Austrian writer Jessica Hausner (club zero, Lourdes, Xiao Qiao) will attend the 77th Locarno Film Festival this year as chairman of the jury that will decide the winner of the Golden Leopard Award in the international competition.
For the filmmaker, this marks a return to the Swiss Film Festival, which runs from August 7 to 17. After all, it was the first time that her work came to the fore at an international film festival, where she received the main prize in the Pardi di Domani section, which showcases short and medium-length films focused on experimental and innovative forms, for her short film Flora 1997.
Ahead of Locarno 2024, Hausner and THR About how she chooses the themes and topics to explore based on emotion, her influences, why the endings of her films tend to spark controversy and why she likes to “create a certain absurdity.”
How excited are you to return to Locarno this time as President of the International Competition Jury? How did you come to play this role?
I’m very much looking forward to this experience. Locarno is a film festival that is really focused on art films, art films and films that pursue an interesting style of filmmaking. So not only is this entertaining, it’s original cinema. This is something I’m really looking forward to.
I think the discussion with the other jury members will be very interesting. My experience as a jury member is that everyone sees the film differently. So there’s always discussions about why I liked this, why I didn’t like that, what did I actually see, what did I do with a movie? I’m looking forward to this.
Is this why your own movies usually end like this? Can it be explained in a different way? How important is it for you to stay vague and leave things open to interpretation?
I would say this: I think there is a direct emotion in the film that works very quickly and very directly. When you see a child crossing the street and a car is coming fast, you feel scared and you feel sympathy for the child. It’s a very direct, immediate emotion of empathy. But I think there’s another emotion in watching the movie that comes later and comes from some understanding of who we are as human beings. It’s a more complex emotion, more relevant to reflection, that you can’t simplify. This is a complicated matter. We humans are torn apart. We want to be important, but we’re not. We need to be happy, but we are not always happy. We want to do good, but sometimes we cause evil. There are too many contradictions in our lives. This second kind of reflective emotional understanding is exactly what I try to do in my films.
Some people find your work very provocative. How did you come up with the idea for the film?
the latter. I started with an idea that I found interesting. Most of the time, it’s a pretty simple idea. Sometimes it’s just a very small plot log line or so. From there, I unfolded the story. But it started with a simple idea that I found interesting, mysterious, or daring. Then I started investigating and doing a lot of research and trying to figure out what I was really interested in. But this is not from a knowledge point of view. It comes from a very exciting time. In the beginning, I didn’t know why I made that movie.
Do you agree that your visual style has become more obvious or emphatic? There’s more color in my opinion, and you seem to be using music more. How important have these things become as you’ve grown as a filmmaker?
I think you are right. What I’m trying to say is that the colors, the clothes, the music become more artificial, extreme or surreal. The original film was more naturalistic in style, but not too much. (Laughed.) Maybe my understanding of this visual storytelling also helped me create a certain sense of absurdity. I’m also looking for the humor that comes from those weird, ridiculous moments. I don’t know, like, someone who’s really sad but wearing a crazy pink hat. This kind of contradiction is what I like. Because it’s hard to say this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad. So I had mixed emotions.
“Club Zero”
cannes film festival
I’d like to ask you about your influence on film, theatre, other art forms and even philosophy. When I watch your films, I’m sometimes reminded of absurdist theater. To get more philosophical, I sometimes wonder if they are an existential exercise. Did you notice any impact?
Now that you mention it, I’ve always been interested in existentialism. I loved reading when I was a teenager [Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Albert] Camus. The Surrealist movement also inspired me. I usually mention the filmmaker Maya Deren, she was an American surrealist filmmaker from the 1940s who inspired me a lot. Her films and the way she cuts scenes create a strange, dreamlike feeling of time and space. This is very inspiring to me. She also collaborated with composer Shoji Ito. in my movie Xiao QiaoI also used music by the same composer.
I heard your next project might be called poisonous And you might be writing about it. Can you tell us if this project is still ongoing and what updates can you share?
For now, that’s the plan. I’m writing a program called poisonous. It’s about work life and the question, “Do we live to work or work to live?” So it’s also about overwork and exploitation. I’m trying to juxtapose some of these positions.
When you write, do you consider actors or other key elements of the film?
Sometimes I don’t do that, but for this movie, it’s going to be four episodes, so I’ve got the actors in mind because it makes it easier for me to differentiate between the different characters.
and club zero, has a Pied Piper theme. And people have compared Xiao Qiao Frankenstein story. and poisonousdo you have any legends, fairy tales or other stories that help you navigate your working life?
There is a story that always stands out to me because it goes against the grain of the society we live in, where we always want to have more, need more, be a better version of ourselves. That fairy tale is Hans’ happiness (Good luck Hans, from the Brothers Grimm). He loses step by step. He lost more and more, and in the end, he had nothing left. That’s when he’s truly happy.
Why did you decide to make this film an episodic film? Will it also explore #MeToo and harassment in the workplace?
Well, the plots come from my understanding, and the film is interesting in showing different experiences, different situations. I started putting it in one place, but then I realized something was missing. I wanted to show different versions of how we live and work. That’s where the idea of doing it in episodes came from. On the topic of #MeToo: I don’t know – maybe in a movie after this one.
When it comes to watching things for your own pleasure, what kind of movies, series, or plays do you like? Is it alternative art or do you watch some stupid stuff too?
Oh, I have to say I’ve seen both. I can enjoy this and that. What I find interesting is that in every genre, there are movies that are truly fascinating, and there are also some that are not so interesting. In the blockbuster industry, some movies just don’t live up to the level of entertainment [level] They commit and others do too. The same is true for arthouse. Art films can be boring and contrived, but other films touch my soul deeply. So I wouldn’t say I prefer one over the other. I just love watching movies that really evoke something inside me.
Does anything you’ve seen recently fit that bill?
In Vienna we have the Vienna Music Festival [arts festival]. I also saw a very interesting play by Florentina Holzinger. She is a star in the performance theater world. Her plays are a mixture of performance and theatre. This is very annoying. It’s a body horror thing. I think she was really hurt on stage. But it’s also very feminist. So she makes some very interesting and intellectually interesting points. That was a very interesting experience.
Your films always feature very strong, very realistic female characters. How important is it for you to bring women’s presence and perspectives to the table?
When I started working as a filmmaker, it was a natural thing because my perspective was a female perspective. So it felt natural to have a female protagonist. Then, when #MeToo came along, things changed a lot. In my own life, that’s certainly been the case, because suddenly there was a huge awareness of the misogynistic treatment of women that before was very unreflective or even normal. Suddenly we talk about it, suddenly it becomes a conscious thing. So that changed a lot and my understanding of my role in life. Since then, I have consciously realized that by including female characters in my films, I was certainly contributing to diversity and change in the representation of women.
“Xiao Qiao”
Christa Amadea/coop99 Film Production
Is it just me, or are audiences these days more likely to identify with characters who are different from them, whether it’s gender, age or whatever, as long as they’re compelling…
Depends on the point of view. Women used to identify with male characters. Now men are beginning to identify with female characters. I have a 14 year old son. In the past 10 years, female characters have gradually become active heroines. And, it’s so funny, he totally identifies with them. So it works really well.
Speaking of shaping the character: How strict were the requirements on set for the lines you wrote, and did the actors have room to modify them?
I’m usually very strict. But if an actor has an idea or wants to change certain lines, we’ll have a conversation, but we won’t do it on set. We did this a few weeks before the shoot. This is indeed something that can be done in advance. Because there are enough unforeseen things on set. So I always try to be as prepared as possible because then I have more freedom to make decisions on set.
This can be a little difficult because sometimes the actors are trying to make the dialogue more logical. That’s when I don’t follow that, because that’s how I like to write dialogue. They don’t necessarily make sense. That’s how I am – that’s how we talk. You start a sentence and then you lose it and say something different, so I wanted to keep it. I also use a lot of repetition. For example, if a character uses a specific word, we find it again later in another conversation, but in a completely different context. So I needed to be very precise with the dialogue.
