Interview

INTERVIEW: MARGARETHE VON TROTTA, DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER OF INGEBORG BACHMANN – JOURNEY INTO THE DESERT

Making films about women is natural to me

Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL is the beginning of my understanding that film can be as important an art as theatre, music, painting or literature.

The celebrated German director, screenwriter and actress Margarethe von Trotta is the guest of the 30th Palić European Film Festival, where she will be presented with the Aleksandar Lifka Award, which she received in 2004, when she was unable to attend the festival. She stepped into the world of film as an actress, in Fassbinder’s and Schlöndorff’s works, for which she also wrote scripts. Together with Schlöndorff, she directed THE LOST HONOR OF KATHARINA BLUM. Since then, her directing career has started, crowned with numerous awards. Margarethe von Trotta is the first woman to win the Golden Lion Award for Best Director at the Venice International Film Festival, for her film MARIANNE & JULIANE, in which she begins her collaboration with actress Barbara Sukowa, with whom she also shot films about Rosa Luxemburg, Hannah Arendt... Strong, revolutionary, women “ahead of their time” are the central figures in the films of Margarethe von Trotta, who was also awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the European Film Academy. One such woman, the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, is the inspiration and subject of her new film, which we are premiering at Palić.

The winners of the Palić’s Aleksandar Lifka Award for contribution to European cinematography, in addition to you, are among others Jirí Menzel, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Ken Loach, Costa-Gavras, István Szabó, Ken Russell, Andrzej Wajda... Do you like the company?

Not only do I like the company, but I am honoured to be in it, even though I wonder if there are any women who have won the award so far. You often point out how Ingmar Bergman is your mentor in art and someone who had a strong influence on your films.

In what way is that?

His film THE SEVENTH SEAL is the beginning of my understanding that film can be as important an art as theatre, music, painting or literature. It was like my “second awakening” and from that moment I hoped to become a filmmaker one day. But I had to wait almost 17 years for my wish to come true. Perhaps also because Bergman’s way of describing a woman and all kinds of feelings and sensations she goes through is close to my approach, although he always approached them from a male point of view and that’s natural, even if he once said to me: “But Margarethe, I am a woman too!” In your films, you deal with women whose stories and lives have had a strong impact on many.

Why is this something you chose?

I was raised by my mother, I saw my father once a year, he died when I was 10 years old. There were only girls in my school. We went to university with boys, but I never had the impression that I knew them. So it was natural for me to start making films about women. Then it became a kind of program because there were so few female directors and I felt the need to speak on behalf of all those who did not have the opportunity to speak for themselves. We will have the opportunity to watch your new film about Ingeborg Bachmann INGEBORG BACHMANN – JOURNEY INTO THE DESERT.

What was it about her character and work that drove you to make a film about her?

Her life, as a poet and as a woman: sensitive and vulnerable on one hand and strong and emancipated on the other.

Are you thinking about a new film and a new heroine?

No, not yet. But I would like to do a new film with Barbara Sukowa and Vicky Krieps.

Jelena Knežević