German director, writer and illustrator Christina Friedrich originally trained in hydrogeology, before studying filmmaking at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, in Berlin. She became a director at the Bremen Theatre, where she staged the German premiere of Tony Kushner’s Perestroika, and she also worked with perfomance arts. She has since directed three feature films: Hurensöhne: A Requiem (2020), Zone (2024) and The Night is Dark and Colder Than the Day, which just premiered at the 54th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. In her latest movie, a group of school children collaborate with a German filmmaker in order to paint a very different portrait of growing up. DMovies writer Victoria Luxford (who also conducts this interview) describes her film as “a window into the limitless joys and terrors of discovering the world at a young age”.
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Victoria Luxford – How did you first come to be involved with the project?
Christina Friedrich – I have been working with the children’s ensemble for five years now. We started working on themes in preparation for the film Zone, in which all 33 children are involved in a very special way. At the end of shooting, the children asked for their own film, which began with the question of fears. I then wrote a letter to each child with questions about time, the night, wishes, abilities, faith and misfortune. The libretto was created from these letters and, importantly, from the work in the recording studio with Jacob Suske, the composer, we collect further voices and speech material, sung, hummed, whispered. The result is a kind of drifting dream choir that moves through the visible and invisible world. The work was and is a necessity, as well as a social space for joint explorations.
VL – Were there any particular challenges working with the children on the film?
CF – The challenge was to capture the cosmos of each child and not to lose any child and to treat them all with the same attention, closeness and care. But otherwise the work is no different from working with a classical theatre ensemble or a symphony orchestra. The children are prepared, they have their own themes, words and thoughts. They wrote them down in a letter, which has become a kind of script for each of them, as they are their own texts. And so a choir is created from many individual voices. It was a very intense, joyful and respectful work, the children have my deep respect and admiration.
VL – Conversely, were there rewarding aspects of the process that surprised you?
CF – The entire work is accompanied by constant and continuous surprise. Obstacles have to be overcome, solutions have to be found, irritations have to be clarified. Sometimes it’s 35 degrees in the shade, or there are mosquitoes, tears, fears or moments of exhaustion, as well as euphoria, dreams, realisation and sensitivity. This process is just as surprising as life itself. Miracles happen when working in a kind of large film family in which everyone is connected to each other and that keeps on growing.
VL – Was there any one child whose answers or responses stayed with you?
CF – Yes, one child answered the question of what he was afraid of by saying that he was afraid of killing himself out of anger and despair, another child was afraid of becoming homeless and another child was afraid of being abandoned by the people he loved. This is just a fraction of the answers that were so deep and heartfelt that I knew we had to share them together and make this film.
VL – How was the process of filming the fantasy sequences outside in nature? Was the shooting schedule adjusted for the younger participants?
CF – The situations, both at night and during the day, in which the children were transformed in their animal and dream creatures, were filmed with the same care and concentration as the situations in the interiors. It is much more about the children being able to experience and feel the creatures they dreamed of at that moment. To lie in the reeds, to live as a werewolf in an abandoned house, to cry as a donkey about the destiny of the world, to dance with joy as a dog or to be able to see as a white wolf and feel love as a wise raven. All of this takes time, dedication and understanding. The entire team, camera, costume, mask building, sound, direction and bodywork, are all highly focussed. The process of filming is also a process of researching, playing and creating. The filming schedule was coordinated with the rhythm of the children.
VL – How did you decide upon the exterior locations?
CF – The origin of the landscapes is various. On the one hand, they are places chosen by the children themselves; one task was to find a landscape or a place with which the individual children feel connected. The Möwen lake, the Salza spring, the Hörninger mountains, but there are also places and landscapes that are part of my own explorations. Quarries, deep forests and abandoned houses. Mirrored dream landscapes that represent the inner spaces and flow with the stories. And they are the landscapes of the Harz Mountains, a vertical historical space. A place of romance, but also a place of death. Not far from Nordhausen is the former Dora concentration camp, which is not far from the Salza open-air swimming pool. The children know this place. So it’s their memory maps and mine that are intertwined.
VL – How have audiences reacted to the film?
CF – Unfortunately, I can’t say anything about that yet, as the world premiere isn’t until tomorrow evening. I can send you some of the reactions after the premiere.
VL – You’ve said in the press material you would like people to “entrust” themselves to the film, did you interact with anyone who had a surprising response to this request?
CF – All I can say is that everyone can confide in this film, as everyone was a child once and may find questions and situations that have affected them or are still affecting them.
VL – In an industry where films have to be ‘sold’ to festivals, distributors, and cinemagoers themselves, was it difficult to convey the film’s unique concept?
CF – Surprisingly for such a magical medium as cinema, the film industry is a very framed world, everything is divided and sorted into genres and seperated realities. The astonishment and scepticism of the promoters was palpable at first . There are secret rules that I don’t appreciate, such as not working with more than three children and animals. I have no interest in such kind of guidelines, it was an urgent necessity to make this film, as the inner world of children is hardly known in an increasingly fragmented present. The process is still ongoing, I am in the process of finding a world distributor, festivals and cinemas and can only do so with the film’s convincing material.
VL – Finally, is there anything coming up for you that you’re currently working on?
CF – Yes, we are currently working with a company that has emerged from the large ensemble on a next film entitled The Darker Night the Brighter the Stars. And I’m still working on two international co-productions, two films that I’m currently preparing.
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Christina Friedrich is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still of Into the Bloo.