Born in 1982 Swiss director and screenwriter Ramon Zürcher studied filmmaking at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). His debut film, The Strange Little Cat (2013), premiered in the Forum section of the Berlinale, followed by screenings at over 80 festivals and numerous awards. The Girl and the Spider (2021) also premiered at the Berlinale, winning Best Director, and also the Fipresci Award in the Encounters section. The Sparrow in the Chimney, which premiered earlier this year in Locarno.

The Sparrow in the Chimney is the final instalment of the Animal Trilogy. It explores human coexistence in a very distinctive way. The film delves into the complex world of a family, igniting hidden desires and secrets that set a fire blazing with renewal. At times staggeringly powerful, at others poetically tender and humorous, The Sparrow in the Chimney features a brilliant cast.

…

.

Natalia Serebrikova – May I ask you how you begin your work on this film? Where did the idea come from?

Ramon Zürcher – Normally, the films in which I’m interested are not really like films where the topic is in the centre of the story. So it’s rather situations, moods, atmospheres, some kind of psychological relationships. So that is the centrepiece or the starting point of the writing process. And here, especially as that film is very close to my first film, The Strange Little Cat, the situation is very similar. It a meeting of two sisters. It’s a chamber piece situation, claustrophobic inside one house. The other film was inside one flat. So actually I thought I’d like to make like a sibling of the first film, and just design the conflicts in a different way. I wanted to make it more explosive, more outspoken.

I wanted to design a turning point or a metamorphosis course that the family changes. Karen changes from a rather dark family to a fairy tale situation.

NS – Could you please tell us more about the boy character Leon. He’s in the centre of the story, always cooking in the kitchen. He feels like something is wrong with his mother.

RZ – Actually, because he’s often like the victim. The victim is at home, where he does not have his own space. For example, he has his cooking books, he has his system, but the mother comes and changes it and says what he has to wear. And at home he has not really liberty or freedom. And when he’s out going to the shop, buying food, then the boys come and they hit him. So there’s no space where he feels free or good. His life is like a terrible situation, because it all feels like a prison.

Then, there’s the moment when he kills he cat. He’s kind of a murderer or psychopath. There’s a tear on his face after the murder. He didn’t hate the cat. He just wanted to hurt his mother, who likes cats a lot. And so actually in that system where he became a victim, or in systems, often victims become perpetrators. So actually often it’s like a system out of victims who lift much pain or much violence. Then they also use violence.

NS – I found the death of the cat deeply disturbing!

RZ – I imagine that because of our first Zoom interview, maybe you remember, it was three years ago where we have Zoomed and we spoke about Girl and the Spider. And then you spoke. And from time to time your cat came. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I know that you love cats very much!

NS – ~Is Karen inspired by someone in real life?

RZ – This is a fusion of many things, and it’s also an imaginary person. And I would say all the characters are very personal, very close to me. So there’s no person where I would say I do not understand anything. I just constructed, designed them. I don’t feel them or I don’t understand them. So everything is very personal, but it’s not private. Those abuses in families, those shadows of families, the traumata of families. And how traumata goes from parents to children,. For example, my own mother is very the opposite of Karen. Because Karen doesn’t speak much. She’s very static. And my own mother, for example, is very extroverted. She apeaks a lot. Yes, But I was interested in making the family rather moving and vivid and to keep the mother, Karen, rather as a static person.

NS – Karen’s husband is very passive, allowing mutiple women to control him. How did you construct this character?

RZ – I wanted to construct a father who’s present, but he’s kind but also not present. For example, he sleeps in the cellar. Then he goes to the cabin, to the wooden cabin, to the neighbours, to his lover. So actually he lives much of his life. He doesn’t live in that house. He works a lot in the office. He says he goes to the office, but then he goes to the lover. And he’s not really a father. And I think that he’s a little bit like Christina, she’s the daughter who goes to another country, maybe to study or to work. She kind of escapes that house. And for example, the other daughter, Johanna, with long blonde hair, stays there and fights against her mother. She’s the one who wants to change the system, who wants to protect her brother.

NS – Why did you opt for a traditional love triangle instead of a more moder, LGBT+ one?

RZ – Actually, the love triangle has a certain LGBT element. Karen and Liv develop an affection. Once they kiss, they are very a little bit like a mirror. There’s some tenderness, proximity and intimacy between Karen and Liv. . The grandmother was queer, maybe lesbian or bisexual. She had a female lover in the woods. There’s some tenderness, proximity and intimacy between Karen and Liv.

NS – The end of your film looked a little familiar, after watching Christian Petzold’s Afire [2023]!

RZ – That was just a coincidence. Yeah, I already knew from the beginning that I’d like to have the house burned because I knew that Liv, she’s kind of a pyromaniac. And at the end when there’s the fire and the whole family looks at the fire, she is impressed and smiles. For me it was like a collective pyromaniac situation, as if the whole family became pyromaniac. Because every member of the family has its own motivation to set fire on that house, to really destroy it. So that something new can be made from the stones, of the ashes.

It’s not clear whether the image of the burning house is a dream or a vision. So maybe the house is still there, The past has burnt. It’s a starting point where they can build something which is not toxic, which is not dysfunctional. They can build new relationships, new things.

NS – This sounds like an epic novel . Epic. What is your connection with literature?

RZ – Unfortunately I don’t read as much as I read before. At one point, literature was as important as films for me. I used to read a lot. Chekhov was perhaps the biggest influence. It’s about atmosphere, melancholia, and relationships. And then Dostoevsky, mostly Crime and Punishment and also the first part of the Idiot

…

.

Ramon Zürcher is pictured at the top of this article, snapped by Iris Janke. The other image is a still from The Sparrow and the Chimney.