TOM GRAMENZ SWEN GIPPA A FILM BY STÉPHANE ... - prora

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
I was working on a script about two boys confronting their identities when one day I read a
newspaper article about Prora. I immediately thought it would be the perfect setting to stage
my story. Its endless dimensions allowed unusual cinematic possibilities and its massively
historic and oppressive architecture offered many symbolic perspectives. I also liked the
name “Prora”, which in Latin and Greek means the prow of a ship. It matched my desire to
tell the story of the two friends Jan and Matthieu, one German and the other French.
Despite opposite backgrounds and personalities, Jan and Matthieu gradually feel attracted
to each other until they unexpectedly have sex for the first time. But they have trouble
coming to terms with it: their physical and emotional outburst blows up their cultural
patterns, blurs their relationship and challenges their masculinity. Nonetheless, their
friendship prevails. The experience deepens their understanding of their own identities.
Whether gay or straight, Jan and Matthieu will never forget this adventure, which opens new
horizons and allows them to become men.
I see Prora’s labyrinthine structure as a third lead character in the story. A vestige of the
past, a witness of failed fascist and communist utopias, the complex reveals the tension
between the boys and provides a stark contrast with the sensuous beauty of the adjacent
Baltic Sea. A statement on the perils of normative heterosexism, Prora underscores the
poisonous inflexibility of Jan and Matthieu’s inherited social landscape.
Given the building’s extraordinary suggestive power, I also built in solitary time for both Jan
and Matthieu in and around the structure. Over the course of the film, the monstrosity
renders the boys at once more fragile, more resilient and more human. Only on the beach,
wordless and elemental, are they able to reconcile.
A journey of self-exploration, a tale of male adolescence, a parabolic confrontation between
nature and culture, Prora is a simple, tender story about love and friendship.
Stéphane Riethauser
www.prora-themovie.com