Fernlicht deploys the interesting device of filming exclusively from inside a car. Why this game rule? Was it the impetus for the film?
It wasn’t a preconception to make the film entirely inside a car. In fact, the film itself wasn’t preconceived in the form of a classical finished script or formal proposal. It developed and shifted over the course of almost three years through writing, shooting, editing, rewriting, shooting, re-editing, and so on. We searched for the film through an open, collective and creative process, as if it already existed somewhere and we just had to find it.
It all started with the urge to film during the upcoming New Year’s Eve. Sebastian Ladwig had the initial idea for a sequence in a coke delivery taxi—as they are common in Berlin—working while everyone else is celebrating. I loved the idea and pushed forward. We didn’t want to lose time applying for funding, especially since we had no clear idea yet where the process would lead us. This decision encouraged us to turn our budget limitations into a stylistic choice. We mounted the camera inside the car, that way we were free to focus on the scene and everything happening around us and to shoot an entire sequence in a single day. That night became unforgettable for everyone involved. Witnessing Marie Bloching bring the figure of Alex to life was magical and the reason we decided to continue and film another sequence.
We then actually left the car and shot a big New Year’s party where Alex tries to sell her stuff. For our tiny budget, that was quite an effort. But when we started editing together with Laura Bierbrauer, we realized it didn’t connect to the same world we had already created. It didn’t “grip” in the same way.
So we returned to the initial sequence and tried to listen carefully to what it was asking for. That’s when the mother sequence appeared. We shot it and it worked. It felt totally organic. After that, we filmed a flashback scene from Alex’s childhood, again outside the car. It was a strong scene, but once more, it didn’t belong to the same world.
That’s when we felt we had to make a radical decision: to film the whole movie inside the car. Once that decision was taken, the rest somehow fell into place.
The dialogues are vivid and larger than life. What were the writing stages? Was it a long-term, layered process?
As we knew we had just one shooting day per sequence, we had to make sure we got everything we needed to keep deepening Alex’s world in that one day. We had long preparation periods where Sebastian and I first discussed the emotional context, where we were coming from and where we were heading. We would brainstorm and gather input from both sides in a big pool of feelings, themes, things that were going on in our lives or that we had observed recently. We would then try to see how these could be related to Alex’s world. Then Sebastian would take all this in and go into a kind of closure, to come back after a few weeks with these incredible and fearless dialogues and scenes.
The film revolves around its main character, Alex, played by Marie Bloching, whose performance is remarkable. How did you go about thinking about the role together? How much room was left for improvisation?
I had seen Marie before at a Passover dinner, but we didn’t get a chance to talk that day. When we were searching for an actress for the role of Alex, a mutual friend suggested her. In a second, it was clear to me that she was Alex, that she had to be. It just clicked. I talked with Sebastian and Leo Geisler about it, and they completely agreed.
I then met Marie at a café and was all nervous about convincing her to do something as wild as filming with us in a car over New Year’s. But surprisingly (or maybe not), she was delighted by the idea. We talked about Alex and her emotional world, but a great deal of it was guided more intuitively. I think we both somehow felt that we could trust each other and that we had a similar idea about the role. Marie and I chose Alex’s outfit: red and pink. Someone who doesn’t try to fit into this world, who swims against the stream and, by doing so, becomes deeply authentic and vulnerable. During the scenes, we simply witnessed her incredible talent.
There was room for improvisation, mainly when it came to everything happening outside the scripted, controlled world, which was basically everything outside the car. But the dialogues were kept mostly as they were written in the script.
How did the constraints of the car interior interest you in working with the body and face? Why do you always use the same camera placement? How did Marie Bloching use it? We can hear but not see the other characters, who are hidden from view. Why this choice?
The interior of the car somehow became Alex’s interior. The different seats she occupies reflect her position within various constellations and situations: as the conductor of her own life, as a daughter, a sister, and a lover. The cars change, but they remain her safe space in a threatening world. They move through her history like vessels inhabited by her soul.
Our dogmatic camera approach—placing the camera in a single angle per sequence, always on one seat, always on Alex, jump-cutting between scenes—emerged initially from our need to economize our shooting. But we soon realized it allowed us to play creatively with the boundaries of the frame. We agreed the device should remain visible.
On the one hand, in some scenes Marie could interact with the frame in a playful way, moving in and out of the image. Then again we were entirely focused on her, immersed in her intimate world. We had long scenes in which Alex would mainly listen and react, and somehow, we don’t get tired of watching her do just that. It reveals so much more about her inner state, about the way she receives the world.
At the same time, the presence of the other characters—generously bringing the off-space to life—becomes even more palpable, as the viewer accesses only their voices and a fragmented image of them. The viewer is invited to complete what’s missing with their own imagination, their inner image archive. In that way, the off-space becomes a space of projection, and hopefully, the viewer becomes another collaborator to the film.
The film is made up of five non-chronological sequences. Was this division into slices of life clear from the shooting ? What role did the editing phase play in the film’s structure?
The editing phase was crucial in the creative process, as we edited in parallel with writing and shooting. Even though our camera concept brought a certain linearity to the editing, it was a very meticulous process, where Laura made every cut very consciously, considering every frame. Each time a new sequence entered the edit room, it affected the entire structure, and we would go back to adjust earlier sequences in light of the new one.
When we realized we had been shooting across different seasons, we thought it might be a good idea to structure the film backwards through time—autumn, summer, spring—as a rule to reflect Alex’s path through memory. But we hadn’t filmed in that order. When we finally shot the last scenes (the summer sequence in the Uber) and put everything together, we realized that the dramatic arc didn’t work with the emotional climax placed at the midpoint of the film.
We then decided that the emotional logic and the associative chain connecting the sequences were more important than a rational structure. We changed the order to a non chronological one, and suddenly it all articulated what we had been looking for. Only then did we know we had the film.
Interview by Claire Lasolle
