Cate Shortland and Polly Staniford Berlin Syndrome Interview

Cate Shortland and Polly Staniford Berlin Syndrome Interview

Cast: Teresa Palmer and Max Riemelt
Director: Cate Shortland
Running Time: 116 minutes

Synopsis: Clare, a twenty–something Australian photojournalist, arrives in Germany on a sabbatical from work. She intends to photograph Soviet–designed architecture in the hope of publishing a book. However on her first morning in Berlin she meets Andi, a charismatic German man who teaches English at a local High School. The instant connection and chemistry between Andi and Clare leads to a night of unbridled passion. But when Clare goes to leave the next morning she discovers that the door is locked. Not only that, but she is the only inhabitant of an otherwise abandoned apartment complex.

Clare desperately attempts to free herself from the apartment but is unable to. The windows are reinforced with Perspex and the door is bolted shut. Clare tries to reason with Andi, believing it must be some kind of misunderstanding, but he won't let her go.

Clare becomes distraught, lashing out at Andi and he has no choice but to tie her to the bed while he goes to work. One morning however he agrees to leave her untied – she convinces him there is nowhere for her to go. Upon arriving home that afternoon Andi is pleased to find Clare busying herself with a jigsaw puzzle. She gestures for Andi to help her and as he lets his guard down, she stabs him in the hand with a screw driver, grabs the keys and attempts to escape. Andi soon catches up with her and smashes her hand in the external courtyard door, breaking her fingers.

The days, weeks and months pass by as Clare becomes accustomed to her life of captivity. Meanwhile outside the apartment walls, Andi is forced to deal with what he believes to be the infatuation of a female student, Franka, and the persistence of his father, Erich, who suggests Andi meet with his estranged mother.

As autumn turns to winter, what began as his obsession has now become theirs as Clare becomes reliant on Andi to be both her provider and her only companion. When Franka comes to the apartment wanting to see Andi, he threatens Clare that he will kill Franka if she says anything. Franka gets a glimpse of Clare in the hallway of the apartment and is upset to hear Andi has a girlfriend – she thought he was interested in her.

After a violent outburst, Andi abandons Clare and goes to stay with his father. Clare starts to wonder if Andi will ever come back. Meanwhile, Andi wakes to find his father has passed away and spends several lonely days alone with his father's lifeless body.

When Andi finally returns to the apartment, he and Clare reunite – emotionally and physically. For a moment, life seems to return to normal. Christmas comes and Andi surprises Clare with an outing to a beautiful forest. When they come across two young boys, Clare takes her chance to cry for help but the language barrier prevents this from being a success.

On New Years Eve, while Andi is at a colleague's party, Clare breaks into his locked spare room and discovers a strange massage chair and albums full of photos that he has taken of her. She also discovers photos of another girl, trapped like her in the apartment and realises her fate is sealed unless she can find a way out.

Andi's obsession leads to the murder of a homeless man attempting to free Clare, and she realises time is running out. Meanwhile, Andi becomes increasingly unhinged and when he discovers Clare's photo in a newspaper article about a missing person, he announces that he is getting the apartment fumigated. Clare now once again fears for her life and knows that she must flee before it is too late. Clare puts together her final desperate plan for freedom. While preparing dinner for Andi, Clare purposely burns her hand on the stove. This forces Andi to search for ointment in the bathroom. While he is gone, Clare searches through his student's book. The following morning when Franka opens her school book, she discovers a terrifying photo of Clare, clearly a cry for help.

Franka, remembering meeting Clare at Andi's front door one evening, immediately flees the school grounds and upon arriving at Andi's apartment, she frees Clare, but only just in time for Andi's return. The two of them hide in an upstairs apartment as Andi searches for Clare. Just as he thinks he has got her, she locks him in the apartment and escapes.

We go out on Clare leaving Berlin in a taxi, taking in the world for the first time since captivity, putting her past behind her, hopeful of the future.

Berlin Syndrome

Release Date: April 20th, 201

Interview with Cate Shortland

Question: What is this story about for you?

Cate Shortland : Berlin Syndrome is the story of a young woman, desperate to explore a cooler, more cultured place than 'backwards" Australia. She wants to reinvent herself as an artist, hoping that Berlin will take away the stench of suburban Brisbane. She doesn't realise – like most of us – that the ordinary, the mundane, the simple is often filled with its own magic. When she meets Andi, he seems to encompass the European ideal – she is enraptured and soon entrapped. For him, she is a vessel to hold and fill with fantasies. He wants nothing of the real. Andi and Clare are the answer to each other's dreams. But Clare does not want violence; she wants inspiration and love. She is addicted to love. He is addicted to control.


Question: What was it about this story that you were drawn to?

Cate Shortland : I was interested in the characters and the extreme situation.

Clare is obsessed with details. Details end up making her days. She escapes her physical body and becomes her mind to survive. She is fragile and self-conscious and becomes strong and resourceful. Nothing is clear-cut with her. Nothing makes sense. As the film progresses she realises she may die. She also realises the beauty of what she left behind in Australia: family and the place that created her. She is an extreme version of many of us: rejecting her childhood life and then coming to see the beauty of it. She goes through various stages in the film: fighting to get out, living in fear, and then coming to acceptance. But this acceptance shifts suddenly, when death is shoved in her path. She becomes a fighter in the end.

Sociopaths interest me, so I was fascinated by a character like Andi who can completely compartmentalise his life. Someone who can bury his transgressions and remake himself – both these characters reinvent. That interests me: the idea that underneath the construction we are fluid. Clare reinvents out of need, she watches him, listens and reacts. Out of pure survival. Andi reinvents himself by hiding what he is from society. An English teacher who romanticises his ideal woman but then wants to entrap her, make her his perfect study, utterly under his power. Andi is the product of his environment, brought up in the GDR, a shadowy utopia, missing his mother, and perhaps hating her for leaving.


Question: What themes do you explore in this film?

Cate Shortland : Various themes are intertwined in this story: sex and violence, the idea of power, and the idea of creating and metamorphosis.

Both characters are running from the ordinary. Clare first longs for intimacy and then freedom. Andi longs for perfection. He wants his dream relationship and will subjugate and violate to obtain it. When Clare, his subject, becomes too familiar he longs to get rid of her, to replace her with a new model. Violence and murder are a bi-product of his goal.

Question: How did you prepare for the shoot, what was involved?

Cate Shortland : I spent a lot of time working on the script. In Berlin, I worked closely with Franz Rodenkirchen – a great script editor and inspirational mind, who I also worked with on Lore. And at the same time Polly, production designer Melinda Doring and I were exploring locations. We discovered so much during this time that later inspired the design choices of the film. We kept seeing all these exercise bikes and running machines in deserted wallpapered rooms in East Germany. I loved their forlorn shapes, the dreams these strange mechanised objects seemed to hold. Perfect body, perfect mind, now lost. I had the idea that Andi should have a massage chair. I really loved shooting the scenes around this chair – its vibrating mass of black vinyl.

We had a solid rehearsal period with the actors in Berlin and then a week when we came back to Melbourne. We had a difficult but inspiring time exploring ideas and working on the script and this made each of the actors feel like they had ownership of the characters. It really grounded and connected us. We worked with the Choreographer Danielle Micich for a full day on the violence and sex – on ways of inhabiting the characters without judging them. Just feeling. This was one of the best days, she taught us all so much. And constantly asked why? Why would he do that, why would she move there? Everything had to come back to instinct.


Question: Where was the shoot, how long was it, and what was involved?

Cate Shortland : We shot in Berlin and Melbourne for 6 weeks. It was a difficult shoot as we had strict scheduling restraints and a lot of location moves. Thankfully it was made possible by the wonderful crews we had both in Berlin and Melbourne, and our key creatives who travelled with us to both locations. Everyone worked really hard to piece together the puzzle of two countries pretending to be one.

Polly Staniford and I knew that making two countries work as one was going to be difficult. I fought to shoot it all in Berlin, but in the end I took Polly's advice and was relieved at how well the Melbourne studio shoot went – it really focused us. Once in the studio, we shot with Max and Teresa for 3 weeks and mostly shot in sequence.


Question: What is your favourite scene in the film?

Cate Shortland : Shooting at Andi's father's house was a highlight, as this was one of my favourite locations. We became friendly with the owner whose parents had built the house just before WW2 and as a teenager he had lived there under the GDR. He had many stories and the most wonderful garden and ceramics.

I always love shooting in nature so shooting in the forest was also a great day. We shot in one location all day – heaven.

I also liked the Christmas scene where Clare speaks of home – of the Cicadas in Queensland. This dialogue came out of rehearsal, so felt really fresh and real to me. Clare was both vulnerable and strong here and Andi hates her for revealing her humanity. Her history. She makes him realise how lonely he is. It is the moment he decides to kill her. But I have to say that working with DOP Germain McMicking made every day good. He is a really intelligent and calm person. He is unafraid and willing to take great creative risks.


Question: What was it like working with Max and Teresa?
Cate Shortland : Max and Teresa are good people and both wanted to do something raw and truthful. I came to like them both enormously. We could be vulnerable around each other, so we could explore without trying to be impressive. Like many directors, I wanted them to be comfortable enough so they could stop trying and just be the characters. We laughed a lot.

They supported and respected each other tremendously, which made each day a joy. At the end they gave me a beautiful bangle engraved with 'meine" which means mine, a line from the film. We all have a piece of each other, after such an intense time.

Interview with Polly Staniford, Producer

Question: What is this story about for you?

Polly Staniford: Berlin Syndrome is a cautionary tale about love and the desperate measures people will go to get it and keep it. It's essentially a very dark love story that explores obsession and the loneliness that can be found both in a foreign city full of strangers and in an apartment shared by two people. It's an exciting, intoxicating, claustrophobic thriller that will ultimately make us all question decisions we've made and wonder who we can trust.


Question: What was it about this story that you were drawn to?

Polly Staniford: As soon as I read the novel I could see the huge potential for a film adaptation. The story was tense, taut, evocative, surprising and original and had a commercial, high concept premise. It was also a fairly contained story – a lot takes place inside Andi's apartment and I felt it was a project that could be developed fairly quickly. I was drawn to the unusual relationship between the two main characters – the complexity, danger and intensity of their union. I also loved the setting – Berlin is a wonderful city with a rich and dark past and it's this history that serves as a kind of metaphor for what's happening in Andi's apartment. Like the imposing wall that divided the city for so long, the walls of Andi's apartment close in around Clare leaving her feeling trapped and unable to escape the oppressiveness of the unfortunate predicament she unwittingly finds herself in.


Question: What was the process of getting the film off the ground?

Polly Staniford: I optioned the book in 2011 and soon after attached Shaun Grant to write it. Shaun had just won the AACTA award for his work on Snowtown and I was excited by his ability to bring beauty to very dark material. I then sent Cate Shorthand the first draft of the screenplay and the book for consideration. I knew we needed a great director to helm this project – someone who could work intimately with our two lead characters and bring a sensitive and emotional style to the genre. Luckily for me Cate responded to the material and came on board. The attachment of Cate as director of this project represents the marriage of a multi– award winning auteur director to what is inherently commercial material which made it a very enticing and distinctive proposition for sales and distribution. We had a huge response when I took the project to Cannes in 2013 – and had offers from a number of leading sales agents. We decided on Memento Films International who are based in Paris and had handled Cate's previous film, Lore. Locally eOne boarded the project for ANZ distribution. Shaun, Cate and I worked very collaboratively during the development phase. We received 4 rounds of development funding from Screen Australia and held regular script workshops to discuss the story as a team. During the final phase of development Cate became more involved and wrote a couple of drafts in the lead up to production.

We secured finance in April 2015 from Screen Australia, Film Victoria, Fulcrum Media Finance, DDP Studios, Memento and eOne and went into production in September of the same year.


Question: What was it like transitioning between locations?

Polly Staniford: Very challenging. We shot all the exteriors and distinctively German locations in Berlin and then built Andi's apartment as a set back in Melbourne at the Docklands Studios. However, the exterior of Andi's apartment, including the courtyard, and POV's from the window were also shot in Berlin so the continuity was extremely tricky and important. Luckily we had an incredible production design team led by Melinda Doring and a fantastic cinematographer, Germain McMicking. The transitions are seamless but a lot of work went into the planning of this to make sure it worked. We also worked with a great VFX team from DDP Studios.


Question: What was involved in the casting process?

Polly Staniford: In Berlin Syndrome there are two active protagonists struggling against each other within the confines of a powerful and chilling premise. We knew we needed two fantastic actors for the roles of Clare and Andi – they needed to really carry the film. We also needed to completely believe their connection and also experience the fear and horror of the situation that unfolds for Clare. Unlike many thrillers, we also get to know Andi, his work life, his family, his past and come to understand a little about what makes him tick. We were so lucky to find Teresa and Max – they literally embodied their characters both physically and emotionally. Both undertook a dramatic transformation and during intensive rehearsals with Cate really let go of all ego, vanity and any pre–conceived ideas and laid themselves bare. We worked with Anja Dihrberg in Berlin for the role of Andi and Kirsty McGregor in Sydney for the role of Clare and saw a lot of actors for both parts. Teresa and Max both surprised us with their performances and they worked so beautifully together throughout the whole shoot. They definitely exceeded my expectations and I feel blessed we found such a wonderful cast for the film.


Question: What is your favourite scene in the film?

Polly Staniford: I think the scene when Andi comes home to find the apartment in disarray is a favourite. Clare has finally truly realised her predicament but still thinks she can negotiate with Andi. The scene moves through so many great emotional beats – as Clare tries everything she can to reason with the man she had trusted but she soon discovers he is far from who she thought he was. I also love the scene where they meet on the streets of Berlin – this scene is very true to the original novel and it's a moment we can all relate to. The charm and seduction of a handsome stranger in a new city. The promise of something exciting, the early seeds of a new relationship. It's a happy, joyful scene with all the colour and life of Kreuzberg where we shot the scene.


Question: What were the biggest challenges of the shoot?

Polly Staniford: We had big ambitions for the film and as is always the case not as much time or money as we would have liked. Shooting over two countries was a big challenge but we had such a talented team of creatives who helped make this as smooth as possible.


Berlin Syndrome
Release Date: April 20th, 2017