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Director's Statement
I was fascinated by the idea of a son trying to save his mother's lite, trying to keep death at bay with a lie and getting more and more entangled in his lie about an East Germany that no longer exists and that he wants to make his mother continue to believe in. This is something that's universal and could be totally separated from this specific past, this whole East German story and the fall of the Wall and reunification. I was excited by the idea of combining both aspects and relating an important chapter of German history as well, or least having it as a Background. That's what's so wonderful about this topic. It's a slice of German history, but it's told incidentally and not placed in the fore-front of the story.
I wanted people to believe in Daniel Brühl's character and to believe that he does all this without having analyzed everything beforehand. And Daniel portrays this fantastically, because he is simply a very emotional actor. Not for one second do I have any doubts about him or why he does all of this for his mother. He makes it seem totally compelling that at the very moment in which he could actually be taking concrete steps toward the future - he's just fallen in love, has so many options to choose from, everything has changed, it's a wonderful summer of change - he suddenly moves in a different direction, namely backwards, to rebuild what everyone else is merrily leaving behind them. Daniel brings just the right warmth and emotional component to the role, which makes you immediately forget why he goes through all this for his mother.
When I think of Katrin Sass [who plays the Mother), I immediately think of her naturalness and the naturalness of her speech. Of the way she has of relying on very few means and never even coming close to overacting. To me, film is also always a cinema of the eyes, and her eyes are just perfect, which is something you don't encounter too often.
I would definitely not call her a hard-line socialist. I would describe her rather as a woman with a classical helper's syndrome, a type that exists in other social systems as well. There is nothing typically former East German-like here. She's a woman who takes great enjoyment in helping others, and even feels a certain obligation to do so. She simply does it. She's a woman who lives in a country without alternatives. She just can't go anywhere else.