Tag: Germany

A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love (A E I O U – Das schnelle Alphabet der Liebe)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN!

A stands for Anna (Sophie Rois) and Adrian (Milan Herms).

E stands for Elocution: troubled teen Adrian has a problem with pronunciation, so it’s up to the past-it, middle-aged actress Anna to teach him how to project his words on stage for his high school play.

I stands for Inhibitions: while working together, they slowly lose them, resulting in a delirious, oddball romance.

O stands for “Oh My God”: words I uttered regularly as the film constantly engaged in cringe-worthy storytelling techniques.

And U stands for Udo Kier: Anna’s landlord and confidant who provided the biggest laughs simply by looking and reacting at things. He’s a great screen presence, but was mostly underused.

This is a quick alphabet of love, with only the vowels needed. It makes sense when you think about it: with one fricative notwithstanding, they are the vowels most commonly used while in the throes of love-making. But this is a talky, playful film, filled with consonants too, as the young boy and the older woman slowly navigate their sort-of inappropriate romance, taking them from the streets of Berlin to the beaches of southern France. At once enjoyable, pleasant and easy-going, as well as occasionally dipping into unearned, hands-over-eyes sentimentality, Alphabet of Love, or Licorice Flammkuchen, is unlikely to set the world on fire, but still is an interesting take on spring-autumn romance.

Y isn’t a German vowel, and it isn’t much of a question in the film either, which starts off as a conventional navigation of social mores before moving into pure fantasy territory, finally dipping into one of the most amiable of genres: the Cote D’Azur criminal con-man genre; glittering hotels and casinos galore. Director Nicolette Krebitz starts by the idyllic Mediterranean, Anna looking at a police-line up of five guys, each holding up one of the five German syllables. Adrian is in the line-up but Anna is giving nothing away, before the film cuts back to how they first meet, the young lad mugging her outside of Paris Bar, Berlin.

He’s a troubled child — although a psychologically vacuous one — and she’s an intemperate former star, once a marquee name but now forced to work as a speech therapist. Adrian comes from a foster family, with his odds stacked against him from the beginning, whereas Anna once had it all but suffered the same fate many women do once they go past a certain age. It makes for an interesting coupling, but the conversations and actions are more focused on quirky details — like where Anna hides her cigarettes, or Adrian’s pickpocketing skills — than bringing this conflict into view. I can’t say that I minded, with the film often working best in its final, more fantastical sequences than during the staid, clichéd parts earlier on. Ending on the use of one of my all-time favourite songs, this is the kind of love story that won’t change your life, but makes for a fun date night watch. Just don’t take your mother.

A E I O U – A Quick Alphabet of Love plays in competition at Berlin Film Festival, running from 10-20th February.

Getting Away With Murder(s)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

There’s something about the enormity of the issues involved here that makes this a very tough watch. (If it wasn’t, there would be something wrong. The Holocaust is not an easy issue to deal with. Films about it can consequently be tough to watch. And so they should be.) That combined with the near three-hour running time (this is not a complaint, honest) means it sat on my pending review pile for quite a while before I finally sat down and watched it.

I suspect Wilkinson is aware of this problem. As the film starts, he takes you (as it were) gently by the hand as he walks into Auschwitz and matter-of-factly discusses its horrors, helped by a man who works in the museum there and has probably helped numerous people before and since to come to terms with the implications of the place as they go round it. Insofar as one ever can.

We learn of the arrivals off the incoming cattle trucks who were told to go down the ten-minute walk to the showers to get themselves cleaned up. They would take off their clothes and fold them neatly so they could pick them up again afterwards. They were herded into the shower interiors, quite densely packed. And they never came out because these weren’t showers at all, but gas chambers used for the systematic elimination of many of the new arrivals. It’s sickening just to think about.

The people who herded them in were inmates themselves. If you were told you could do that job or join them in the gas chambers yourself, what would you do? [A quick aside: the extraordinary and brilliant subjective camera drama Son Of Saul (László Nemes, 2015) goes a long way to understanding an inmate who does this job. Not that that’s possible.] As I say, trying to comprehend the inhumanity of this is really, really hard. These inmate-workers would be told, “the only way out of here is through the chimney.”

The screen shows well-put together maps of the place and gruelling archive footage is presented throughout the film in a non-confrontational, non-sensationalised way which helps. However, this material is, on the most fundamental human level, horrible. There’s a part of you that just wants to get away from the screen and throw up. People shouldn’t treat each other like this. Yet history testifies that they do, and we should never forget the fact. It’s the reason we need films like this, and the reason you need to watch it. Lest we forget, as they say.

Which implies that we know it all already. For myself, though, there is much in this film I didn’t know. Ranging from specific details about perpetrators large and small in the overall process that was the Holocaust right the way through to the scale of the operation (six million Jews turns out both an oversimplification and an understatement) and all the complicated ins and outs of the legal aftermath of the attempts both to track down and administer justice to the numerous perpetrators alongside the numerous attempts of all those involved to evade justice, all to often successfully. Much of what’s shown here is an indictment of humanity, although all the way through there are signs of hope as perpetrators are convicted and justice done. But it seems that too many get (got) off scot free or with woefully inadequate punishment for their appalling crimes. It’s not surprising that someone should want to make a film to address the burning question about the injustice of all this. Kudos to Wilkinson for doing so.

It may make for harrowing and deeply upsetting viewing, but at the same time, it’s consistently compelling. And it absolutely screams out to be seen.

After Auschwitz we move on to France, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Austria and, eventually, Germany. In his own county of Yorkshire which has a population of 5.4 million, Wilkinson attempts to get his head round the sheer enormity of the figures. For comparison, both Denmark and the US State of Maryland have populations of six million. If all those in Yorkshire were killed, he asks, would the UK government remain silent?

York, where the film has its premiere, is the site of England’s largest massacre of Jews in 1190, when some 150 were killed. Lest we think such things could never happen here.

Wilkinson also travels to Galway, Ireland to see the grave of William Joyce who broadcast German propaganda during the war as Lord Hawhaw. He was captured, tried and, in 1946, executed. His case is comparatively cut and dried compared to what happened to those Germans who abetted the Holocaust.

After Germany’s defeat in 1945 and the shock of what they found in the death camps, the Allies vowed to bring the Holocaust’s perpetrators to justice. The International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg is often cited, but in fact that was held in a building with the capacity to house no more than 24 defendants of whom three never made it to trial and only 12 received the death sentence.

Matters were scarcely helped by the Nazis’ use of law under the Third Reich. Prior to that, law in most European countries had been based on the foundation of the Ten Commandments, but the regime effectively suspended such considerations, creating a legal framework under which it was permissible to eliminate specific ethnic and other minorities. The concept of ‘crimes against humanity’ didn’t exist until its instigation for the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, 1945-6.

Other trials followed, but the Allies failed to keep up the momentum as they became more concerned with the growing threat of the Soviets and the rise of the Cold War than with hunting down Nazi war criminals when Germany was economically on its knees. Finishing the job within Germany’s borders was left largely to Germany itself.

Where East Germany, as a newly formed Communist state, rebuilt its judiciary from scratch with entirely new appointments, West Germany retained many judges who had been in post during the Nazi era, many of whom were somewhat sympathetic to the murderers in the dock. In a very real sense, the post-war, West German judiciary had became Nazified.

Thus, in later West German trials, while some of the murderers received the full force of the law in the death penalty, many sentences were much more lenient or subsequently commuted so that, for example, a 20 year sentence became five years. There are also examples of murderers living in Germany who were never prosecuted, or who got off during a trial using the most spurious of defences. In many cases, these were people living under their real names.

Others fled, most infamously to South America, but to other countries as well, including the UK. In recent years, in his retirement, Nazi hunter Dr. Stephen Ankier researched their whereabouts, often to find the perpetrators he unearthed die of illness or old age before they could be brought to trial. The UK’s record on finding and prosecuting the perpetrators has been poor.

Getting Away With Murder(s) had its premiere on Thursday 9th November in at the Everyman Cinema, York. Dates for further screenings around the UK are constantly being added: click here to see if your town or city is listed yet. If it isn’t, then tell your local cinema you want to see it.

The film is released in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 1st, the 75th anniversary of the end of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

Review originally published on Jeremy C. Processing. Reprinted by permission.

Black Milk (Schwarze Milch)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

West meets east quite literally in German-Mongolian production Black Milk, with its two characters named Wessi and Ossi. Wessi (Uisenma Borchu) lives in Germany, where she is in an abusive relationship with Franz (a very brief Franz Rogowski). Ossi (Gunsmaa Tsogzol) lives in the vast steppes of Mongolia in a yurt. They may share a mother and a language, but they have little else in common.

After a brief and slightly confusing prologue, Wessi returns to Mongolia, clashing with her sister and the wider culture in the process. Set against a gorgeous landscape of endless plains, deserts and wide skies, it is a heartfelt and deeply personal story that investigates themes of belonging, women’s liberation, and cultural identity with a surfeit of sensitivity.

Showing her background in documentary filmmaking, Borchu has a great eye for the customs of the region, showing us the food, gestures and superstitions that make Mongolia unique. This blurring of lines, focus on nomads and the lovely landscapes brings to mind the work of Chloe Zhao, although with a far more marked and European sense of sexuality.

Borchu plays herself, making it a particularly intimate film in the way it explores sex. Her character strikes up a relationship with the darker Terbish (Terbish Demberel) who represents the more traditional part of Mongolian culture. Tackling both colourism (his blackness is disparaged) and ageism (he is far older than her), this relationship provides the heart and central conflict of the film. This is especially true as we never really get an idea of why Wessi left in the first place, or as to what happened to their parents, or any idea of what Wessi’s life is even like in Germany. Everything remains in the moment, leaving it up to the audience to experience the film alongside its characters.

Despite a lot of sparring between the sisters — at one point Ossi says that Wessi can’t speak Mongolian properly — Black Milk is a lot subtler than the premise suggests. It doesn’t portray Germany as a feminist paradise or Mongolia as a patriarchal nightmare. Rather the film realises that good and bad men can found anywhere, but it’s up to women no matter where they are to speak up and find the right, caring kind of man for themselves. Employing a variety of animal-slaughtering metaphors, including the seemingly real portrayal of animal hearts being ripped out, Black Milk connects love to the landscape and to its animals, showing the difficulty of extricating one from the other.

While one moment in the middle — which should be earth-shattering but is never really referenced again — is a little confusing, and Franz Rogowski’s character is so thinly-drawn that it was probably better not to include him at all, this is a fairly successful second feature. Collapsing conventional expectations and expectations in favour of a nuanced sensuality, Borchu rarely compromises on her unique, cross-cultural perspective.

Black Milk plays as part of In Focus: New German Cinema at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 13th to 29th November. It originally premiered at the Panorama section of the Berlinale.

Model Olimpia (Modell Olimpia)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

Filled with elliptical storytelling, minimal dialogue and a strange, unsettling tone, Model Olimpia is a low-key German horror film filtered through an arthouse style. Presenting a mother-and-son relationship quite unlike any other, it announces Frédéric Hambalek as a director to watch.

Made for almost no-budget, the film only consists of a handful of players. At its centre is a young man (Alban Mondschein), a quiet and strange boy. He performs rituals at the behest of his mother (Anna Steffens) such as looking at pictures of strangers and imagining their secret lives, as well as masturbating to the audio of cringe-y erotic novels. It appears that she has created her own therapy technique, one that will go to dark places in order to “fix” her son.

What is the mother trying to achieve? Is she actually trying to help her son, or is she the reason he is so strange in the first place? This tension is brought to the test by the arrival of a new neighbour (Mathilde Bundschuh), a kind, well-adjusted student who offers the young man the chance for a more normal life.

Or does she? It’s hard to tell considering the weirdness of all the players. Characters move and act slowly, drained of any true emotion. There’s influences from Yorgos Lanthimos here, especially Dogtooth, with its hermetically sealed world of internal rules and symbols that keeps the viewer second guessing throughout. There’s also elements of Berliner Schule directors such as Christian Petzold and Angela Schanelec. Like these abrasive directors, the film moves at strange angles, forcing the viewer to constantly play catch-up.

The connective narrative tissue between scenes is almost completely omitted: showing us only the jagged parts instead of the whole. We are often dropped into the midst of scenes, giving the film a feeling of unpredictability. The camerawork is extremely precise, making use of unconventional, mostly static frames to create a controlled and unnerving atmosphere. The tone is so controlled that when there is a marked break with the films carefully created style, you stand up and notice, providing a masterclass in making and then disrupting a certain type of style.

In different hands the film may come across as overly crass or even misogynistic, but Model Olimpia is so matter-of-fact in its presentation it can be interpreted in multiple ways. This is stressed by the lack of a score, which provides the audience little guidance of how to feel. In fact, the most unsettling thing is not knowing what to feel rather than simply having a strong reaction one way or another.

There will probably be mixed reactions to this film. It’s likely to put a lot of viewers off. But for those who want to stick with it, there are plenty of rewards to be found in its intriguing approach. Some may find it bitterly comic; while others will be utterly horrified. To work on both levels on such a small budget is a fascinating achievement.

Model Olimpia plays as part of the First Feature competition at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 13th to 29th November.

Enfant Terrible

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Before his death at the age of 37, Fassbinder directed more than 40 films, as well as producing several plays and TV shows. His cocaine and sex-fuelled career made him the true provocateur of German Cinema, helping to give birth to a New Wave of cinema while challenging cinematic conventions and German’s collective national shame. But you don’t get to make that many films in such a short space of time without being a unique type of character: Fassbinder worked because he couldn’t think of doing anything else, making his entire life a type of film.

Director Oskar Roehler shoots his biopic Enfant Terrible in a Brechtian style, with deliberately artificial lighting, mannered acting and painted-on props and sets. This is a particularly clever method for a biopic of a filmmaker, as it shows little difference between the world around Fassbinder and the films he is trying to shoot, giving a great demonstration of how life and art can so easily blend into one another.

Oliver Masucci plays the late German director. The actor is 51 years old, three decades older than the German filmmaker in the 1960s. There is no de-aging in sight. Masucci embodies the director’s intense physicality, strength and outspoken nature. In an early scene in Enfant Terrible, he sprays the audience with a hose, claiming that it’s the only way to make them experience the real world. Almost immediately he lights up the Munich theatre scene, bringing in an entourage who will follow him through initial bemusement at his Berlin Film Festival debut through to his eventual international success with masterpieces such as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978).

Despite all the stylistic window-dressing, this is a very conventional biopic in terms of narrative, covering Fassbinder’s career from his first film, Love is Colder Than Death in 1969, to his cocaine and barbiturate-filled death in 1982. This is a long and piteous look at his failed relationships, mostly with foreign men, touching on themes of homophobia and racist attitudes, as well his controversial, physically abusive behaviour on set, which would never hold up today. Masucci provides a truly boisterous performance, showing us the complexity of a man who hits people on set but cries after sex, is cruel and dismissive of his lovers one moment, and desperately pleading for them in another.

For those new to Fassbinder’s work and unacquainted with this particularly artificial strain of German theatre-inspired filmmaking, they may find themselves a little lost. But for Fassbinder fans this film is a fascinating look into arguably Germany’s greatest ever director, a wunderkind so inspired he makes Xavier Dolan look like Ron Howard. For the average person, maintaining such a prolific career while rarely sacrificing quality is simply a cinematic miracle that cannot just be chalked down to cocaine use. And while Enfant Terrible can’t quite unravel what made Fassbinder live in such a constant state of inspiration, it serves as a fine portrait of a man who never left the set, even when he stopped filming.

Enfant Terrible opened the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in November 2020,when this piece was originally written. It had been originally selected to show at this year’s Festival de Cannes (which was cancelled). It premieres in the UK in March 2021, as part of the virtual edition of BFI Flare. On BFI Player on Friday, April 2nd.

1917

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

When the trailer for 1917 debuted, it bore a similar aesthetic to Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017) – not an entirely bad thing, but not the preferred style, either. I had shared the minority view that Nolan’s film was, in the words of The Guardian’s David Cox, ‘bloodless, boring and empty’. The menace and spectacle of its opening quarter petered out into litany of tepid peril overcast by Hoyte van Hoytema’s gloomy cinematography.

Thankfully, 1917 makes a quick break from these facile similarities with its tight pace, raw emotion and staggering camerawork. It is one of those rare films where, as a reviewer, you risk getting stuck in a rabbit hole of superlatives – so here goes it.

Firstly, the performances, though good, are not what drive this film. It is instead an intensely sensory experience that demands to be seen on the biggest and best system. Roger Deakins’s masterful camerawork bobs and weaves through the trenches of the Western Front in seemingly one unbroken take, capturing the men of the British Expeditionary Force with a visceral fluidity. After ten years of excellent cinema, 1917 will be counted amongst the decade’s most impressive and absorbing.

Everyone in this film is under overwhelming pressure – few more acutely than Lance Corporals Blake (Dean Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay). The young men are ordered to carry a message across enemy territory that will prevent a British battalion of 1,600 men, which includes Blake’s brother, from charging into a death trap.

Chapman and MacKay both give strong performances. Blake is a chipper lad given to jocular anecdotes and crude jokes, while Schofield, apparently the more experienced of the two, has developed a war-weary reserve. There’s a mutual respect and affection for each other, though, and their extraordinary experiences only makes their bond stronger.

This tight, simple premise and character dynamic sets the stage for one of the most remarkable portrayals of combat in recent memory. It may not have the thematic depth of Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957), but Mendes conveys the all-consuming stress, misery and exhaustion of total war. Many of the men Blake and Schofield meet are in varying depths of hate and prostration, but most are driven by a stoic resolve to keep moving forward, whatever their dismal fate may be.

Key to the film’s immersion is Dennis Gassner’s epic set design. We follow the troops as they traverse yard after yard of dank trenches, and the scope becomes even more grimly arresting when they scale the parapet, entering a vast, ghoulish wasteland of sodden craters, splintered trees and mangled bodies. Indeed, there are moments across No Man’s Land that resemble the body horror of David Cronenberg; the attention paid to the grisly details of death and decay is disturbing as it is appropriate.

Inspired by the stories of his grandfather, director Sam Mendes and DOP Roger Deakins have made the biggest and best First World War film of the 21st century. This is important, because for better or worse, cinema has the power to reinvigorate history, to spread knowledge and awareness. After all, the First World War has been overshadowed by the conflict that followed, with its clearer moral compass and even greater level of destruction. Mendes’s film, while not a depiction of the war’s terrible stalemate, will nonetheless assault one’s senses and give them some idea of what their forebears endured in Britain’s deadliest war.

1917 is in theatres Friday, December 10. On VoD on Monday, June 1st. On Netflix on Friday, September 10th (2021)

The dark humour of fatherhood

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The movie A Voluntary Year (Das Freiwillige Jahr), which played in competition at the 72nd Locarno Film Festival, is the second film in two years from Ulrich Köhler after In My Room (2018). Co-directed with Henner Winckler, it tells the story of generational conflict. A father drives his daughter to the airport to take part in a voluntary year in Costa Rica. But when her boyfriend Mario resurfaces, she finds herself unable to truly figure out what she wants, much to her father’s chagrin. The result is a bitterly funny exploration of home, father-daughter relationships and the inability to see past one’s own perspective. We sat down with the two directors to discuss the process of making the film, what the actors brought to the film’s point-of-view and how to maintain narrative conflict when your characters refuse to change.

Read our A Voluntary Year review here!

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Redmond Bacon – What was the main idea behind the film?

Ulrich Köhler – The main idea was to make a film together. During Sleeping Sickness (Schlafkrankheit, 2011) I felt: “This is really too much for one person.” It’s a very uncreative process because you never have a view from a distance where you can say: “This is the problem” or “This is the possibility.” This was the first starting point. Then we have a lot of matching biographical experiences. We are both fathers of children and we hope for them to have a happy life. We have a certain vision of life but we have to learn that our vision of life is not automatically the thing that will make them happy.

RB – The film deals with the concept of a Voluntary Social Year: a strong concept in German culture. Can you tell me more about what it means?

Henner Winckler – We had military service as a duty for our generation. When they stopped it they invented this idea instead. Lots of kids go abroad. I’m not sure if it’s always a good idea. These young people are not trained for anything. They go into the world and they want to help, but they don’t know anything. For the young kids it’s very interesting. For the countries they go to, I’m not sure it’s really helpful.

UK – You’re not automatically an expert just because you went to school in Germany.

HW – It’s controversial.

RB – Is it a hangover from colonialist ideals?

UK – It was a very populist move from a Social Democratic Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who wanted to say that he’s doing something for the Third World. In a way it’s neo-colonialism. It’s absurd to think that just because someone went to high school in Germany he’s automatically highly qualified to help people in less privileged parts of the world.

RB – The film flips stereotypes on their head. In conventional cinema it’s usually the daughter who wants to break free and the father who wants her to stay at home. Here it’s the other way around. Was this a conscious decision?

HW – On the one hand yes. On the other hand this is something we experienced as well. In our generation the parents think this is how it should be, to go out and see the world, but some just want to stay. They have their friends. There is no need to go abroad because they have everything on Netflix.

RB – The use of perspective in the film is very interesting. There are no crosscuts between characters. We only switch if they have interacted in the same scene. Is this an intentional move to immerse us in the lives of these characters?

UK – It comes from the formal idea that a lot of this film should take place in the car. And that the car was like a relay race. Every time someone has the car, then we’re with them.

HW – This was one of the main ideas when we started: to tell the story from the view of a car.

RB – It’s funny because it’s a Volkswagen Camper Van too.

A Voluntary Year

UK – That’s like the embodiment of socially liberal Utopia. There were those parents who went on traditional vacations in hotels in Lago die Garda or Rimini. Then there were those like our parents, who either had a boat or a VW van and went wild camping in France.

RB – This generational change forms the conflict between father and daughter. I found it to be bitterly funny; a dark comedy of awkwardness. Would you agree?

UK – For me it’s a situational comedy. Humour is always a question of perspective. If you go back far enough in history, then even the war between Gallics and Romans can become comedy. Something that feels very serious and very emotional for a person when they’re living through it, might seem very different when he looks at it from the outside or five years later. That’s how humour works for me.

RB – A lot of this humour rests upon the performance of Sebastian Rudolph. Did you have him in mind when you were writing the screenplay together.

HW – We had a different character for both the father and daughter in mind. We thought it had to be a “real man” with a beard.

UK – A patriarch.

HW – And for the daughter we had a more narrow-minded girl in mind. So the father is ashamed of his daughter. When we started casting it felt like a cliché. Instead, Sebastian Rudolph’s Urs is more like an older teenager, a softer type, and Jette is much stronger than we thought. She’s not someone who has no idea what to do. She’s just jumping from one thing to another and this makes it more complex.

UK – If you look at what Maj-Britt Klenke made out of this character, it’s very different. We really had the desire to make a film about a boring girl. I found it a dramaturgically risky but interesting thing to do.

RB – In most films people change their perspective from the beginning to the end, but here no one seems to change. How do you keep the narrative full of conflict while characters don’t fundamentally change their perspective?

UK – I think on a superficial level it’s quite simple dramatically. It’s like a film where a bomb is ticking. You always have this decision: Is she getting on the plane or not? When she changes her mind, it restarts, and you have the new decision. If you look at it from a purely analytical, formal and superficial point of view, this very primitive dramaturgy keeps the film going. It’s very character driven but also very plotty in a way.

RB – I thought fundamentally the way father and daughter react to situations is actually quite similar. They’re both impulsive characters. Were you trying to show how father is like daughter and vice versa?

UK – When I look at the film, I’m amazed how much the daughter behaves like the father. It’s not something we had felt strongly.

HW – The idea was the opposite: there’s one that makes decisions and one who can’t make decisions. Now we say the way she behaves with her boyfriend Mario is quite similar.

UK – It’s something I really love because it shows that filmmaking is a process. You start something then it has a dynamic of its own. You’re not just fulfilling an idea you had five years ago.

RB – Ulrich, there were seven years between Sleeping Sickness and In My Room. Now there’s only one year between In My Room and this film. How did you turn around a new film so quickly?

UK – That’s not our decision. That’s the decision of the film funding system. We just had the opportunity to make the film as a TV movie. For me it was an interesting experience. For the first time I felt like a professional director. Otherwise I always start from scratch. This time I was well aware of how the process works.

A Voluntary Year

RB – It seems films for TV can be made a lot quicker.

UK – That was interesting for me. It gave me the feeling that there’s less to lose. That gave me and the actors a certain amount of freedom. It was an interesting experience and it will change the way I work.

RB – I want to talk about the character of Murat, the refugee. Urs says that he will take him in but due to personal circumstances he changes his mind. Is this a pointed comment on how the response to migrant crisis in Germany changed from openness in concept to more complicated in reality?

UK – Yeah. It’s easy to say “welcome” but it’s not so easy to give Murat a room when you’re in a big crisis with your daughter. It’s understandable he doesn’t want Murat in that situation. At the same time it’s very consequential. I think we’d all like to be better people, but we also don’t really want to give away too many of our privileges.

RB – Ulrich, you wrote a political essay around ten years ago explained why your art isn’t political. Have you changed your mind on this?

UK – The point I was making is that filmmaking is not a political action. Well, everything is political. Taking a shower is political. But in a narrow definition, filmmaking is not political. If you want to change the world actively, change it actively: it’s not the reason why I make films. I think there’s a hypocrisy in making a film out of creative or commercial ambition and thinking that you’re changing the world.

RB – Are you two planning to work together on your next project? Have you got anything in mind?

HW – Vacation.

UK – I’m sure we’ll work together in one way or another. I’m not sure we’ll work together directing again.

HW – I think first we want to do our own stuff but I never know how it will.

UK – [laughing] When he’s deaf and I’m blind we will do the next film together.