Variety spotlights rising talent across the Continent, from breakthrough actors to directors and writers with films at Berlin, Park City and beyond. The 10 will be feted at a reception on Feb. 13 hosted by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg at the Berlin Intl. Film Festival.
Joel Basman
At the age of 26, Zurich-born actor Basman already has an enviable clutch of European trophies (including a German Film Award) and nominations to his name, not to mention a role in George Clooney’s 2014 “The Monuments Men.” Such a high level of achievement suggests a serious career plan, but Basman believes otherwise. “It all started when I was 13,” he says. “I was just interested in movies and acting, but I had no idea how to get into the business. So I told all my neighbors and friends that I was looking for work, and a neighbor told me about a casting she’d read about in a newspaper. It didn’t work out, but they took me for another part, and, step by step, I fell into it.”
After a stint on a TV series, Basman made a series of movies in his native Switzerland before being named one of European Film Promotion’s Shooting Stars at age 18. “I played a lot of street kids,” he laughs, “handbag-stealing boys, but I also played a few guys with disabilities: I played a guy who was autistic in the movie ‘Jimmie’ in 2007, and in ‘Keep Rollin’’ I played a guy in a wheelchair who robs a gas station. But after a while it changed into the mean guys, like the junkies that take the good girl into the bad, dark world of drugs. And a lot of Nazis, I have to say. My father’s from Israel, but I’ve played more Nazis than Jews.”
Fluent in Hebrew, Swiss-German, German, French and English, Basman moved to Berlin after his Shooting Stars win, where his fortunes picked up in 2014 with “We Are Young, We Are Strong,” the true story of an urban riot in East Germany. He recently completed Christian Schwochow’s “Paula,” in which he plays poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Right now, though, he’s waiting for the next role. Would he consider directing?
“Well, I’m very interested in working behind the camera, but for now I don’t have the strategy to get there,” he says. “It’s in my head, but for the time being I’m staying out in front.”
Mea Dols de Jong
Life could have turned out very differently for de Jong. The daughter of Dutch director Ate de Jong, she began acting at a very young age, before landing a recurring role in popular TV series “Gooische Vrouwen,” the ongoing story of four women living in an upmarket part of the Netherlands. De Jong continued acting though her college years, when she studied philosophy with a minor in physics. “It helped me a lot in my analytical power,” she recalls. “But it was always my intention to tell stories.”
Which explains why it wasn’t long before de Jong decided to follow in her father’s footsteps. “While working as an actress, I always looked at the director with great respect,” she says. “I started making my own films while I was still in high school. I borrowed my father’s old camera and filmed my own stories, using everything I had at hand. It was one of the films that I made in this period that got me in to the Netherlands Film Academy (NFA).”
As a part of her course, de Jong studied documentary filmmaking. “It intrigued me immediately,” she says. “In documentary you have to find the storytelling in real life, and that is fascinating.”
De Jong caused a stir on the festival circuit with her first documentary short, “If Mama Ain’t Happy, Nobody’s Happy” (2014), which just won the jusry award for doc short at Slamdance (and that comes with an automatic bid for the 2017 Academy Awards). The film took de Jong around the globe. “It was also great to see how my story turned out to be such a universal story,” she notes. “Whether it’s Japan, South America or Russia, people come to me after the show to tell me how much they are touched and how they recognize parts of the film in their own lives.”
With several projects in the pipeline, de Jong hopes her next film will be feature-length. “I want to tell stories that touch people,” she says.
Omer Fast
“Within art, there’s lots of freedom to make whatever you like,” says Fast. “Curators won’t bother you during development and they certainly won’t watch any rushes. It’s like a fairy tale: They give money and disappear.”
An artist primarily known for his video and installation work — notably the 2003 piece “Spielberg’s List,” which explores the way Hollywood storytelling affects our grasp of historical fact — Fast recently followed the example of “12 Years a Slave Director” Steve McQueen in making his feature film debut with “Remainder,” an adaptation of Tom McCarthy’s novel, in which a brain-damaged man tries to piece together the gaps in his memory.
Born in Jerusalem in 1972, Fast’s fascination for the moving image developed after a brief dalliance with more traditional art forms. “I was accepted to graduate school as a painter, but my paintings were horrible, messy affairs that involved a lot of text and (painted) body parts. Frankly, they made me miserable, they made my teachers wince and not even my parents wanted them. So I stopped painting and tried sculpture, installation, photography and then bought a high-8 video camera and fell in love.”
In his video work, Fast frequently explores the relationship between reality and imagination, an interest he ascribes to his Israeli roots. “Reality stopped existing for me as a stable, singular thing while moving several times between Jerusalem and New York as a child,” he says. “Growing up between two languages and cultures, I realized that much of what constitutes personal and collective identity involves performing. I’m therefore not really as fascinated by images as I am by performance.”
A word often used to describe Fast’s work is “hybrid,” a label that, although restricting, he can understand. “In my short movies, I often combine different modes of storytelling and jump between perspectives and timelines. To me this makes perfect sense, especially since my relationship to the subjects I choose is often ambivalent. I am reluctant to characterize my work but I guess hybrids are funny, awkward things that are neither here nor there. They can be absurd or magical. The sphinx is a hybrid. I like hybrids.”
Now based in Berlin, Fast recently finished his second feature film, “Continuity,” which will premier in the Forum section at this year’s Berlinale alongside “Remainder” in Panorama.
Roman Kolinka
For actor Roman Kolinka, show business runs in the family: his father is French rock star Richard Kolinka, drummer with Parisian proto-punk rock band Telephone, his mother is actress Marie Trintignant, herself the daughter of industry legends Jean-Louis and Nadine. Following in the Trintignants’ footsteps, therefore, wasn’t entirely unexpected. “I guess growing up surrounded by cinema, it felt like a natural thing do,” he says. “So I studied theater at the school of Claude Mathieu in Paris and then after that I worked as an assistant director for a few years on various different film projects.”
Indeed, film was primarily to be his calling. “I grew up watching movies by the Coen brothers and Martin Scorsese,” Kolinka says. He says French cinema continues to endure as a vital cinematic force, citing the works Arnaud Desplechin, Jacques Audiard and Bertrand Tavernier as proof.
His own career began very quietly, with one of his more notable early roles in the 2004 TV miniseries “Colette, une femme libre,” which was written for him by his grandmother Nadine, who also directed. Such a soft launch gives the actor cause to be modest about his progress so far. “I don’t really have a career as an actor as of yet, it’s only just beginning for me and I hope that it lasts, so I can continue to do what I love.”
After a role in Olivier Assayas’ “Something in the Air,” a freewheeling, autobiographical account of the director’s involvement in France’s post-May ’68 counterculture, Kolinka recently reaffirmed his promise with another story from the underground — the French electro and house music scene of the early ’90s, as documented in Mia Hansen-Love’s nostalgic rave drama “Eden.” “Mia knows what she wants and is very specific in her writing and directing,” says Kolinka, “but she’s good at listening to any ideas you might have about a character or situation.”
Kolinka, who turns 30 in September, is circumspect about what the future holds (“I’d rather not talk about projects until the shooting has started”), but he was recently reunited with Hansen-Love for her 2016 Berlinale entry “Things to Come,” which premieres in competition and features Isabelle Huppert as a philosophy teacher dealing with divorce.
“I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll see it for the first time in Berlin,” he says. “Working with Isabelle was a wonderful experience, though.”
A sensitive and modest actor — “I find it very hard to watch myself back in films,” he says. “I have the impression, always, that I could be better” — Kolinka hesitates when asks what he looks for in a role. “It’s difficult to answer that question, I’m not overwhelmed with propositions, so for the moment I’m lucky that Mia has confidence in me as an actor. And she keeps proposing me wonderful roles!”
But aside from that, does he have any ambitions? He laughs. “To continue to make films and try to make a living from it.”
Ivo Pietzcker
Pietzcker made a big impression in 2014 at the age of 12, when he made his debut in Edward Berger’s Berlinale competition entry “Jack.” Praised for its low-key, intimate shooting style, which some compared to that of Belgium’s masters of naturalism the Dardenne brothers, Berger’s film told the story of a 10-year-old Berliner who is forced to deal with adult situations when his negligent mother leaves him at home with his little brother, often for days at a time.
The role saw Pietzcker nominated for a German Film Critics Award for lead actor, against four older and much more established nominees — a feat made all the more surprising since Pietzcker had never acted before. “I became an actor just through the role in ‘Jack,’ ” he says.
Pietzcker landed the role through mutual friends of Berger, who asked if he would be interested. “I read the script, and right before the shooting of the movie I met with Edward Berger, the other kids, a coach and a stunt trainer and jointly we prepared for about one week. It was great fun and enjoyable, because Edward really left me a lot of space to act how I thought it best, and then he made corrections.”
Pietzcker’s followup role, in Kai Wessels’ “Nebel Im August,” was to be no less challenging. “I play the 14-year-old boy Ernst Lossa, who was killed by the Nazis in 1944 (as part of) the so-called euthanasia program. I also read the book (by Robert Domes) beforehand. ”
Despite such grim subject matter, Pietzcker, who turns 14 in June, enjoys his work. “It is very fun to become a different person basically for the time on the set,” he says, “and to work with awesome actors as well as a great team — that is always really nice.”
What kinds of roles is he looking for next? “I really don’t know yet but I would like to continue acting. The kind of movie is basically not as important to me, but I have to like the script and I have to like my role.”
Geza Rohrig
“Blessed, from beginning to end,” is how actor Rohrig describes his breakout 2015 art-circuit hit “Son of Saul,” which debuted in competition in Cannes last year. It’s held its momentum through to this year’s awards season, where the Hungarian drama still stands as favorite to take the Oscar for foreign-language film. Indeed, there are many aspects of Laszlo Nemes’ formally experimental Holocaust drama that defied filmmaking logic, the first being that the entire film focuses tightly on its leading man’s face, obscuring all background detail as a concentration camp inmate tries to bury the body of his illegitimate son.
More strikingly, however, Nemes not only cast a complete unknown in the role, he chose a man with almost no acting experience whatsoever — apart from a small role in a Hungarian TV miniseries, Rohrig was better-known as a poet, philosopher and musician when he auditioned for the film. Rohrig knew Nemes a little bit from his time at film school, where he studied film direction, a discipline he chose not to pursue. That, he was says was “a long time ago. But then I chose literature, ’cause I can write without asking for money from anybody.” If anything, Rohrig credits his time as a musician, playing illegal, confrontational, anti-communist rock music under the name Huckleberry, with giving him the necessary skillset for “Son of Saul.” “I had a punk band in the ’80s,” he recalls. “I hated the communists. I still do. Singing in front of large audiences definitely counts as acting. In fact, I hope to have a band again once more.”
Rohrig is modest about his achievements. “I felt like I was the right guy for this,” he says. “I’m glad I didn’t fail the project.”
Nemes, however, is more effusive on the subject. “(Geza) came to mind for the role probably because he is someone who is in constant motion,” the director says. “His facial features and his body are always changing. It is impossible to tell his age, for he is at once old and young, but also handsome and ugly; ordinary and remarkable, deep and impassive, quick-witted and slow.”
Much to its star’s surprise, not only has the film been a critical hit, but his charismatic performance has also brought a slew of acting awards. Nevertheless, Rohrig refuses to reveal what his next move will be, or how quickly he will move to capitalize on the film’s heat. “I’m not much of a planner,” he says. “Plus, the word ‘career’ is a long-time enemy. So we’ll see.”
Hayley Squires
In the space of four short years, Hayley Squires has risen quickly through the ranks, starting with a small role in the prestige BBC TV drama “Call the Midwife” and recently completing a shoot with Ken Loach. Introduced to cinema by her film-buff father, who gave Squires and her brother “a first-class education on film,” she had an epiphany at 13 when she saw Martin Scorsese’s 1990 crime classic “Goodfellas” for the first time.
Squires made the decision to become an actor the following year. “We were studying ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in drama lessons at school and I knew I didn’t want to do anything else.” Between the ages of 19 and 22, Squires did a degree in acting at London’s Rose Bruford College, following up “Call the Midwife” with a recurring role in the dark, Sean Durkin-directed Channel 4 series “Southcliffe,” about a small-town gun massacre.
When looking for roles, Squires says it’s important to her that the character has a journey and complexity. “The smallest part in a piece can be great to work on,” she says, “if the character is written as rounded and full up and not just there to be a stepping stone for the story.”
After a key role in the underrated British indie “Blood Cells,” by Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore, Squires had her first commercial screen role in the romantic comedy “A Royal Night Out,” a fictionalized account of Queen Elizabeth II’s experiences on VE Day in 1945. Next, she will be seen in Loach’s new project, titled “I, Daniel Blake.” “Very simply, it’s about the welfare state and the extent of the bureaucratic hoops, laws and protocol that are in place in Britain,” she says. “And how that can infect and alter people’s life to the point of utter destruction. At the center of the story is a friendship between two people that comes about as a result of being caught up in the system and striving to survive.
“It was the most wonderful experience,” she continues. “Ken creates a family out of the team. A kind and patient family. It was very special. But challenging — I never had a full script, was fed pieces of scenes just before we shot them and had no idea what would happen to my character and her children. Everything was experienced in the moment or as we shot the scenes. And given the subject matter and the events in the film, some of it could be a little bit traumatic. But an actor could never be in better hands than Ken’s.”
After that comes the “gritty but magical” British film “Away” with Timothy Spall and Juno Temple, then a BBC series called “Murder” to be broadcast in March. “I’m also working on two plays that I’m writing and my first screenplay,” she adds. “I’d love to direct one day. Far in the future. When I’m a grown up! Ha!”
Tomasz Wasilewski
With his boyish good looks and chiselled features, Wasilewski looks more like an aspiring actor than the writer-director of finely nuanced human dramas. This may not be a coincidence. “When I was a kid, I thought I would be an actor — I acted in a couple of independent theater productions — but when I grew up I started to understand that I wanted to create, that I wanted to tell stories that I made up in my mind,” he says. “It was very natural for me to go from acting to directing. Ever since high school, I knew that I had to make a movie — I was just looking for a way to do it.”
Growing up in Poland, where state funding is pretty much the core of the national film industry, Wasilewski finally decided to take matters into his own hands at age 32. “First I made two shorts,” he says. “One fiction, one documentary. Then I did my first movie, ‘In the Bedroom’ (2012), which was totally independent. The budget was, like, €20,000 ($21,000), and everyone involved with it was making their debuts. We didn’t have a professional crew. It was just people we picked up from university who wanted to make a movie with us.”
The oblique story of a Polish woman struggling in middle age, “In the Bedroom” was a big success on the festival circuit, and Wasilewski followed it quickly with 2013’s “Floating Skyscrapers,” in which a Polish man in a straight relationship comes to terms with his homosexuality. “It was a bigger production, but still it was an independent movie — the budget was something like $500,000. But except for the money, it doesn’t matter. Obviously we had better conditions — for the first time I had a crew — but I’m not saying it was necessarily better. Actually, I think I’m just lucky that way, because somehow I can always gather people who want to make my movies and help me create these worlds.”
Wasilewski prefers to work from his own material, he says, simply because he can’t imagine doing it any other way. “The topics I choose, it’s really hard for me to explain. I wish I had an explanation, but I really don’t — I just choose the emotion, I choose the characters and then I develop them through the story.”
Next for the 35-year-old is “United States of Love,” which premieres in competition at this year’s Berlinale. “It’s a portrait of four women right after communism collapsed in Poland. I have four main characters, but somehow they combine to make the film a portrait of one woman. It’s very intimate and focused. Each woman has a different scale of experience in her life.” After that, Wasilewski will be diving straight into the next one, which he has already started writing. But with his international profile rising, Wasilewski won’t rule out a change of scenery this time. “My dream — my professional dream — is to make films whenever, wherever I want, with whomever I want. This is freedom. Because cinema does not have boundaries.”
David Wnendt
With three films to his name, two of them among German cinema’s biggest critical and financial successes in recent years, Wnendt could easily give the impression that filmmaking was in his blood. Far from it. “My father’s a diplomat so we moved every two or three years and I changed schools quite a lot,” he says. “When I was 18 I didn’t know what to do, and my dad said, ‘If you don’t have any passion, why don’t you go and work for a bank?’”
Before he was lost to the world of finance, Wnendt had a flashback. “I decided I wanted to do something else. I remembered the theater productions I did in school — I was very much involved in those, whether acting in them or designing the production. Nothing fulfilled me as much as that. But I wasn’t so interested in theater as film.”
Interning for film production companies and working as a gaffer, Wnendt finally found himself at film school in Potsdam. Using college funding, he developed his thesis film “Combat Girls” (2011), a drama about two girls involved in the neo-Nazi movement. “I’m from West Germany and I lived in Berlin, so (after reunification) I was very curious about this whole new country of ours. I travelled around and noticed how different youth culture was, and I also noticed, back in the ’90s, how many extreme right-wing young people there were. And then I got the idea to focus on a female protagonist, because there are more and more girls in this scene. Now, they’re especially interesting because it’s such a contradiction — they are tough, and they want to be fighters, but they believe in an ideology that sees women only as mothers and wives. I was curious — what did they want from it?”
After “Combat Girls,” Wnendt was approached to adapt Charlotte Roche’s erotic, sexually explicit cult novel “Wetlands,” of which he was a fan. “They had the feeling that I didn’t just want to do it just to do a bestselling novel — they could tell I was really passionate about it. It was a lot of work to adapt the novel, because every time you read it, the main character changes. … But I always had a feeling of how it should be done. For example, the producer said he saw it as a mixture between Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Nine Songs’ and ‘Trainspotting,’ which gave me a very good idea of the goal we were headed to.”
By its release in 2013, Wnendt had gained a reputation as a somewhat fearless director. “By now people saw me as somebody who was able to take something controversial and pull it off without turning it into an exploitation B-movie. So I got offered a lot of risque projects, and one of these was ‘Look Who’s Back,’ about Adolf Hitler coming back to our world. I didn’t know the novel, but what interested me was that it was like going back to ‘Combat Girls,’ because it was another chance to examine this rise of right-wing extremism in Germany and Europe. But here the idea was different, my idea was to test the premise in real life and go with Hitler into our reality, ‘Borat’-style, with documentary footage, to find out how people would react.”
The film was a huge hit, but Wnendt refutes any suggestion that controversy is his stock in trade. “Certain things interest me, others don’t,” he says. “But I don’t choose my subjects based on just wanting to do something provocative or so something nobody else wants to touch. Making films is such a tedious long process, you need something to keep you going, to keep up your energy.”
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