If you can only watch one film in our
four-part GOETHE FILMS series on women robbing banks, please make it this one, featuring a new (female) director-to-watch and one of Germany's best stage and film actresses creating an intense portrait of a woman starting over in mid-life.
Director Carolina Hellsgård on her debut feature film WANJA:
Is WANJA a women’s story?
Wanja is a woman and a mother, but that’s not the main point. Actually it’s a classic story: someone gets out of prison and tries to find their way.
Actress Anne Ratte-Polle gives Wanja incredible strength. How did you come across her?
For the role of Wanja I didn’t have a casting. I had met Anne and found her to be an incredibly captivating person. I gave her the script, and that’s how we got to know each other. I never thought of another Wanja, it was always Anne;
this particular face and the special aura and personal history that she carries with her proved to be perfect for the role. We often shot in very long takes so that we wouldn’t disrupt her acting. I wanted to have as few cuts as possible. I think that this continuity is good for the film, and that one can simply watch the actors.
Actress Anne Ratte-Polle on the role of Wanja:
Do you have a weakness for women who don’t fit into society?
I’m mainly interested in roles that are not easy to classify. I find it very exciting
to dive into an imaginative space and create a character based on experiences that are not easily categorized.
Did you talk to many women prisoners?
I spoke for a long time with one woman, she was a completely different type of person than Wanja, but had a similar background with robberies and drug addiction. I was sitting in her cell and she told me that being on heroin feels like being an embryo in the womb. And I was able to imagine how one can pass one’s time in jail like that.
Did you model Wanja on any other film characters?
I found no female figure to model her on. She is pragmatic, she doesn’t busy herself with things that she cannot change, and she tries to make the best of it. That’s what I like about the character, how she goes through life and the film. She does it without fear.
Anne Ratte-Polle studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock from 1996-2000. Alongside her numerous theatrical engagements, she frequently performs in front of the camera. She is well-known to the wider cinema-going public from films such as Andreas Dresen’s WILLENBROCK (2005), and Romuald Karmakar’s NIGHTSONGS (2004).
Rate-Polle played the lead in two feature films at the Berlinale 2015: In WANJA, the debut feature film by director Carolina Hellsgård, as well as in SIBYLLE, directed by Michael Krummenacher. Taz newspaper: "Ratte-Polle derives incredible nuances from her physicality, oscillating between anger and cheekiness, vulnerability and will power."
Carolina Hellsgård works as a writer, editor and director in Berlin. After completing a MFA from the Berlin University of Arts, she studied film directing and screenwriting at the California Institute of the Arts. Hellsgård's award-winning films have screened in film festivals such as the Berlinale, Clermont Ferrand International Film festival, Films des Femmes and Oberhausen Short Film Festival. She is a former participant of the Berlinale Talent Campus, and her short film LÄUFER was nominated for the German Critic's Award 2013.
interviews by Thekla Dannenberg, Berlin 2015
image: promo photo courtesy Flickfilm
