Wakolda or The German Doctor is a very intimate story. It is the story of a teenage girl and the way she falls in love with a monster. It is the story of a hunt and of a seduction.
Lucia PuenzoIn terms of my father, if you have 4 children that work in film, then there certainly was a happy, positive influence from him because none us became an accountant.
Lucia PuenzoMuch more than trying to focus on the battlefield of the war, it was the central place that German doctors occupied within Nazism, the omnipotent and insane idea of wanting to generically modify an entire nation. This idea was not on the outskirts of Nazi ideology, it was the heart of movement, that's what intrigued me. Mengele is the most extreme expression of this idea.
Lucia PuenzoIn general, even if I'm dealing with a historical subject, I begin with invention rather than investigation, because I need to understand what is going to be the voice or the tone of the story.
Lucia PuenzoI'm completely surrounded, not only my father, but also my three brothers, and Sergio, my husband, all four of them work in film. Some are writers, or directors, or cinematographers, all of them. I'm surrounded by men that make films, so much that at some point I felt there was no more room in the family for another filmmaker.For many years I was only working as novelist or writing screenplays for others to direct.
Lucia PuenzoIn the case of my second film The Fish Child (El Niño Pez), I had written the novel about 5 years before I made into a film. In the case of The German Doctor I had published the novel a year before I started writing the script, I even had another project to shoot. But I had this idea of the powerful cinematic language from the novel that I couldn't let go of.
Lucia Puenzo