Matthias Luthardt represented German cinema at Cannes with his feature debut, Pingpong [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Matthias Luthardt
intervista: Sebastian Urzendowsky
scheda film], in 2006. Since then, he has worked on several fiction features and documentaries, and is preparing his next feature, based on the novella The Fox by DH Lawrence. Luthardt is part of this year's Face to Face promotional campaign organised by German Films. We talked to him about his new project and what it means to be a German filmmaker.

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Cineuropa: You shoot both fiction features and documentaries. What do you like about each format, and how do the two mix in your work?
Matthias Luthardt: What I like about documentary is that it allows you to capture the ingenuity of life. No matter how hard you try as a writer to come up with a story, life is already rich, colourful, quirky and weird in and of itself. Documentary allows you to look very closely at it, and I find that very exciting. Then there are also areas where it becomes more intimate and which are more difficult to approach with the documentary language. That's where fiction features begin for me. When it comes to the psychological examination of a certain material, it can then be easier to go into the fictional form. In my first short film and first feature-length movie, this close look, which is so necessary for documentary, helped me a lot with the work with the actors. It helped me to find out if what was happening in front of the camera was really believable. I'm also interested in mixed forms, and I plan to keep experimenting with that.

What can you tell us about your next feature?
The Fox is the title of a novella by DH Lawrence. Our film will have a different title, though. I read an exposé for a film version of it that really moved me. It's about a young woman who lives with another woman. The two of them are hiding a deserter in their home. And out of that starts a love triangle. It takes place in 1914. We turned it into a Franco-German story set in Alsace, on the border between Germany and France, with a language that is almost extinct.

What fascinated you the most about the story?
The relationship that develops between the characters. I was interested in the question of what it does to us men when we feel excluded. How do we position ourselves? I found that aspect very modern. In order to be able to touch others, I have to be touched myself. For me, the story also has parallels with today, even though it's set in the 1920s. I wanted to take a different look at that era and create something new from it, instead of reproducing the same images over and over again.

What influence does your connection to France have on your artistic work?
When I came to Lyon for a few months, I went to the cinema there for the first time, whereas before, I had been more interested in literature. That's when I saw that there were films other than the blockbusters that were playing in the cinema in the small town where I grew up. This opened up a different view on cinema for me – that it is not only commercial art, but can be received and viewed critically like any other art. There, I saw films that moved me very much, many European and French movies. But I also got to know German cinema there. I had already heard some of the names, but hadn't consciously watched the films beforehand. I discovered Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and co in France during retrospectives, and the discourse about them was very interesting. Because then, I also had to reflect on my own view of my country, and I asked myself what it means to be a filmmaker from Germany.

So what does it mean to be a filmmaker from Germany?
I don't really have an answer to that. The German Films campaign gives me the opportunity to cast aside my global view of cinema and just reflect on what it means to be a German filmmaker, and also to observe what the status of German film is. In France, for example, people still associate German cinema with Wenders and Herzog. German Films does a lot to make sure that the filmmakers who make cinema today are recognised, and that their films are watched. But these clichés persist and also work in the opposite direction, of course. French cinema is also considered by many to be primarily the generation of Truffaut and Godard. People often tell me that when I write a story, it's very French. Then I try to ask what exactly is meant by that.

The most important thing for me is that I can make my films, that I get the money to do so. That people trust me to make movies, and of course, I want to be perceived as a filmmaker. I am aware that I will then be perceived as a German filmmaker. But the influences are manifold. I think anyone who writes, anyone who makes art, doesn't want to have to pigeonhole themselves so quickly. I don't find the stories I develop to be specifically German; it's not the current reality of Germany that's being portrayed, because they don't deal with topics that are particularly relevant right now. I'm often interested in timeless stories.

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