Has anything changed since you won the Silver Bear?
Angela: No.
Everything remained the same?
Angela: I should say so.
Is there anything different in terms of the film promotion in cinemas?
Angela: It is the same film. It was the same film before the Silver Bear and it is the same film now.
Can we talk about the family in your film? Is it a happy family, is it a sad family or perhaps a family with problems?
Angela: It is a family like many other families. A sad family, a happy family, generally that does not exist. I think that the construction of the family is much more complicated than it could be said in so little words.
Maren, you had a very intense role. How did you work with the director?
Maren: Yes, we worked on the basis of self-confidence and trust, which is very good. This was our fourth film where we worked together. I enjoyed working with Angela, because she is calm and witty.
Ivan, how did you get to be in this film?
Ivan: Maybe that is not a question for me, but I can tell you how it came about. I did a graduation film by an Angela’s student and so we met thanks to that film. Then we had initial meetings, which lasted for a while until the finances were in place. After that, we started with preparations, but right after the first meeting we decided to work together.
Did you have a screenplay when you started filming?
Angela: Yes, there was a script. In the script was written more or less everything that can be seen in the film. We can say that everything is written in there, only minor changes in the editing were made.
How did you feel when you first read the script, what did you find most interesting? Have you improvised?
Maren: No, not at all. There was no improvisation. I had read the script much before the shooting. Perhaps a year before or more. During the shooting, it was interesting how I would constantly discover new things about my character. Of course, we had talked about this before, but there were many scenes where I would discover what my character was currently going through during shooting.
There are many acting references in the film. In some scenes there are children playing Hamlet.
Angela: I wondered what would happen if I asked children to say Shakespeare's words written in rhythm and partly in rhyme. We were looking for children who did not necessarily know what drama meant. At the casting, they would say the words I told them to say. I would say a sentence, and they would repeat it. We chose these students you saw in the film, from more than a hundred children, who knew how to say only what was written. That was the idea. We could have found children who would have understood the text, but it would mean that the text was making something out of them, instead of them making something out of the text.
Why did you choose Hamlet?
Angela: There are many interpretations of Hamlet. If you think about it, you can find many reasons why I chose Hamlet. It is not so complicated, the work is complex and the main character is one of the most studied theatre heroes in literature. If you think about it, it is very easy to find connections, such as that he does not have a father, but if we talked about it in a simple way, it would be wrong, because the connections are a bit more complex than that.
