An inter­view with Linus de Paoli (direc­tor) and Anna de Paoli (pro­duc­er and Head of Pro­duc­tion Stud­ies at DFFB) by Tan­ja C. Krain­höfer

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With their col­lec­tive “Schat­tenkante” they bring dar­ing cin­e­ma from Ger­many into the world. If need be, even with­out sup­port and sta­tion help: Their new film A YOUNG MAN WITH HIGH POTENTIAL is cur­rent­ly shown in cin­e­mas. Anna and Linus de Paoli have pro­duced this fea­ture film past the usu­al struc­tures. An inter­view about genre film and inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing in Ger­many in gen­er­al.

 

Though essen­tial­ly a dra­ma  A YOUNG MAN WITH HIGH POTENTIAL is not shy when it comes to bor­row­ing Thriller- and Gore-Ele­ments. The film opened last week in Ger­man the­aters with four copies and a tour through sev­er­al cities. How did the audi­ence react to the sto­ry about the bril­liant but timid pro­tag­o­nist Piet and his prob­lem­at­ic rela­tion­ships with women?

Linus de Paoli (LdP): I was pos­i­tive­ly sur­prised by how well the film was received by the audi­ence. There are always some walk­outs at every screen­ing, which I under­stand. Our sto­ry is hard to swal­low at times. Our best expe­ri­ence was when some peo­ple who walked out came back in lat­er to see the end­ing and talk about the film any­way. That is what intrigues me most about film­mak­ing: the dis­course.

 

The fund­ing boards and TV net­works, on the oth­er hand, were not enthu­si­as­tic about the project, so you put it togeth­er as an entire­ly inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion. How do you explain that atti­tude, since Net­flix and oth­er stream­ing por­tals are chalk­ing up con­sid­er­able suc­cess, often with dark and edgy for­mats – espe­cial­ly with younger audi­ences who don’t often go to the movies?

LdP: Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the net­works and fund­ing insti­tutes are not as open-mind­ed and coura­geous as they like to think. Their sys­tems are inflex­i­ble and their under­stand­ing of what is con­sid­ered “cul­tur­al­ly wor­thy” is lim­it­ed. Our last film DER SAMURAI was reject­ed by the net­work because it didn’t match the “pub­lic taste-guide­lines”. A YOUNG MAN WITH HIGH POTENTIAL was labeled “moral­ly ques­tion­able” by the BKM. It’s sad in this coun­try that the act of show­ing some­thing is often mis­tak­en with pro­mot­ing some­thing. For me, it starts to get inter­est­ing when things get ambiva­lent. Net­flix and oth­er por­tals are not nec­es­sar­i­ly wis­er – but cer­tain­ly more open.

 

Inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion not only rep­re­sents the free­dom to tell sto­ries beyond the main­stream but also con­sti­tutes a seri­ous finan­cial risk. In addi­tion to defer­ments, spon­sor­ing, pay­ments in kind and count­less favors, you still had to come up with a cash bud­get of 160, 000 EUR. How did you go about it and what oblig­a­tions came with it?

Anna de Paoli (AdP): After try­ing out all pos­si­ble financ­ing alter­na­tives, we con­clud­ed: Every euro spent comes with cer­tain con­di­tions, no mat­ter where it comes from. Our co-pro­duc­tion with Hahn Film AG had three major advan­tages: all fund­ing came from the same source. It was imme­di­ate­ly avail­able when need­ed. And it guar­an­teed com­plete artis­tic free­dom. Our com­pe­tence was in deliv­er­ing high pro­duc­tion val­ue on a shoe­string-bud­get against cash flow. A win-win sit­u­a­tion. But it’s still true that both sides take full risk. And with­out the ded­i­ca­tion and the will­ing­ness of our team, which was only paid min­i­mum wage, the film would nev­er have been made.

 

Freddy/​Eddy pro­duc­er and direc­tor Tini Tüll­mann invest­ed 75,000 in her inde­pen­dent film and could only recoup 50% from the­atri­cal release, DVD and VoD – although it had inter­na­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion. How great are the chances that A YOUNG MAN WITH HIGH POTENTIAL will break even, or even make a prof­it?

AdP: Right now, we are still in the exploita­tion phase. Our world sales com­pa­ny Raven Ban­ner pro­vid­ed a best-case, mid-case and worst-case sce­nario. But even the lat­ter promised break-even. We are cau­tious­ly opti­mistic. The press can be very help­ful in pro­vid­ing wider pub­lic aware­ness of what we stand for. Though we are total­ly over­whelmed by the audi­ence reac­tion on our Ger­man cin­e­ma tour, we are not expect­ing it to gen­er­ate much prof­it and are hop­ing for a lucra­tive BluRay/​DVD/​VoD start. Our Ger­man dis­trib­u­tor For­got­ten Film is known for it’s taste­ful “fetish-edi­tions” with lots of extras. Nor do we share the opin­ion that phys­i­cal media is dying out. The increas­ing­ly-frag­ment­ed online mar­ket forces the con­sumer into sub­scrib­ing to mul­ti­ple stream­ing ser­vices and a nev­er-end­ing scav­enger hunt. The best way to guar­an­tee the per­ma­nent avail­abil­i­ty of your favorite film is still to buy a disc – and prob­a­bly the cheap­est too.

 

Many con­tem­po­rary Indie-direc­tors and pro­duc­ers of films like “KLAPPE COWBOY!”, “FREDDY/​EDDY” and “ÜBERALL WO WIR SIND” were unable to find a dis­trib­u­tor and end­ed up self-dis­trib­ut­ing their works. You were able to con­vince Salzge­ber and For­got­ten Film to dis­trib­ute your films – as well as Raven Ban­ner for world sales. How did this come about?

AdP: I tricked Raven Ban­ner a lit­tle in Cannes last year. They liked the film right away, but were afraid that it might scare buy­ers off. So, I turned the tables on them and told them to “go where the fear is”. As a com­pa­ny spe­cial­iz­ing in hor­ror and sus­pense, they couldn’t argue with that – and it was a con­vinc­ing argu­ment for sell­ing the film to the USA, Cana­da and Great Britain, where its top­ics are espe­cial­ly con­tro­ver­sial right now. For­got­ten Film shares our pas­sion for cer­tain films and fes­ti­vals like the “Terza Visione”. That cre­at­ed trust right from the start. It’s a spe­cial hon­or in itself when cinephiles decide to invest in your project. By the way, our first fea­ture film “DR. KETEL” was released with the sup­port of the “Moviemen­to” cin­e­ma in Berlin. They ran the film for months and helped pro­mote it nation­wide, mak­ing it eas­i­er for us to orga­nize a Ger­man cin­e­ma tour our­selves. It was then that we dis­cov­ered the incred­i­ble val­ue of hav­ing con­tact to pas­sion­ate cin­e­ma cura­tors /​ oper­a­tors. They know their audi­ence real­ly well. We wouldn’t want to have missed the expe­ri­ence of this the­atri­cal, par­tial-self-dis­tri­b­u­tion.

 

Your sto­ry takes place at a pan-Euro­pean elite cam­pus, where dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties come togeth­er and com­mu­ni­cate in Eng­lish. So, you could cast actors from sev­er­al coun­tries. What role did mar­ket­ing strate­gies play in that deci­sion?

LdP: None. But the lan­guage gave us an advan­tage in sell­ing the film to Eng­lish speak­ing ter­ri­to­ries. The deci­sion is pure­ly con­tent-relat­ed. In our present world, Eng­lish has become a uni­ver­sal lan­guage – espe­cial­ly online. So, I want­ed to take the idea one step fur­ther: The Euro­pean Union has merged into one giant coun­try. All that remains of the for­mer nation­al­i­ties is dif­fer­ent accents. I have an ambiva­lent point of view towards that, too. On one hand, a fan­tas­tic utopia, to which we’ve nev­er been clos­er his­tor­i­cal­ly. One the oth­er, what­ev­er great advan­tages and pos­si­bil­i­ties this open­ing has, it won’t pro­tect indi­vid­u­als from iso­la­tion. And even this world seems to have pret­ty tough exter­nal bor­ders.

 

After its world pre­miere at the Munich Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val last sum­mer, the film had an exten­sive, inter­na­tion­al fes­ti­val run. Did you fol­low a fes­ti­val strat­e­gy that was also part of a recoup­ment con­cept? For exam­ple. through screen­ing fees or prize mon­ey?

AdP: With fes­ti­vals we fol­low a strat­e­gy, yes. But it’s a cal­cu­la­tion with sev­er­al unknowns. The fact that we won a Ger­man Cin­e­ma New Tal­ent Award in Munich cre­at­ed great ener­gy and pre­vent­ed the film from being labeled as “dirty”. Hope­ful­ly, our ultra-sen­si­tive insti­tu­tions will begin to under­stand, that a film may raise moral ques­tions and chal­lenge pub­lic dis­course. But back to your ques­tion. Yes, screen­ing fees can con­tribute towards recoup­ment of distributor’s and sales agent’s invest­ment – and in the long run even pay off for us, because we nego­ti­at­ed a cor­ri­dor for the pro­duc­ers. We are well-con­nect­ed to the fan­ta­sy film fes­ti­val cir­cuit. A rather friend­ly and pas­sion­ate part of the scene and mar­ket, with close ties and bet­ter chances of mak­ing fair deals on an equal foot­ing – at least from our expe­ri­ence. Hope­ful­ly, the rest of the indus­try will soon real­ize that exploit­ing cre­atives has got to stop.

 

At the last edi­tion of Munch­n­er Medi­en­tag, Simon Amberg­er and Kobin­ian Dufter of Neue­su­per described the big play­ers, Ama­zon, Net­flix & co. as an unbe­liev­able chance. Although more than 90 per­cent of all pro­duc­tions are still ini­ti­at­ed with­out VOD-plat­forms, their enor­mous influ­ence on esthet­ics and sto­ry­telling is evi­dent. And they offer the young gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers a chance to par­tic­i­pate in shap­ing the cin­e­mat­ic world. Do you share that per­cep­tion?

LdP: Yes and no. I see stream­ing ser­vices just as ambiva­lent as tele­vi­sion. They are pri­mar­i­ly just anoth­er form for pre­sent­ing audio­vi­su­al prod­ucts. For ser­i­al for­mats, it seems to be ide­al, because con­sumers can get exact­ly what they want, when they want and as much of it as they want. This offers incred­i­ble chances, because the demand is high. And plat­forms like Net­flix can also become enablers for dar­ing fea­ture films. Roma is an inter­est­ing exam­ple. But they can nev­er replace, and should nev­er be mis­tak­en for, the expe­ri­ence of going to a real cin­e­ma. Time will tell how their influ­ence on esthet­ics and sto­ry­telling will change in the long run.

AdP: Not all that glit­ters is gold – also for a pro­duc­er. Stream­ing ser­vices have high expec­ta­tions of pro­duc­tion val­ue for often com­par­a­tive­ly low bud­gets with immense con­trol­ling expens­es. Cre­atives are exclu­sive­ly bound to projects for long peri­ods of time and have to work very hard on their own projects – or as guns for hire. New chances for artis­tic free­dom can only arise, when we stop chas­ing after gold all the time. We also have to strength­en inde­pen­dent, sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion struc­tures.

 

In the past, a lot of inde­pen­dent films were able to prof­it from the new play­ers through Amazon’s Fes­ti­val Stars pro­gram and Net­flix’ inter­est in Berlin-based films. Do you think this will cre­ate promis­ing options in the long run – also con­sid­er­ing the grow­ing hunger for con­tent of such oth­er plat­forms as Mag­ne­ta or Max­dome?

LdP: I can only spec­u­late. I guess com­pe­ti­tion among the big play­ers will increase and ulti­mate­ly start a con­tent war. Spe­cial-inter­est con­tent and niche films might become a cru­cial fac­tor when it comes to con­sumers decid­ing which sub­scrip­tions, they are will­ing to pay for. But maybe not. I could also imag­ine that self-pub­lish­ing/dis­tri­b­u­tion will become more pop­u­lar and offer a lucra­tive way around the typ­i­cal exploita­tion chains. Espe­cial­ly among inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers, I can sense grow­ing frus­tra­tion with the non-trans­par­ent and waste­ful way dis­trib­u­tors and sales com­pa­nies often oper­ate. Many believe that they could do a bet­ter job in pro­mot­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing their films than the estab­lished com­pa­nies, which also seem to lag behind the Zeit­geist.

 

In addi­tion to film school grad­u­a­tion projects, there seem to be ever more inde­pen­dent films being made in Ger­many. Do you think that there is a Ger­man indie-scene emerg­ing that is estab­lish­ing itself sep­a­rate­ly from the exist­ing film indus­try?

LdP:  Even with all the prob­lems and com­plaints we have, it is still a lot eas­i­er and cheap­er to get a film project going than in the days of cel­lu­loid. And that is a great thing. Nonethe­less, inde­pen­dent film pro­duc­tion is self-exploita­tion and very risky. You can do it for a few projects, but you need a lot of endurance and at some point, mon­ey to estab­lish your­self. Pri­vate investors or stream­ing ser­vices could be help­ful for projects with appeal beyond the Ger­man mar­ket. But right now, the Ger­man indie-film is nei­ther strik­ing nor com­pelling enough. I’m doing my best!

 

The wish for more film cul­ture and diver­si­ty is also one of the key demands of sev­er­al move­ments like the “Frank­furt Posi­tions Towards the Future of Ger­man Cin­e­ma”, or the recent­ly found­ed “Main Asso­ci­a­tion Cinephil­ia”. In your opin­ion, what mea­sures would be nec­es­sary to reach that goal?

AdP: It is most impor­tant that the wish for change over­comes the fear of change. Fort two years, we have par­tic­i­pat­ed and wit­nessed pas­sion­ate dis­cus­sions, where every­body in the room was on the same page until a “high­er author­i­ty” inter­vened – be it one’s own asso­ci­a­tion, a network’s com­mis­sion of edi­tors, or oth­er anx­ious col­leagues. Wor­ried about their pro­fes­sion­al exis­tence, many film­mak­ers retreat­ed from their posi­tions. But stick­ing our heads in the sand is no option. Die “Frank­furt Posi­tions” give spe­cif­ic ideas about pos­si­ble mea­sures. ” With this, every­thing is said! “ was Jea­nine Meerapfel’s (pres­i­dent of the Acad­e­my of Arts) sum­mery at the pan­el “Cul­tur­al Film Fund­ing Now!” on 5^th Feb­ru­ary, 2019. One year after the “Frank­furt Posi­tions” were pub­lished, it is a major goal to plan defin­i­tive steps. We’re work­ing on it at this year‘s edi­tion of Lichter Film­fest, but also on the first con­fer­ence of the “Main Asso­ci­a­tion Cinephil­ia” along­side “Pro Quo­ta Film”, many fes­ti­val pro­gram­mers and oth­er allies. We should know more after East­er.

 

Indie-pro­duc­tions often have a hard time when it comes to exploita­tion. What pos­si­ble options do you see to sup­port small­er pro­duc­tions?

AdP: That’s a big field. The sep­a­ra­tion of pro­duc­tion fund­ing from dis­tri­b­u­tion fund­ing is anoth­er demand in the “Frank­furt Posi­tions”. The com­plex­i­ty of the admin­is­tra­tion involved in han­dling fund­ing also needs to be revis­it­ed and sim­pli­fied. Oth­er­wise indie-pro­duc­tions are not able to han­dle it. Anoth­er prob­lem: The tra­di­tion­al exploita­tion win­dows require cost-inten­sive mar­ket­ing. Judg­ing from the behav­ior of our own con­sumers, we believe that films would prof­it from imme­di­ate avail­abil­i­ty in all pos­si­ble forms. Here, we agree with Net­flix. Word-of-mouth rec­om­men­da­tion could cre­ate a big­ger buzz – and even draw peo­ple into the cin­e­mas. There is a lot of poten­tial in syn­er­gy effects that has not so far been used so far and that could pos­si­bly inspire and boost cin­e­ma atten­dance. What else? Fes­ti­vals that take action and present small­er films in their own DVD/​VOD edi­tions. Pre­sent­ing a film at a mar­ket should be eas­i­er and cheap­er. We con­stant­ly main­tain a world­wide net­work of film­mak­ers and con­duct con­tin­u­ous exchange on our expe­ri­ences. Mean­while, we’ve gath­ered some exper­tise on dis­tri­b­u­tion and can help each oth­er out. Togeth­er we are strong.

 

You are cou­ple and soon expect­ing your third child. Could you tell me your secret on how to feed a kid from defer­rals?

LdP: Well, you don’t. We both have oth­er jobs that pay the rent and give us some secu­ri­ty, so that every oth­er year we can “afford” to real­ize a project. Anna works for the Ger­man film- and tele­vi­sion Acad­e­my (DFFB) as head of pro­duc­tion stud­ies. I’m a free­lance com­pos­er and part of the selec­tion com­mit­tee of the Per­spec­tive Ger­man Cin­e­ma sec­tion at the Berli­nale. Our friends in the indie-scene call us “bou­tique” film­mak­ers. I con­sid­er that a com­pli­ment. If we put the cam­era on the tri­pod, it’s only out of an urge to cre­ate some­thing spe­cial. To quote Anna: There is enough audio­vi­su­al crap in the world. We don’t need to con­tribute to the pile.

 

Do you con­sid­er your­self a direc­tor-pro­duc­er-duo?

AdP: Absolute­ly. We met at film school (also DFFB) where Linus stud­ied direct­ing and I stud­ied pro­duc­tion. We’ve been work­ing togeth­er since 2005 as the col­lec­tive Schat­tenkante, which then became our pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny. A YOUNG MAN WITH HIGH POTENTIAL is our third fea­ture and Linus’ sec­ond fea­ture-length work as a direc­tor.

 

What’s next for you? Are you already plan­ning a new project?

LdP: As I men­tioned ear­li­er, our next child is due in May. That’s a project alright. But I am also devel­op­ing two projects on the side. One of the is a hor­ror-film with the work­ing title Kruste(Crust). The oth­er, a los­er-bal­lade in the form of a com­e­dy, called Florow.

AdP: We’ve invest­ed the prize mon­ey from Munich for an ini­tia­tive called “Film macht Schule” (lit­er­al­ly: film makes school). Film­mak­ers, pre­dom­i­nant­ly female, meet with stu­dents in work­shops and are free to cre­ate con­cepts. It’s all about encoun­ters to help light a spark of cinephil­ia to ignite some­thing in the new gen­er­a­tion.