Tell us something about the filming conditions. They were extremely tough, because we needed, erm, snow. The screenplay was ready end of January and my Mum found out from a fortune-teller that it would snow again in March. I firmly believed her, no-one else did. It became our running gag during the pre-production work and then, two days before filming it began to snow. (Yipee.) Filming in snow is really hard going for all concerned. The actors were wearing light clothes, the Bavarian Sport Club (Bayersiches Sportverein) kindly allowed us to use a hut to warm ourselves up and a manufacturer of heat packs sponsored us. Every day, at 4 a.m., we drove to the shooting location in the mountains.
You were working with a very reduced team. Was that a conscious decision or was it the only option given the financial restrictions? I knew from my experience on short films that we needed to be flexible. We all had to fit into a bus so that we could go from one set to another cheaply and quickly. Furthermore, each person in the team had to take on more than one role. This worked really well from early on. The production company were impressed and the team worked perfectly!
The bridge in the film is symbolic of your story ... It is in a small wood, which is unofficially called the magical forest. Robby Hirtl, a friend, showed it to us during a location tour. It appears three times in the film. On one of the final days on the set, there was an unfortunate incident. In a break between takes we were happily messing around and Mirkus was jumping up and down on the bridge. Then he suddenly started screaming. We thought that he was just messing around, but unfortunately he’d pulled his Achilles’ tendon. Filming had to be put on hold for a while. Strangely enough this forced break ended up being good for the film, as it lead to certain aspects of it changing and becoming more consistent. When we filmed the scene in the cabin later on, it was fun faking winter scenes in the middle of summer.
And what is the moral of the story? Life is hard and love is even harder. There is a saying: “If I knew all secrets and had all the answers, but didn’t have love, I wouldn’t be anything.”
The interview was conducted by Jakob M. Erwa.
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