Barbara Wurm: To start off, could you maybe say something about your relationship to filmmaking, your background, your interests, what fascinates you about it the most?
Daniela Magnani Hüller: As a kid, I always enjoyed watching films and TV. At some point, I found out that it was really a field in which you can work. And that set the plan. And I simply like people, observing and watching them, what motivates them, just looking really closely and searching for what connects us, and maybe what divides us. I thought at first documentary was right for me and it’s fortunately turned out to be the case. I started studying at a film school and realised it suited me, and I wanted to know more, develop further, and also try out different forms. Each project that I’ve made in film school so far is very different. From experimental to mixed media to interview-based projects. In all honesty, I’m still trying things out.
BW: And then it was clear that your first feature film would be focused on yourself in a certain way?
DMH: It just happened like that. My first film was also about a woman who experiences violence. It was a portrait and I did an intense interview, which was also more or less the film. And I always knew those were themes which simply interested me – subject areas that are closer to women or feminist viewpoints. I knew that I had my own experience but was unsure for a long time if I should open up the subject again. It’s tiring to face it again after so much time has passed. I really looked at and read the files for the first time in 2022. I was very emotional, but I thought it’s also important and strong. At the time, I was reading a lot of Annie Ernaux and slowly raised the question of whether I wanted to do something with the topic and in what form. It started very small and I kept testing how it felt to tell other people who didn’t know about it. I’ve grown into the project over the past three years and I don’t regret it.
Carolin Weidner: Since you’ve already mentioned interviews in passing – your gift for doing them is something that really impressed me about the film. You manage to get everyone to reveal a lot about themselves. What was your attitude and how did you prepare for those scenes?
DMH: It’s interesting you say that because a sound person gave me the same feedback. Where had I learned to do that? I said: nowhere. They’re just questions which interest me. And of course I went in prepared. There were different subject areas, questions I wanted explained for myself, for my life. I didn’t necessarily need the film for that, but why not film it too? And it was also a way for me to re-encounter people who I had encountered in their institutional roles. To get to know them as people. Back then I always thought: I’m standing here with my whole personality and my life is spread out before them. Every question is posed very precisely. I didn’t know anything about my interview partner. That felt like a big inequality to me.
The film gave me the opportunity to discuss things that go beyond me and which also tell us about structures in our society.
CW: Your interview subjects seem almost relieved to describe their perspective. How was the experience for you?
DMH: I think I conveyed from the get-go that I was not interested in starting a campaign of vengeance. Not just harping on where people have done something wrong. From the get-go, I said that I’ve grown through the situation. I’m happy with my life today. I’m very proud of everything that I’ve achieved since then. I have no interest in doing anyone harm. However, there are things that did not go well and which are still going poorly. That was a main reason to make this film, because it goes beyond me and because it can affect every woman and every girl. I think I conveyed that in the conversations. A lot of the people were happy to be able to discuss it, because the story may still have been a burden to them. I was very thankful that people like the teacher, for example, were ready to sit down and say, ‘Yes, I didn’t do everything right and I regret it now.’ I see that as a sign of strength.
BW: I want to come back to something: When you said that it was about clarification for you, you said you didn’t need the film for that. To put it bluntly: Why do you need the film? What opportunities does it offer you that you might not have had without it?
DMH: To discuss things that go beyond me and which are important because they also tell us about structures in our society, about institutions, about patriarchal structures. That’s why I wanted to have the conversations in front of the camera and not only for myself. At the same time, I was also concerned with showing myself as a person and a character, and not only as the victim of a crime. I can also retell my own story in a different way, and that is something which also really appealed to me as a filmmaker, because I knew that I would maybe want to use some humour as well. I would like to show how I translate feelings – visually too. I’d like to combine it very freely. I wanted to share my concern, while also conveying that my life has many layers, it is not always focussed on difficult subjects. That I’m still trying to keep on going. To see beauty in the world, in nature for instance. Showing an afterlife and a way of valuing life was important to me especially when you’re in a period when you are very disassociated or feeling alone with your experience. Life can simply end quickly and unexpectedly.
CW: Your film really shines in many directions. I just had to think of your visit to your sister in Brazil, which is about her sexual awakening. Nonetheless, everything is incredibly concise, even though you work with such different kinds of material. That carries the risk of everything falling apart. How did you do it?
DMH: No idea. That was always the big risk from the get-go. I knew it was an experiment and also that everything might not work. But I was still not ready to say it should only go in this or that direction. During the production process, however, I said, ‘Let’s see how we put all of this together in the end.’ Fortunately, I have an incredibly good editor, Melanie Jilg, who thought it all through with me over many months, bringing in ideas, and then it somehow worked out. But I am still a little surprised over how it went.
CW: I also love the music that you use and I find you placed it very cleverly. It begins with ‘Roda viva’ by Chico Buarque from the 1970s.
DMH: Right. ‘Roda viva’ is hard to translate, but it’s about a wheel of life which keeps turning very fast. It’s about how you would like to decide more, to take fate in your own hands, but you don’t really manage to do so or miss a lot of things you cannot control. There’s a lot of poetry in the way it is expressed.
CW: Then there is a very popular piece by Rita Lee, ‘Cor de Rosa Choque’ and at the end ‘Tudo Que Você Podia Ser’ by Quarteto em Cy, a kind of sister band. Towards the end, this even mixes a little with the police inspector’s violent fantasies. It’s as if all women are coming together. And then it culminates in these wonderful lyrics. I find that really strong. How did you decide on these songs?
DMH: Music has brought me so much in different periods of my life. I often look up the meanings of song lyrics in different languages and like working with music because it is its own kind of artform which I really, really appreciate. Regarding the songs: They are very famous Brazilian songs, and at the very beginning I wrote into the concept that it was also important to me to contribute something about Brazilian culture and perspective on life. Brazilian music is often about hard times and how you try to see the nice sides and keep on going. Overall, I’m also getting closer to the poetry of language – I am half Brazilian, but was born and raised in Germany.
In Brazil, I also noticed that this subject is extremely well received, as it is everywhere, because it is simply an issue everywhere.
BW: While we’re on the subject of Brazil – we discussed your film at length and came to a point where we noticed a tragic irony: That you move back to a country that is considered to have a macho culture, probably far stronger than in Germany. Have you thought about this, would you want to see cultural differences or is violence against women actually a universal problem?
DMH: It is unfortunately the same everywhere. I think I also tried to retrace in the film the path I had gone down back then. Two years after the crime, that is, after high school and the trial, I returned to Brazil and took a year to feel something again and to be in a place where everything is completely different and where nothing directly reminded me of the crime. That was an extremely important period for my – I’m reluctant to use the word ‘healing’ because I don’t think there is ever full healing – but a period which did improve a lot of things for me. I consider it a privilege that I had the possibility of going so far away. My father recently said to me that my parents thought at the time, ‘And now this too?’ But what should they have said to me? After what I’d gone through here in Munich, in this supposedly so safe city, what argument is there? For me, it was especially important to stop letting myself be restricted too much. I wanted to be free. I wanted to make my own decisions after having been controlled by others in the past.
CW: I felt Brazil was an extreme source of strength, which brings in a lightness that had simply been broken in Germany.
DMH: Yes, exactly. And that has a lot to do with the culture and people there, with an openness and readiness to help. However, it is my perspective. I couldn’t go so deeply into the kinds of violence that occur there. But in Brazil, I also noticed that this subject is extremely well received, as it is everywhere, because it is simply an issue everywhere.
CW: I’d like to pick up on this term ‘readiness to help’, and the lack of a readiness to help, which is heard in your film too. You make very critical statements about the German justice system and its protection of victims.
DMH: In a situation like mine, the laws do not always work for you and I experienced that first hand. I’ve unwillingly become an expert on certain things because it was the only way. And the situation in which you are a victim, a threatened person, a person who is stalked, and the possibilities you have, is really shitty. I have be honest about how it is. In fact, you wait until something happens. You have an extreme lack of freedom because you’re afraid. And the system really works against you. Even when something does happen, you are a mere piece of evidence before the law. The situation is fundamentally bad because, above all in Germany, there is a reluctance to prosecute too hastily perpetrators or people who make threats. And then you have these precarious situations. However, I chose a career in which I can put something out in the open. It would be very desirable if there were a few more laws that would help us more, especially us women.
BW: We also found it fascinating how you manage to juggle your various roles. You are the director, you are in front of the camera, you are the protagonist, and you are the injured party or victim. How did you manage to separate all that?
DMH: Yes, it wasn’t so easy. It always works out differently. I’d say I am basically a rather controlled person, also due to this experience. A person who always exudes much more strength or self-awareness or calm than is the case inside. During the whole trial, your boundaries are constantly tested. There were individual words I did not want to use at all, and very important decisions about which direction the film should go in. To be honest, I checked everything very precisely because it was very important to me that people understand where I wanted to go. That you’re not pigeonholed. That was hard.
BW: You were also very reserved in the staging, if you will. I mean, very often you filmed the conversations from a certain distance. How did you initiate these conversations with the others?
DMH: It was different with each person. With the teacher, I wrote her a letter. It started with the motto, ‘We haven’t heard from each other in 14 years, but this is how my life is now. I’m looking at this time in my life again. I’d like to talk to you about it. Are you willing to do so? I’m also doing this in connection to a film which I’m planning.’ Then we met for a first conversation. It was important for it to be clear what my intentions were and that trust was established before showing up with a film crew for that kind of conversation. And then there was really just this one, long conversation over three hours. The wide shots were important to me so that I would have a certain concentration for the conversations. On the one hand, the best way to have these conversations calmly is if the camera is far away and the crew is small. On the other hand, it allowed me to concentrate better on my task as director. It was also important to me that the conversations take place in public spaces and that you see a lot of the surrounding space, because it is also about taking my story out of this individual fate, individual case.
BW: Very impressive.
CW: In terms of your own processing – did the film trigger a lot for you again?
DMH: Yes. When you start writing down your own memories, start shortening them and speaking them, often and again and again, then partly again in the edit and in the sound mix – of course, that’s a kind of processing which also becomes more and more technical over time, because it is reworked again and again. That did change something, but I’d say that processing trauma is something which takes a very, very long time. I couldn’t have made the film earlier. It wouldn’t have worked. This was the moment when I said, Okay, I can look at this again in all its intensity, and then that’s enough.
BW: I think it is really great that you give us insight into something subjectively and objectively incomprehensible, which is not just your subjective perspective, but also offers such an objective picture through contextualisation and diversification of the facts. In this respect, I find this film incredibly reflective and activist at the same time. It has the intellectual as well as the emotional intelligence to counter these systemic boundaries in some way. And that is a very, very powerful gesture – for you, as you can sense in the film, but also for us as viewers.
DMH: Thank you. After four years in a small room with a small film crew, it is really very nice to hear that it’s been so well received.
