28/09/2023 - We talked with the German director about her inspiration for and her artistic approach to her dystopian feature debut

(© Locarno Film Festival)

German director Katharina Huber presented her debut feature, A Good Place [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Katharina Huber
film profile], in the Cineasti del presente section at this year's Locarno Film Festival. The director graduated from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and the film was funded by the regional film institute of North-Rhine Westphalia. We spoke to her about her inspiration and her artistic approach.

Cineuropa: How did work on the film begin?  
Katharina Huber: The first idea came to me many years ago. I was at the Royal College of Art in London, where I did my masters in animation. The structures there influenced me. I often had the feeling that everyone agreed on many things that felt wrong, not only to me, but still no one fought back. I felt this mood on a small scale as well as on a larger scale. In addition, all the revolutionary events about Maidan took place, and I followed them on the radio. This atmosphere of revolt influenced me. It was in this context that I began to plan my graduation film. I had this idea of setting it in a village quite early on. I also had the character of Margarita. Then I left the project for a few years. After I returned to Germany, I took it up again. I knew I didn't want to do animation. I wrote the script very intuitively.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did the pandemic influence you?
I don't like to get too close to day-to-day events. When the pandemic started, I was annoyed. I thought, now the story is becoming far too concrete. In the script, the subject of illness and getting sick was originally way more important. I then toned that down. Some might have said that our film was visionary, but few people knew that I had written it beforehand.

An important motif in the film are the chickens. What do they symbolise for you? 
At first, they were more closely associated with the theme of illness. But basically, I needed a symbol for the feeling that something was wrong. I wanted it to be food, but not an apple, for example — an animal. A chicken was more manageable than a cow, for example. It also fit well in the village world. That being said, I think chickens are kind of weird. You never know if you like them, if you think they're stupid or not, or if they're cute after all. As a symbol, they were very concrete. They are everyday foods. They also relate to the problem of abusive animal husbandry. In a village where chickens have been bred for generations and perhaps overbred, this can no longer be healthy. This can also be applied to the ideas and habits of men. Even if you always do something the same way out of tradition, it may not be good at some point.

How did you find the place where you shot?
I had an idea of what the location should look like and drove around with it, looking for possible locations. We shot in the Eifel region, near Cologne. It's a rural area, and I was surprised to find that there are still so many small villages where people sometimes spend their whole lives without really knowing the town. Still, it was hard to find a place that seemed authentic and not dominated by modern infrastructure. I was looking for a place with a timeless look.

You use a very consistent visual language, especially when it comes to the colour scheme. How did you develop the visual concept? 
From the beginning, we had determined that the image would be static. That allowed us to give the actors and actresses their space. We shot with two cameras at the same time. On the one hand, we tried to plan shots in advance as much as possible, but these conditions also gave the images a certain spontaneity. Sometimes, for example, the image is cut off a bit unusually because of this. We played with that combination. It was important to me that the film should not look too picturesque or too pretty. That was especially important with the images of nature. Our goal was for the image to appear cool and rusty. It should reflect a certain gloominess. I wanted to create an old-fashioned world that belongs to the past. This had to be shown through this muddy and dusty image.

How did the soundtrack to the film come about?
I wanted to respond to the place, to observe, and to draw from reality. During the shoot, it was spring, and the birds were very present with their singing. I thought that was great, and we specifically recorded birdsong to enrich the score with it. When creating the score, it was important to me to create a certain mood. I wanted the film as a whole to be a sensory experience, so that the image and sound were like a river that let you float along. I also wanted to bring in sounds that don't necessarily come from the moment or from reality. The sound should give additional information. In this respect, it was also very obvious to insert the element of radio. For me, radio is also a kind of "radicalisation medium.” It's a rudimentary opening to a certain kind of information that can also influence and manipulate you. And so the characters in the film are hearing these voices in the background all the time. All these messages and fragments are doing something to them, perhaps giving them confirmation or prompting them to make certain resolutions or take certain actions. 

In collaboration with