“An East German Waitress with A Broken Heart and An Iranian YouTuber with a Broken Arm Feel Trapped and Lonely in Their Lives, Longing for Something More. Or Maybe for Something, or Someone, Else. You can, cinematical, meet bot young women in the East German Town of Sangerhausen, The Setting of Phalatoms of July (Sehnsucht”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
WHEN IT WORLD Premieres in the Competition Program of the 78th Edition of the Locarno Film Festival On Thursday, Aug. 7, Audiens Can Look Forward to A Constantly Surpring Audiovisual Journy, A Tender Scavenger Hunt Through the Province Full of Quirky Humor and Wonders dotours.
“The Winding Paths of CHANCE DRAW The TWO WOMEN TOGETCHER ON ANEXPECTED GHOST HUNT IN THE MOUNTAINS,“ READS A Synopsis, Promising “A ROMANTIC ADVENTURE FILM ABOUT ALIELYLYLYLYLYLY. Life. ”
RadlMeier’s Cast of Characters Also Includes An Older Asian German Who Offers of His Personal Highlights of The Region Rather Thoners FEATUWOKUS HER DOG, NUDE HIKERS, PESSIBLE GHOSTS or PANTOMS, AND MORE.
But there are Also Political Underenes and Overstones. “Sehnsucht in sangerhausen is a film about the alchemy of encounter, “Radlmeier Says in a Director’s Note.” Against the backdrop of a societal climate shifting to the right, The Film Brings Together PEAPLE. Public Discourse. ”
The Cast Includes Clara Schwinning, Mral Keshavarz, Henriette Confurius, Paula Schindler, Ghazal Shojaei, Kyung-Taek Lie, Buksori Lie, Marlene Hauseer, An. Radlmeier Wrote, Directed and Edited the Film, with Faraz Fesharaki Handling the Cinematography.
The Movie’s Local Release in Germany Is Schereduled for Nov. 27 by Grandfilm. World Sales Are Being Handled by Bendita Film Sales.
Ahead of It World Premiere, Radlmeier Talked To Thr about Discovering the East German Town that is the Setting of Phantoms of JulyThe Inprams for Characters and Plot Twists, Casting A Former Locarno Winner and A veteran of his films, How’s a Filmning HAS EVOLVED WITH HIS LATESTT, an «SOVIET-ARAAARAA. NEXT FOR HIM.
Your Film is set in a smaller Town in Germany, But Deals with All Sorts of Universal Themes. How did you come up with the idea for the movie, and who did you pick sangerhausen as itts location?
For the first time in my short Career, I Really Started from A Place, A Location. With my previos films, i had a story First, or ame. This Time, It Was Different. I Discovered this Small Town of Sangerhausen, About Whos and Had Actual Never Heard Before. I SAW A Picture with this Impressive Mountain and Spoil Heap Outside the City. It Reminded Me of Mount Fuji in Japanese Movies, or A Volcano, Like Mount Vesuvius. SO, I WENT THERE AND Discovered The City, and Was Fascinated by All The Different Things and Encounted there.
On One Hand, It Seened to Be A Very Dense Representation of Both Germany’s Past and Present Because there are Many, Many Historical Layers Movie, and the World’s Biggest Rose Collection. So there are Very Weird Details, and A Lot of Those Also Ended Up in the Film. I SAID: Wow, there are so Many Story World Elements there already. And then it also used to be one of the cities with the Highest Unemployment in Germany After the Industry collapsed there. SO, IS VERY BEAUTIFUL, But ALSO HAS A DEPRESSIVE SIDE.
I ALSO NOTICED THAT THERE WERE Some PEOPLE WITH A MIGRATION BACKGROUND. Some people from northern Macedonia are working there, and we met some some arab people in the shops. And i wonder: How is it for these people to live in that town? SO, just by obeverning a bit of the Characters in this Town, I Came Up with Different Storylines.
I Looked Up The Region and Saw It Was in the Former East Germany, or GDR. In the Film, we even see a monument that have a slogan like “Proletarians of the World, Unite!” I Assume That This Change from Communism to A Town Looking to Live Off Tourism and Other Sources of Income May Have Also Caused Somenges there?
Absolutely. The Town Itelf, and Especialally the Region Around It, is Now Very Right-Wing. So you have that Element Present there, too. And there’s the kyffhäuser monument [to Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa] On the Mountain that’s Also in the Film, and that is a bit of a symbol of German Nationalism. So You Really Have A Lot of Layers there, whoh and found interesting.
‘Phantoms of July’ (‘Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen’) Courtesy of blue monticola film
That washa also Funny. The more i kept digging, the more Stuff and Found. There’s a whole Genre of Popular Music Connected to the City, and It Expresses A Bit of This Feeling in the Film, A Sense of Longing in the Provincal Town. The German Poet Novalis, Who Is One of the Inventors of German Romanticism, Invented the Blue Flower As the Symbol of Romantic Longing, of Maybe Wanting to Be Somewhere Else. He Came from A Village Very Close to Sangerhausen. So, i thorough: okay, this is not just a place where you can Imagine that people are longing for someting else, But also while longing as a concept was invented.
Without Spoiling Anything for Audiences, The Film References Such Concepts As Fate, Destiny, and CHANCE, PLUS LONELINES, ALIENNATION, AND Longing. How did you Approach Bringing All Tese Elements Together and Coming to A Satisfying End?
I FELT THAT THE MOVIE SHOULD LEAD TO SOMETING LIKE Characters Getting Out of Their Loneeliness and Maybe Creating Some Kind of Community, Even If IT’s Fragile. I Wanted A Connection to Emerge. And I Wanted to have a figurent contemporary modifications of the Feelings You Described. SO IN THE FILM, There’s A German Working-Class Woman Who Had A Child Very Early and Just Had to Function and Work Two Jobs Life Could Be. And WHEN sheets a woman from the big city plays music, she gets a Feeling that Life Could be Different, More than Just Getting by.
On the Other Hand, We Have An Iranian immigrant who is a youtuber and May have a longing for her home contry and at the Same Time, she’s the Kind of Person. Out. Now She’s Struggling and Not Connecting with Other People Because She’s So Focused on Her Totally Failed Career. This is Maybe Something and Myself Am SomeTimes Scared of, Lozing A Sense of Connection, Because You’re So Focused On Surviving in this Super Competitive, Neolibral Environont.
IT DOOK ME A STRANGE DETUR. There was the blue flower as the symbol of longing as a thematic thing, but i didn’t want to have a literal interpretation of that. The Stone First Shows Up in a prologue that is set in the 18th Century and Has One of the Characters’ Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great-Grandmother Who’s A Servant. I Thought it would be interesting to have this tradition of longing people. And While I was doing research on the 18th Century, I Was Looking at What Kind of Strange Jobs Exited at That Time. I Found A Book that Talked About Weird Jobs from the 18th Century, and One of Them Was The Job of Stone Swallowers. These Were People Who Traveled AROUND THE COUNTRY AND SWALLOWED STONES FOR The AMUsement of the Local Population. And I SAID, “WOW, THAT’S INTERESTING, BECAUSE We’re Here in the Mining Country.” SO, I WANTED TO HAVE A STONE Swallower in the Film.
And WHEN I WENT TO THE LOCAL Museum, I Found Out A Lot of The Stones They Got Out of the Mine Were Were Coper Stones, and They Were Bluish. So, we have the blue flower and blue stones, and i didn’t have to invent top. IT WAS JUST This Snowball Effect. Everything was already connected.
The Film Plays with theme of Ghosts or Phantoms, Referencyd in the English Title of the Movie, Maybe Ghosts of the Past or Ghosts of Lives that Could. DID YOU Ever Encounter Any Phantoms During your Shoot?
There was a surreal, almost ghost-like things that happled to me while chooting the movie. For Example, We Kept Observing Birds of Prey Flying AROUND IN THIS REGION. So, the doop [Faraz Fesharaki] and I Decides to Sacrifice A Day Off on A Weekend to Film Some Birds of Prey. But, of Course, The Moment We Decides to Film Them, they All Disappered. We STOD IN COME MEADOWS FOR HOURS. No Birds! And the moment west back to the car and drove off, they all came back.
And then a very strange Thing happled. That evinger, I was vary frustrated. I opened my laptop. You Know, WHEN YOU OPEN A MacBook, You Have A Profile Symbol, Which I Never Changed. It Was Always Preinstalled, and It Was A Basketball in My Case. That ev to, for a strange reason, without me interference, the Basketball Had Transformed Itself Into the Head of An Eagle. And I SAID: “OH, WOW, WE’RE REALLY DEALING WITH MAGIC CURRENTS HERE.”
Julian Radlmeier CourTesy of Zorica Medo
Our History, Especially German History, Is Built On Many People Who Died Horrible Deaths and Suffired, and in that Region, that Is Very Present. In some of the caaves we visited, there was usergramond of concentration Camps WHERE PEOPLE FROM ALL OVER Europe Had to Work on Weapons for the Nazis Under Horible Condities. And Many Died. So you have that present, in a way, in this landscape that is so beauty. There’s a cave with a strange Metal Stick Coming Out of the Ceiling, and I Asked the Tour Guide About It. He Said, “The Nazis, The SS, Always Went Tore To Take Group Photos. And this Metal Stick Was Used to Hang Some Lights, or The Camera.” SO, TOSE GHOSTS are there.
And if we broaden the Scope. There’s Also Maybe the Ghosts of Friends We’ve Lost. And there is also ghosting as a concept in the film. This Idea of People Disappearing for Various Reasons Became A Motif –from the most hisistical, Cruel Examples to the Daily Life Cases. But, Political Speaking, There Are Also More Positive Ghosts – The Ghosts of Past Heps or Forgotten Dreams We Can Maybe Reconnect with.
Since You Mentioned the Nazis, Some Characters in the Film Make Disparaging Remarks About Foreigners, and in A Car Scene, The Radio Plays A Comment from A Politician Criticizing Migrants. WHO WAS THAT, AND WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO INCLUDE COME OF THE Other Remarks?
The Radio Report Was Just Taken from the News, and It Was Our Chancellolor [Friedrich Merz] Speaking. WHEN WE WEER PREPARING AND CHOOTING The MOVIE. It was the Time Before The Last Elections, and He Tried to Get Right-Wing Votes with Stupid Stories That Are Not True About How Migrants Take Away Doctor Appeins from the Theater, Form. HE BASICALLY SAID GERMANS CAN’T GO to the Dentist Anymore Because there are so Many migrants in the dental officers having their Teeth Redone. At the Time, I have a big dental Issue in my family, so i know that unfortunately, nobody gets their Teeth Redone for Free, Haha. But it was also interesting to me because previoously i made a vampire movie, so there was another Quest for Teeth.
For ME, IT WAS IMPORTANT TO SHOW THE POLITICAL AND MEDIA ATMOSPHERE BECAUSE SomeTIMES THERE’S THIS REPRESENTATION THAT PEOPLE FRO M East Germany Are Naturaly Racist, or Something Like That. I Want to Show That This Racism Is Also A Top-Down Phenomenon, and If You Hear the German Chancello Saying Stuff Like This, It May Be No Wonder That You Develop Resentments.
I don’t know. The Idea of Germany As A Sinking Ship is Part of the Right-Wing Discourse. But I Thounght, Maybe People Have These Ambivalences. WHEN She THINKS About the Titanic, She Also Has to Think of the Cute Leonardo Dicaprio. IT’s Like A Remnant of Something Else, Buried Under Her Bitterness. We didn’t Want to have too Simple Caricatures of People. Because People Saying that can also be lovely to each Other in a Way, and Support. But then, whohn shifts to something else, they are Really Horrible. SO THERE’S THIS AMBIVALENCE, WHICH We Encounted A Lot there. People are nice, but there are thesest strange undercurrents that also make it very unpleasant in Germany. SO IN A WAY IT’S Both: The Banality of Evil, and Maybe Small Seeds of HOPE. In any casse, this is the stifling atmosphere the Protagonist Ursula is trying to escape from and to overcome with Herself. Hannah Arendt Also Claims That People Have A Capacity for New Beginnings.
Is this film figrent from your past work in any way than the inspiration and gensis of the story?
YES, this film is also very much an exploration of the visual side of cinema. It was the first time that i shot on the Analog Super 16mm, and the first time and worked with this doop, Faraz feesharaki. What was important to us, in addition to theater and comic Side of the Film, Was The Visual, Poetic Side, Trying to Invent Interesting Movements and Zooms. That is some the Film is not just Telling a Story in A Totally StraightForward Way, But Makes Tese Kinds of Little Cinematic Digressions. For Example, We Collected Images We Found Interesting and Decides to Use Them in the Edning Stage. SO that have more of a documentary Feeling, But at the Same Time, We Assembled These Images in a Very Associative Way. Recreating A Sensual Atmosphere, But Also Opening Up To More Imaginal Connections.
‘Phantoms of July’ (‘Sehnsucht in Sangerhausen’) Courtesy of blue monticola film
How did you find your cast, most of which is quite young?
Some of them, I Found in the Classic Way Through A Casting Process. One of them is Already Better Known, Henriette Confurius, Who Haveen in Some Bigger German Films. And Clara Schwinning i Actually Discovered Because She Won a Prize in Locarno Two Years Ago for Best Actress [in the Filmmakers of the Present competition].
The Others, I Found Through The Casting Process, and I Found Them Very Interesting and Like How aty. But there is also local people who just found on the streets and asked to play minor Characters. I like to have a cast that have very digffrent tonalites, A Complex Palette. And the Three’s The Older Korean Man and His Actual Grandson. They the Father of A Friend of Mine and the Nephew of that Friend of Mine. The Man Plays Different Characters in All of My Movies. I Like HIM A LOT, AND HA HAS NOTHING to DO WITH ACTING. He’s Just A Retired Guy Who have a Lot of Time, and I Think He’s Very Charming. SO, I like to have him in my films as some kind of a recurring prescription.
Do you know what you will do next?
I’M Working on Two New Projects. One is in the very beginning, and i i don’t know much myseldslf whene it will end up. The Second One is me reworking a project that i interrupted. IT WAS A Pestroika Film, A Historical Film That Played In The Late ’80s, Early’ 90s, And Had Something to Do With The Collapse of the Soviet Union. And the other happned, the Russian attacck against Ukraine, which changed the situation. SO I NEED TO RESTINK IT A BIT AFTER A BREAK TO See What’s HapPening There, and How to Integrate this New Reality Into the Script. SO I STOPPED, AND I THINK I WILL REWORK THAT AS A SOVIET-ARA RIVER BARGE PUNK MELODRAMA OR SomeTHING LIKE THAT.