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Trübes Wasser

Troubled Water

Elena Wiener // Germany // 2020 // 09:58 min

Animation, Live Action

Synopsis:
What if your body eats you up, when the struggle against yourself overshadows your everyday life, your relationships and your freedom? A film about the fight against an auto-immune disease and inner demons.

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?

Elena Wiener: Short film to me is an own art form. Its challenge is to reveal new worlds in the shortest of time, pointedly focused on the essentials. There is not much time to catch the audience and convince it to fully enter the presented world. I think that short films offer a lot to think about and stick longer in one’s mind with their rather experimental and unconventional topics and approaches. I consider the majority of short films to be more courageous and surprising than traditional movies, which might be due to the fact that short films are not necessarily dependend on the usual system of broadcasters and funding.

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?

Elena Wiener: There is a main protagonist in my film, who is trapped in her disease. In her suffering she looses herself more and more in projections, which eventually blur the borders between dream and reality. It seems that she is about to loose her mind, but in the end she is able to realise (and accept?) that the disease is a part of her.  


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

Elena Wiener: The work of Maya Deren inspired me, especially MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON. I like the surrealistic world she leads the viewers into. At the same time it is fascinating how she manages to capture the audience in the spellbinding world of cinematic art with only few means. I also appreciate that not everything is explained in detail, which leaves room for interpretation and stimulates own thoughts. That can be very exciting, and is possible even without dialogues! I recognize some parallels to my work, without even nearly reaching her grandiosity. I do not use similar elements on purpose. However, the worlds I create are also surrealistic, without being to far from reality, and do not need spoken words. I also am a great advocate for room for interpretation and use experimental elements in my work, without coming close to Maya Derens' range of technical and artistic tools.