that would happen naturally. And we can shoot this sort of building of togetherness, as Derrick likes to say. He also coined this other really great term.

Harden: We're going to introduce you to the greatest term in the last 30 years in cinema. So right now, I'm with Crystal Moselle and Izabella, and these young ladies have given you guys The Wolfpack and Skate Kitchen — great finds, great discoveries, as you said. So they know the doc world. That's how this project started. It started as a doc. And I'm a rapper. I'm a hip-hopper. So, making music, freestyle, and coming up with words from thin air just pulling out words and phrases and things — I think the marriage of those two things and those two worlds created this film because hip hop has a lot to do with improvisation. So we coined the phrase, this film is basically cinematic freestyling.

disappointment: That’s amazing. You mentioned how you are a musician. I think the soundtrack is one of my favorite parts of the film. Do you think your background as a musician helped him form your soundtrack choices with this?

Harden: 100%. But I think that the reason why people are liking my music is because I'm an underground rapper that no one knows, which is really cool because I'm not ushered in by a record label to help market me in a different frame. I'm really a gem. Somebody's going to really discover something. I'm fine with being underground, local New York. And my life is nice. I'm cool with it. But because nobody knows me, it makes it more special.

Tzenkova: The soundtrack, actually, half of the songs are Derrick's songs.

Harden: When we were filming it, Izabella said, “Wait… this is your song?!?”

Moselle: She thought it was a big pop hit, and we were like, “No, we haven't even released it.” But I think we had no plan for how the music was going to come into the film. When he was on the boat with Giorgi, rapping to him, that was just happening, and we turned the camera on. Something I really love is when you weave in just somebody's world and life and who they are without it being a plot point. The movie wasn’t about a guy trying to be a rapper.

Harden: It wasn’t “I gotta blow up when I get to Bulgaria!”

Moselle: He was trying to own a coffee shop, not be a rapper, but he just happens to rap. And I think that it was really nice. I'm really proud of the way that we wove it in.

Harden: And she really helped put me it in a light where it's not corny or cliche because we know those hip-hop movies — we don't want to name-drop and make people feel bad — but we know those TV shows where the guy raps and then we have other celebs. We know what’s trash. And it's just so seemingly in there that you're not concerned that Khalid raps. It’s just what he does. There’s a word you used…

Moselle: Diegetic. 

Harden: It’s diegetic.

Moselle: We wanted all of his songs to come in in a diegetic way. There’s only one that doesn't at the beginning of the movie, but it kind of feels like it could be on the street; the way that we mixed it was to feel like something coming just from the environment. And then also bringing in some of the Bulgarian music, like at the open mic night to get some of the local Bulgarians in there. It was so fun to discover some of the rap and stuff. And they also really love hip-hop there. There's a whole thread of hip hop in Bulgaria, and you can see it with the clothing and with the music, and it was a nice balance, I think.

disappointment: You mention balance; I think the film’s tone also strikes a very delicate balance. Although the film deals with some serious themes, it has a very funny sense of humor. Why did this approach stand out to you?

Moselle: It’s what happened.

Harden: I think it was just the nature of what happened. The history of Bulgaria and the history of African Americans — both stories have a lot of suffering. And when you find suffering, you find humor. One of the things that makes this ultimately very funny is that both people understand how low and bad life can be. There's a bit of, “It's not that bad. It's never that bad.”

Moselle: And the film found us. We didn’t plan the film; it came together. We didn't say, “Oh, we want this to be in it, and we want that to be in it.” It was just what felt right. And I think it was important to Izabella — obviously, we went to Bulgaria to be in her community — and I think, the authenticity of shooting a movie in Bulgaria, we just wanted to make sure that we were truthful.

Tzenkova: That it wasn’t exploitative. That it was encompassing and involving.

Harden: On all sides, too. We didn’t want to have a Black guy named Khalid over there just doing wonky stuff. We wanted to make sure that both sides, Khalid and Bulgaria, are being well represented. 

Tzenkova: I think it's very common for people to go to a foreign place or culture, and they go in with their cliches, and that's the representation that they end up making. I thought that was something that we very much intentionally wanted to avoid.

disappointment: I think something that's really unique about The Black Sea is that, in a lot of films where you have a character who's an “outsider” going into another culture, the other culture is kind of otherized in a way. But in this film, Khalid’s culture is kind of otherized. Do you want to talk about how you flipped these tropes?

Harden: In Brooklyn, I'm faced with all those realities for all those New Yorkers. I mean, when you look at the word migrant, you look at the word migrate, that only means a person coming to the United States of America, but then when someone from the United States of America leaves to go live in the Philippines, they're an expat. I’m a migrant over there.

Moselle: It’s an exchange. Cultural exchange is a phrase that we use a lot because we wanted to show the similarities and learn things. When we first were making the film, when it was more of an experiment, we were throwing around Borat, but like actual respect for the cultures. But then it became less of a Borat-y type of film and it really surprised us what the film turned into. We thought it was gonna be like this fun thing, but it actually got pretty tender.

Tzenkova: I think it also came naturally because the Bulgarians were naturally curious. And that's probably where the turnaround of that experience comes from.

Harden: Yeah, the genuine curiosity.

Moselle: Again, it wasn't a plan we had. This happens to me a lot. As long as you represent the people and have respect for everybody, it just happens naturally. If you’re a respectful person and you’re not trying to exploit somebody, it’s just gonna show through.

disappointment: You mentioned how tender the film is. One of the themes in the film that really resonates is connection. This is a film about connecting with other people on unexpected common ground. Why do you think that this theme resonates so much?

Tzenkova: Because we need it more than anything in the world right now.

Harden: Common ground is what we need. Common ground brings togetherness. That common ground that we both didn’t know what was going on. Ina’s character and Khalid didn’t know what was going on. That was the common ground they stood on, and then they built something.

Moselle: Yeah, and it’s leaving your misconceptions of things and connecting with people rather than, “Oh, they voted for this person; they voted for that person. I can't be friends with them.” We don’t believe in that. In our work, like with Derrick, we use the word togetherness. We believe that is the answer. We want this film to actually inspire that and for people to look at the world a little differently at that moment. People have come up to us like, “This is exactly what I needed right now.” And that, to me, is a beautiful thing.

disappointment: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a really wonderful film in that way. It captures the feeling of community very well, and a lot of the reason why it does that is because a lot of the people in that community, from what I understand, don't have an acting background. You're using the real people from there. So, can you talk about the challenges and the rewards of taking that approach to working with non-actors?

Moselle: I think the challenges are like people committing to a schedule. 

Tzenkova: Which was loose anyways.

Moselle: Yeah, we’d be changing everything.

Harden: We’d ask them to come at 4, and it would be 5.

Moselle: And then they wouldn't come at all. But also that gave us an unexpected creative spark. Then you're like, “Oh, who can we call? Let's call those girls back in!” Listen, filmmaking, in general, is challenging. There are so many levels of it that you have to bring together. And it’s hard. But I think that we trusted the process. It’s all easy, it’s all hard, and the magic just comes through when you just keep going with it. I think there is no other way to do this movie than to grab people off the street in the moment because that’s when we got the best moments.

disappointment: As far as the improvisation goes, the runtime was just over 90 minutes. Did you end up capturing a lot more footage than that?

Moselle: No…

Tzenkova: We wish we would have captured a little bit more!

Moselle: But I was so surprised. I thought, “Oh my God, there's probably some crazy holes in the story that we're gonna have to fill,” and there really wasn’t.

Harden: No, there wasn’t. At all. 

Moselle: It was wild; we actually just kind of did what we needed to.

Tzenkova: When we first started talking about it, too, I think we were trying to be a lot more realistic, as optimistic as we ended up being. But we thought we were going to shoot a short film, a proof of concept, and then come back the next summer and develop it and then do a feature. And then the closer it got to it, we're like, “No, actually, we can probably push this out. We can push out a feature film.”

Moselle: And we did! We knew that Khalid had to bring this town together, and that happened eventually, and we created the obstacles for him to get there. It was really fun. It was the best shoot I’ve ever worked on. I love working like this; it’s the best. There wasn’t this pressure that you can get from money people. You’re spending your own money and only getting paid for yourself.

disappointment: And Mr. Harden, have you been bitten by the film bug? Are you looking to do more in this sphere?

Harden: I definitely have gotten bitten by the film bug. You will see me at the same time next year with a different film.

Moselle: I wish that was a joke. We have a Black Sea 2 idea. Everywhere we go, Derrick has a spark for ideas. And I’m not even kidding you — we probably have about 25 ideas that are all fantastic.

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The Black Sea screened at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival, which runs March 8-16 in Austin, TX. It is currently seeking distribution.