Berlin Legend Andreas Dresen: The Versatile German Arthouse Master on Nazis, the Stasi and Currywurst

Andreas Dresen‘s favorite Berlinale memory, as you’ d anticipate, entails Currywurst.

“I was on the jury one year, And it was clear I was the local guy among all these big names,” he remembers.“Now the festival had a vegan menu already then, and at the awards dinner, we had great food but they were quite small portions and [jury president] Wong Kar Wai turns to me and says ‘Andreas, can’t we get some real food?’ So I took them all, Susanne Bier, Shirin Neshat, Tim Robbins, everyone in tuxes and evening gowns, to [legendary Berlin snack bar] Curry 36 for a Currywurst. Even Tim Robbins, who actually is vegetarian, tucked in. I personally saw him gobble up three Currywursts. It was the most Berlin moment ever.”

Dresen has actually had a couple of. The 60-year-old supervisor has actually been a routine at Germany’s leading movie celebration given that 1991 when his trainee movie So schnell es geht nach Istanbul premiered in the fest’s Discussion forum area. There he fulfilled Wolfgang Pfeiffer, that generated his attribute launching, Quiet Nation. His follow-up, Evening Shapes, remained in the Berlin competitors in 1999 and won the Silver Bear for finest star for celebrity Michael Gwisdek. Ever since, he’s had 4 even more movies in competitors– including this year’s Golden Bear competitor From Hilde, With Love– in addition to screening docudramas in View and offering on several courts.

“The Berlinale’s a bit like my second living room,” claims Dresen. “I really know the festival inside out, from every possible perspective.”

Currywurst with Tim and Wong apart, an outright Berlinale emphasize for Dresen can be found in 2002 when Grill Factor won the Grand Court reward. The low-budget dramedy regarding 2 pairs residing in a tiny city on the Polish boundary was totally improvisated.

“It was a very special story because Grill Point was ridiculously low-budget, almost an experimental movie,” claims Dresen.“We didn’t expect it to come out at all, let alone go to the Berlinale. Then we got into competition and the premiere was one of the most impressive I’ve ever seen. It was on Tuesday afternoon, I think, and the room literally exploded. At the awards ceremony, when we won, I brought the entire team on stage – all the actors and the entire crew – and we were 12 people total.”

Dresen, that never ever utilizes the “a film by” credit score in his motion pictures– “I hate that formulation because a film is made by a team,” he claims– made an exemption with Grill Factor, providing everybody’s name, from brings about grasps, associated with the image.

The German supervisor’s job typically oscillates in between semi-improvised, near-documentary-style dramatization, like Grill Factor, Cloud 9, and Quit on Track– the later on both Cannes premieres, winning the court reward and finest movie, specifically, in Un Particular Respect in 2008 and 2011– and extra tightly-scripted price from his normal partnerships, the late Wolfgang Kohlhaase (that penciled Summer season in Berlin, Scotch With Vodka and 2015 Berlinale competitors entrance As We Were Fantasizing) and Laila Stieler, film writer on 2005 criminal activity thriller Willenbrock, 2018 duration dramatization Gundermann regarding Gerhard Gundermann, East Germany’s response to Bob Dylan, and Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Shrub, which won the Berlinale Silver Bear in 2022 for celebrity Meltem Kaptan as the titular Turkish homemaker that takes on the united state federal government to release her boy from his unlawful jail time in Guantanamo Bay.

Stieler additionally created the movie script for Dresen’s newest, From Hilde, With Love, which includes Babylon Berlin celebrity Liv Lisa French fries in the real-life story of Hilde Coppi, a left-wing resistance boxer that was implemented by the Nazis in 1943.

However Dresen fasts to keep in mind that his scripted movies additionally include a great deal of improvisation– “for the big scene with Hilde on death row when she dictates her farewell letter, I gave Liv Lisa Fries complete freedom in how she wanted to do it, we shot the scene all day, and each take was 10-12 minutes long, her doing different things every time,” he keeps in mind. Also his near-documentary motion pictures have actually meticulously organized minutes. In Grill Factor, there’s a repeating joke where downtrodden lead character Uwe (Axel Prahl) maintains coming across a team of buskers, that show up to increase with each experience. (The buskers, played by German people set 17 Hippies, in fact exceeded the movie’s whole team.)

Birthed and elevated in Eastern Germany, and a filmmaker that has actually constantly made his working-class and left-wing partnerships a factor of satisfaction, Dresen is frequently contrasted to British social rationalist legend Ken Loach. While there are resemblances– “I’m a total fan of Loach, how he tells stories of so-called ordinary people with such humor and heart, while remaining political,” he claims– branding Dresen “the German Ken Loach” would certainly be unjust and reductive. Loach has yet to make a clearly sexual dramedy regarding an elderly person experiencing the 30-year-itch (as Dresen made with Cloud 9) or a children’ movie based on a German fairy tale (Dresen 2017’s The Legend of Timm Thaler or The Child That Offered His Giggling).

“I always want to try something different, something I haven’t done before,” claims Dresen.“After the success of Grill Point, everyone wanted Grill Point 2, the same sort of thing, but I hate repeating myself. So my next film was a documentary about a German politician (2003’s Vote for Henryk!) then a crime thriller (2005’s Willenbrock).”

He will certainly be adhering to up From Hilde, With Love, an effective, if typically painful tale of love and resistance from the darkest duration of German background, with Auguste, the Xmas Goose, a remake of an East German vacation standard from 1988.

“After Hilde, it felt right to do a nice family film again,” he confesses.

The supervisor’s convenience has actually made him difficult to pigeonhole, a lot less market, as an arthouse “brand” along the lines of Loach or Aki Kaurismäki (one more of Dresden’s faves).

His movies differ extensively in state of mind and design– from the sandy kitchen-sink realistic look of Grill Factor and Quit on Track, the tale of a male passing away of mind cancer cells– to duration movies Hilde and Gundermann– the last checks out just how the German Autonomous Republic’s secret cops solution, the Stasi, penetrated every element of its people lives, also the most intimate– to the Erin Brockovich-esque docu-drama of Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Shrub.

The background of East Germany typically plays a main function in Dresden’s motion pictures, however he prevents both the “Ostalgie” (East Fond memories) of movies like Wolfgang Becker’s Bye-bye Lenin, “which paints East Germany as a kooky place with funny cars and odd objects,” he kept in mind, in a meeting with Detects of Movie theater in 2009, or the “Hollywood fairy tale” of threatening Stasi representatives in black layers as seen in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others. “I’m not saying these are bad films but for me, they have relatively little to do with the GDR or GDR history… most Stasi agents had families; they lived perfectly normal, ordinary lives, having BBQs on the weekends with friends in their dachas, and on Monday they went back to the office and denounced people.” (Both Becker and von Donnersmarck are “Wessies,” German for individuals from West Germany).

From Hilde, With Love is additionally an extremely within take a look at Eastern German background. Though hardly recognized in the West, Hilde Coppi was a famous number in East Germany, among the “absolute superheroes” of the Communist resistance, branded the “Red Chapel” by the Nazi Gestapo. Along with her spouse Hans and a tiny team of mainly socialist and communist-leaning protestors, they attempted to respond to Nazi publicity with anti-fascist leaflets, private objections, and pirate radio programs, consisting of sending messages, from Radio Moscow, of German battle detainees to their households back home. (Hitler’s publicity asserted the Soviets took no detainees, however fired every soldier on view.)

“They were put on such a pedestal in the East, made to seem so brave, so incredibly strong, which I think had a very political intention behind it,” claims Dresen.“Because when you have people so great, so superhuman, you can’t ever imagine yourself rising to their level, to be that brave. You can’t imagine yourself fighting the system the way they did. But what I found interesting about the real Hilde Coppi, is that she wasn’t a superhero. She’d never even have claimed to be a resistance fighter. She was just someone who followed her heart and did what she thought was right.”

The tale of From Hilde, With Love is hence an extra average, and extra moving and effective story of human modesty.

Dresen cross-cuts the representation of Hilde’s apprehension, jail time– she brought to life her boy while in a Gestapo prison– and ultimate beheading by the Nazis, with Hilde and Hans’ partnership, the very first summer season they fulfilled and dropped in love.

“And had sex!” Dresen laughes.“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed watching films about resistance fighters, but apparently, they never had sex. I guess between all that pamphleting and being heroic and fighting Fascism and all, they just didn’t have time.”

By stabilizing the light of Hilde Coppi’s life with the darkness of its end, Dresen discovers hope and mankind in the middle of the scary. There are no beasts below– also Hilde’s Nazi guards treat her kindly and grumble regarding the oppression of her test– just problematic average individuals, some braver than others.

“There are some pure assholes in the world, but I rarely put them in my movies,” claims Dresen.“I try to find the good in everyone.”

Simply put: there’s no person Andreas Dresen would not share a Currywurst with.