Interview with the Director
»How did the city look compared to the image you had from the book?
Very neat. My cameraman was a little disappointed. A lot of the walls were repainted and the town didn't look as bleak as it sounded in the book. We tried to keep as close to the book as possible and find some dark corners. I was totally taken with the harbour and the clay engravings. It's a small working town.
The people of Zehdenick had to be questioned for the book for months. Didn't they get tired of being filmed and of being told what to do?
At least the band members of 5 Teeth Less liked it. I am curious how the other 13,000 inhabitants will react to the film. The guys from the band believe that there will be no booing and no fights. The guys from Zehdenick can really feel comfortable about the film. Of course there are ugly corners, there are in every small town – whether in the west or the east. But there are also nice corners, which we show in big pictures. I'm uncertain, like the people of Zehdenick who drink one schnapps after the next in the film, how they will find it on the big screen. There was a guest who can be seen in the background in all the pub scenes. I only noticed that afterwards.
Some of the protagonists used to belong to the right-wing scene. In the film they regret this, but praise the "horny parties" of that time. Did you ever think about placing such answers more prominently in the film?
No, we don't explain, we document. But I did ask them why they did those things. But my job was not investigative, I didn't want to expose the people.
Nevertheless, you did discover a few things along the way.
Yes, for example, we shot in the back room of a kiosk that Moritz von Uslar didn't know yet. A yellowed room in which a few men meet daily, smoke and have a few drinks already at 11 o'clock. That is a world of its own.
You don't only document, you recreate scenes that have already been described in the book. Why is that necessary?
Because those were strong literary scenes. For example, I've never seen people riding through the forest at 100 km/h at night and without lights, and then on the cycle path. Of course I wanted to have that in the film as well. Other things just happened. If a muscle-bound, tattooed guy is getting his eyebrows plucked at a nail studio and invites us in, then you just have to shoot that. And then he also tells us that he had tears in his eyes at his daughter's coming-of-age party.
You just shot in China. What was more exotic – Shanghai or that small Märkische town?
Zehdenick was weirder than Shanghai and also not so western. You see a great skyline, communicate in English and after a few days you fly away again. In Zehdenick we had to get used to the foreign surroundings. Shooting at one place for three months was a new experience. It was great and I miss it.«