If the mother does not want happiness adapt … – Emily Atef talks about her film “The Stranger in Me”
Jul 25, 2009 Uncategorized
If the parent does not want happiness adapt … – Emily Atef talks about her film “The Stranger in Me”
Cannes Film Festival was her film The Stranger in Me, which was seen in the collateral lines “Semaine de la Critique” to enthusiastically. Now Emily Atef start drama about a woman, who suffers from postpartum depression, in the German Cinema and touches on one of the last social taboos of our time: What happens when the hard-luck mother after the birth not just want to post? Joachim Kurz spoke with the director about her film.
What has prompted them to make a film about this subject, which has not yet been addressed?
The subject has occupied me for a long time. Especially in cases than in my circle of acquaintances, many pregnant women have been and I’ve noticed how much these women have changed. From the beginning of pregnancy to her mother, who broadcast this lucky, they got a very special, almost sacred aura, a glow, a fortiori, of course, after the birth. But what happens when a woman does not stop this radiation, I asked myself. When I researched it, I came across the symptoms of postpartum depression, from that in Germany every year about 80,000 women are affected. And then I quickly sensed that this issue is a really hot taboo subject. The fact that a mother – feels for any reason whatsoever – not for her own child, which can, that it should be outlawed.
How did you deal with this taboo subject? Have you had many discussions?
My co-author Esther Bernstorff and I have long researched and had many discussions, which was not so easy. For those directly affected women encapsulate away and can not even talk to her family about their feelings. Especially since they are exposed by their environments and enormous pressure. And even some women who were healed – the overall prognosis for healing is almost 100 percent – we ran into a wall of silence. They were ashamed of it still, when her mother refused “to have.
How do you then go from here?
It took a long time until we met a psychiatrist who has devoted great attention to this issue. And with us then we have maintained very closely and we have always shown our script. In addition, we found an Internet forum where women victims have shared their experiences. Was the us a lot.
In the title, which carries the film, you could be my first so that the expectant mother feels the fetus as foreign. But in the movie it is so that the feeling ceases after birth. So what do you mean by the title ) The Stranger in Me (#? It’s in the book focus on the experience of depression, which makes the main character Rebecca totally unprepared. It was important to me that postpartum depression can make really every woman. Rebecca is a woman in her mid-thirties, who has a job that she fills a happy relationship and a complication-free pregnancy. She looks forward to her child and has no worries and problems. But then she falls through the hormonal fluctuations in a deep hole they discovered in themselves a dark side, of whose existence they had not even suspected anything. This is the stranger in her.
The stranger in me is not just a film about a postpartum depression, but on all forms of depression. This requires a different kind of staging, because depression is a sickness of silence of silence, so that the dialogues in the film reduces to an absolute minimum and instead must work even more with pictures. And at the same time, the stranger in mirauch a kind love story, a closer look exactly how a formerly intact relationship can change over the course of such a disease.
The Stranger in Me is a movie that is completely focused on the perspective of the protagonist. Was it difficult to find the right actress for this role?
I was actually very quickly became clear that I absolutely Susanne Wolff, who is a wonderful actress at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, wanted for the role of Rebecca. But I still had to convince many people around me. But as directed by novice you just have to fight forever. (laughs)
Susan and I then worked very closely together on the role, much rehearsed and incredible amount of time spent with each other to gain trust each other. For this is the basic prerequisite for such a difficult role. And I was quickly realized that I can reach that level only with an actress with a very long breath.
They are already working on a new movie and write the screenplay, he will
Kill Me! Hot . What it will go in this film? In my new film I am writing together with Esther Bernstorff, is about a 13-year-old girl growing up on a farm. Their life is hard and joyless, affection, they will not get from their parents. When her brother dies in an accident, she also wants to take her life, but she made it just can not jump off the cliff. One day will they have a runaway prisoner who is seriously injured. The girl gives the fugitives to a deal: if she takes care of him and allow him to escape from his pursuers, he shall surely be of service to you here. But in the course of flight between the two outcasts is a bond, so that both experienced for the first time in her life, genuine affection.
One more personal question: Your parents are from France and Iran, you are born in Berlin and lived there until the age of seven years, then grew up in the U.S., France and Britain and then returned to Germany to study. Was that a conscious decision to study in Germany film?
No matter where I lived, I’ve always felt a very strong feeling for Germany, Germany-a kind of nostalgia. Maybe it’s the age that I had when we went to the USA. And when the opportunity arose to study directing at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin, the dffb, too, was a great stroke of luck for me.
You’ve also the view from outside: How do you assess the current situation of the German film?
The German film is overall a very good way. There are a lot of eminent filmmakers such as Fatih Akin (Gegen die Wand, on the other side), Andreas Dresen (Cloud 9, Summer in Berlin), Hans Christian Schmid’s (23 Lights) or Stefan Kromer (you Knut, Summer 04 ).
, this reservoir of talent necessary to encourage even more. Sometimes I wish for a quota for domestic films, as it is in France or in the case of South Korea. If you look at what is there arose for a movie scene, then we are far away, despite all the achievements yet.
Title: If the parent does not want happiness adapt … – Emily Atef talks about her film “The Stranger in Me”
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