Quarterly 2 · 2008 - German Films

“via a Dutch diplomat who smuggled my application over. I got accept
ed the day I got out of the GDR!”
Her dream of directing neither gone nor forgotten, Enders met the
now deceased producer, Rudi Kaufmann, who was making the film
Kinderspiele with Wolfgang Becker and for whom “I was Best Girl –
girl for everything! Afterwards, I decided to stay close to directors to
learn by doing, hence script continuity. I did that for ten years.”
Getting into the dffb finally gave her the chance to study what she
really wanted.
“I’d already written scripts,” Enders explains, “and applied to other
schools, but it was very hard with my personality! I still don’t know
what the problem is! Babelsberg felt I was too objective and not emotional
enough. Then I met someone who’d been there, he read my
documents and advised me to reapply. I got accepted there and also
at the dffb. I went with the dffb because I felt the course was more
practical, given where I was in terms of experience and knowledge.”
Enders then did “the obligatory shorts” and worked, as well, on a special
project for regional broadcaster RBB. “It was a series of student
films called Boomtown Berlin and I wrote about a girl, Kroko. I got the
story about girls and girl gangs from the lighting guy, Lars Paetow.
Afterwards, I was given the opportunity to turn it into a feature and
Lars stayed very close to the project, advising, assisting with the
casting, keeping me credible. I also had Franziska Juenger reprise the
role of Kroko.”
The film, the attention and awards it garnered, acted as Enders’ foundation.
She then made Hab mich Lieb! for her graduation film.
“It’s about fighting for status inside a friendship,” Enders explains. “It’s
based on the basic idea of Waiting for Godot and Franziska had the
main role again.”
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to actually receive a film
award? When Enders won the German Film Award for Kroko she
was “heavily pregnant, and desperate for food! I heard the announcement,
Artiste, and thought ’Hey! There aren’t any others! I’m the only
one!’ I was more worried about my skirt sitting properly and my
mother asking why I wasn’t dressed better!”
She then tells how Kroko was shown in a school and, afterwards,
the teacher told her that children who rarely uttered a word had been
the ones doing the most asking and talking. “That hour,” says Enders,
“made the film worth it for me.”
Three years on and she’s now a mother, Enders made Mondkalb
(2007) and, for the first time is stumped by one of my questions:
what’s it about? Unwilling to be nailed down, still wrestling with the
themes of her own creation, she talks of relationships to violence,
against oneself, others and children, and that “I needed 100 minutes
to tell a very complex story.”
Now working on up to five projects, she’s keen to push Kokon,
“about a woman who helped someone to die. And Ein hauch
von … which is about a 40-year-old family father who fights for his
self-respect after his mother dies, has a crisis and is unemployed.”
While we might have to wait a bit for Enders to make her first comedy,
she is, in reality, a very funny woman. “I like lively, vital films with
a pinch of humor,” she admits. “I like films that tell the story with a
light touch.” Inspired by American films from the 1960s and 70s, she
reels off the names of Cassavetes, Penn, Schlesinger, Forman and
Bogdanovich, then adds Danish director Susanne Bier, who made
Open Hearts and Brothers: “I like the mixture of very interesting
figures, contradictory figures, unsentimentally told but still very emotional.”
Not a great watcher of TV, Enders prefers to let zapping be her program
guide! “Discovery is fun,” she says. “It has something magical
about it. The films you need come to you at the right time, just like
the stories sometimes do! By that I mean mostly documentaries. I find
they’ve become almost essential. I think actors should be made to
watch them to see how people express their feelings in reality.
Genuine, deep feelings flash for a millisecond. I find that very interesting.”
When casting, Enders looks “for someone who can listen and wants
to. Someone who doesn’t know they know a lot: they need to be
curious. They should listen because they have to act as if they don’t
know much just yet. And they mustn’t take themselves too seriously.”
Her hobbies include reading, “novels from all centuries, anything I can
get my hands on!” Again, she lets serendipity do the work: “I trust
things to come to me! I don’t go into bookshops: my friends’ libraries
are my source!”
Enders is, above all, grounded. “Filmmaking is a privilege,” she readily
admits. “It should be used to try things out and also to keep making
mistakes because they’re the best thing that can happen to you!
Wanting to direct has something childish about it. Building sandcastles
again, a second world. You can conjure more out of the first one or
de-magic it entirely!” And then she trots out one of her own contradictions:
“I would also love to make a Tatort!”
Sylke Enders spoke with Simon Kingsley
german films quarterly director’s portrait
2 · 2008 15