‘The Shallow Tale’ Director on Casting Steve Buscemi as a Serial Killer — Who Is Also a Marriage Counselor — in Tribeca Dark Comedy (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Turkish director Tolga Karaçelic, who made a splash in the U.S. with absurdist comedy “Butterflies,” is getting ready to premiere his first English-language film, “The Shallow Tale of a Writer Who Decided to Write About a Serial Killer,” in which the offbeat serial killer in question is played by Steve Buscemi.

The New York-set film, which takes Karaçelic’s comic streak in a new direction, will launch on Saturday from the Tribeca Film Festival. “The Shallow Tale” also features John Magaro (“Past Lives”) as Keane, a struggling writer who befriends the “retired” serial killer, who eventually becomes Keane’s unlikely marriage counselor as he goes through divorce proceedings with his straight-laced wife (Britt Lower), as well as the muse for his next book.

Karaçelic, who got a law degree in Turkey before moving to New York to study film, debuted as director in 2010 with the well-received “Toll Booth,” about a Turkish toll-station worker with a vivid imagination.

His second film “Ivy,” set aboard a stranded cargo ship, premiered at Sundance in 2015 and went on to score multiple nods, while “Butterflies” won Sundance’s grand jury award in 2018. “The Shallow Tale” isn’t just Karaçelic’s fist film in English — it’s also his first film that’s unrelated to turmoil and societal changes in Turkey, though of course it stems from his personal demons, as he tells Variety below. How did you come up with this wacky story? The first time I put it on paper was in 2015.