THE DIRECTOR OF A CONTROVERSIAL FILM EXPLORES THE VIRTUAL REALITY IN OUR HEADS

24. 9. 2021, 11:00
MFF Praha - Febiofest

AT LAST YEAR’S BERLINALE, THE AUSTRIAN-GERMAN FILM “THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN” GOT AN AWARD – BUT ALSO A CONTROVERSIAL REPUTATION; MANY WHO OBJECTED TO THE REMARKABLE FILM ABOUT IDENTITY NEVER EVEN WATCHED THE FILM.

They saw headlines like ‘provocation and sex with minors’ and that was enough. Already at the Berlinale, people compared me to Jeffrey Epstein, one misinformation website claimed that we were part of a Hollywood campaign to normalize pedophilia. We didn’t see that coming,” the director Sandra Wollner said. She had mostly been a documentary filmmaker, but even with a fictitious story, she wants to be surprised by what can be found in the process. “Otherwise it’d be boring,” she sums up.

At the Q&A after the screening, audience questions concerned aspects such as the sound, which reflects the female protagonist’s loneliness, or the visual concept: the story of a ten-year-old android is told through her eyes. The director also shared her own view on her original film. “To me, the story is clear, almost banal. At the core is my interest in how virtual our reality is, how we live in our heads, separated from others. We can never see the world through the eyes of another person, however much we may try, even through art,” Sandra Wollner pointed out.

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