Find films

Hurenkind & Schusterjunge

Widow & Orphan

Niklas Pollmann // Austria, Germany, England // 2021 // 14:30 min

Experimental, Live Action

Synopsis:
A journey marked by the sound of the sea, the sun and motorway tunnels gives birth to a film about loneliness.

Three Questions for the Director

1. Short Film has a unique way of telling stories and exploring themes. What is it that fascinates you about the short format?

Niklas Pollmann: Short films can be more radical and uncompromising than feature films in trying out (new) narrative forms because they have less responsibility to captivate an audience for 90 minutes. Thus, short films are an underestimated narrative form to not only tell situations or small thought experiments according to a dramaturgical formula, but even to develop for them a completely new structure equivalent to the content, which can transcend classical narrative cinema. In this sense, the feature film can also learn a lot from the short film.

2. The program your film is selected for is called “Hier hast du einen Kopf, jetzt kannst du sehen.”: What connection do you see between your film and that title?

Niklas Pollmann: According to Andrey Tarkovskys famous distinction between "looking" and "seeing", the first means a rather simple and consumptive way of watching, whereas "seeing" means something transcendental, enabling access to a higher understanding. In that sense I am honoured my film is considered as something that make you see.

3. What film has inspried you most to make films yourself and what part of it do you see in your own work?

Niklas Pollmann: My films are usually inspired by humans and humanities, as well as my own thoughts/doubts/passions about myself and last but not least filmmakers I want to refer to because I feel their style is fitting well into my project (for Widow & Orphan* especially the Chinese auteur Lou Ye and his early films)