You Can’t Look into People's Heads

When and how did you decide to become a filmmaker?

If I had to reduce it to a single moment I would say: When I realised my first short films in New York. My mother had given me the opportunity to spend some time there and attend some filmmaking classes. I had wanted to become an actress, having played theatre in school. Whenever I didn't act I started to direct. My teacher then wanted to organise a directing internship for me at a theatre, but I was indignant, like: “I'm gonna be an actress!“ Now I see things differently, which took some time – a studies of film and theatre in Hamburg, amongst other things, and some slave jobs on various sets.

As a student film, where there any requirements for XXO?

It was my first fictional exercise at the ifs in the second semester. The school had organised a fixed setting for all projects of this year, so we were allowed to/had to shoot in an abandoned floor of an old children's hospital – the former newborn nursery. There were these large windows from room to room so that the nurses could always check on the babies. We had a small budget and only seven hours time to shoot, which is by far the worst experience, because time is of the essence when you try to make a film. We had two rolls of 16mm stock, so about 20 minutes in all. There were no further creative requirements other than that the DoP had to be another directing student.

Where did your original idea come from and how has it maybe changed over time?

For this exercise at the ifs directing and screenwriting student collaborate. Stefan Höh came to our first meeting with a little pocketbook full of ideas. One of them was in essence this woman  behind a glass window and the setting of a psychiatric ward. I liked this immediately, and very fast the idea of this game came into play. We thought long and hard about whether the audience needs to understand who has what illness and what kind of a clinic this actually is we decided to get rid of some of the ballast and stage this little encounter at a kind of last exit of the souls, giving up on naturalistically and causally thorough principles.

There's a lot of atmospheric work done with the selection of this rusty old equipment and the music.

When it comes to props design and music I favour a bit of exaggeration. The set and props design came from architecture students from Cologne, who were eager to think themselves into the concept. The props should reject the viewers, and I thought the space with the neon lights at the ceiling and the glass windows would transport that as well as the important props like the razor blades. We enhanced this impression with the help of a few selected things. For example we scrubbed the floor with water before every take to give it this glossy, disgusting grittiness, which the 16mm stock again amplifies.

We did by the way edit it all on an old analogue Steenbeck, both images and sound, and it was quite complicated to keep track of the twelve sound tracks. Luckily there isn't much talking in the film, so we could forget about dubbing while editing some scenes. We did lot of the sounds ourselves, like the scratching at the window or the shaving, which was quite a challenge. My editor Christopher Tworuschka had to scratch a marble plate with sandpaper in tie to the on-screen action, because with the Steenbeck it's not that easy to just edit single sounds. But I think this rough and imperfect feel fits this film very well.

The musical theme heard at the beginning and at the end was composed by Kriton Klingler-Ioannides. Digitally I could only give him a still and a song by Marlene Dietrich for inspiration. He worked, amongst others, with a Theremin, an instrument known from horror movies. It sounds a bit like a disturbing Disney song, which is a neat fit for our movie that flirts with different genres. The music at the last shot combines two elements, a low base tone and a constantly rising high-pitched one. Our sound designer constructed this out of the melody at the beginning. We worked very intuitively there and tried out a lot of new stuff. Since at the end everything is told in a single shot visually, while the high-pitched sound disappears (the base sound stays on) the scene is twice accented

What can you tell us about the actors?

In that year the ifs had a cooperation with two acting schools, whose students auditioned for us. We then told them our stories and could cast from this very interesting pool of actors. I didn't even need to see Hanna Franck (who would play Mona with the razor blades in her mouth) act, she just came in with the perfect face. I liked working with her very much, because she closes in on a character and a scene by defining the outer characteristics, which I found an extremely precise way to work. Konstantin Marsch and her auditioned together with a scene, and he had this wonderfully saggy corners of his eyes and a suicidal presence about him. I then decided on Dolores Winkelmann for the nurse, which was originally written to be a man, but I couldn’t find a man with the right energy for the part, so we re-wrote it spontaneously as a woman.

There are stark contrasts between bleakness and joy of life in your film. What part do you think is stronger?

I like the humour in the film. It's fun to delve right into a genre with exaggerated make-up and subjective camera. But as a human and a filmmaker I enjoy life in a wholly un-ironical way, which might seem old-fashioned but only the more coming back into style. There's no difference between feeling and humour for me. But XXO was a mere first exercise, and I hope to get much more possibilities to tell quirky and yet emotional stories.

Please tell us where the film has been shown and to what reactions.

It was shown at a film festival in Regensburg and was one of the nominees at the Shocking Shorts Award 2010. That meant we were on the compendium DVD and there were some screenings. It was also shown on the pay TV channel 13th Street, for example as a supportive film short before prime time. We didn't expect that, the film being such a small and rough affair. But it's great to see that others seem to enjoy it as well. Of course you can’t look into people's heads, but I actually enjoyed watching this one with an audience in the cinema.

Where did you go after XXO and what are your future plans?

Meanwhile I'm studying at the dffb film school in Berlin, where I'm still allowed to try myself out as a director – which I find to be a real privilege. Right now I finished my second year film there, which, just like my first one called ANITA is about a woman and her obsession: A character who slips out of life's reality, who becomes absent and disappears from this noisy world.

More informations about the Internationale Filmschule Köln (ifs), cologne