Film is simply the most complex way you can express yourself

Usually, when making a film, the surprises are negative surprises. You don't get what you wanted or what you hoped for. The only nice surprises are those that are offered to you by actors when they offer you these gifts, when they are better and give you more than what you had originally conceived. That doesn't happen every day on set, but if it happens a couple of times in the course of making a film, you can consider yourself very lucky.

It's more enjoyable to shoot in a studio on a single location with two actors... if they are good.

In German. I'm more sensitized to the details, to the emotions. In English, I wouldn't detect as much nuance.

As a private person, professionally I am invisible.

In terms of cinema and filmmaking, there are certainly the unexpected gifts that the actors bestow on you. Film is always a question of compromises with respect to what you originally intended.

Of course there are many films about the period of Fascism itself but I don't know of any about that period beforehand. But it wasn't that specific fact that they weren't there that got me to think about this in the first place. It's not what led to the basic idea for the film, although it became apparent when I began to think about it.