Nothing staff
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Nothing staff |
| Original title | Nothing staff |
 | |
| Country of production | Ireland , Netherlands |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2009 |
| length | 85 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Urszula Antoniak |
| script | Urszula Antoniak |
| music | Ethan Rose |
| camera | Daniel Bouquet |
| cut | Nathalia Alonso Casale |
| occupation | |
| |
Nothing Personal is a film by director Urszula Antoniak from 2009. It premiered on August 14, 2009 at the Locarno Film Festival , where the film won six prizes. The actress Lotte Verbeek was the European Shooting Star 2010. On April 8, 2010 the film was released by MFA + FilmDistribution in German cinemas.
action
Nothing Personal tells about a young Dutch woman, Anne, who is leaving her life behind. With only a backpack and a few elementary items such as a tent and sleeping bag, she sets out for Ireland and wanders through the wilderness there in complete solitude. She feeds on garbage and seeks contact with people only for the purpose of hitchhiking . When a driver picks her up and starts to open his trousers, she jumps out of the car into the embankment at full speed and screams out the driver. From now on the journey will only proceed on foot without a destination. But then she meets an old, isolated house on a small headland in the middle of the deserted, lonely landscape . She doesn't meet anyone at first, but enters the house anyway and leaves obvious and intended traces of her visit. She then returns to her tent that has been pitched apart with stolen peat sod for a campfire.
The next day she sits on the bench in front of the house, where she meets the resident, the elderly loner Martin. He offers her food to help him in the garden. Anne agrees, but when there is an argument over dinner, she wants to leave immediately. Eventually an agreement is reached between the two of them: food for work, no personal contact, no personal questions. So the two slowly come to terms with each other. Martin explains the work to her, which includes tending the kitchen garden , collecting seaweed (as fertilizer for the garden), housework and peat cutting . In the evening, Anne keeps returning to her tent until Martin gives her a room in the house. Martin provides her with meals, which he puts in front of the house because Anne does not want to eat with him. When they are not working, they read books or listen to music (the focus is primarily on Schubert's winter journey ). But even though they only talk about the bare essentials, the walls that both of them have built around them gradually begin to dissolve and they gradually get to know each other better. It shows, among other things, that Martin has significant health problems.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the agreement. In Anne's absence, Martin searches her bags and finds her driver's license with her name, unknown to him, and her last address, whereupon he visits the still vacant apartment in Amsterdam. Anne also tries to find out more about her host in Martin's absence. In addition to these secret breaches of the agreement, there are also increasing numbers of open, mutual physical advances. One morning Anne finds Martin dead in his bed, next to him a letter in which he apologizes. The property belongs to her, will and money are in the house. The letter ends with the words "I love you" in Irish Gaelic ("Tá gná agam duit") and English. Anne wraps the body in a sheet; what then happens to it is only hinted at. At the end of the film, Anne can be seen walking through an unknown city without luggage and moving into a hotel room.
Backgrounds for the shoot
The shooting of Nothing Personal took place mainly in Connemara , "the heart and soul of Ireland" (Urszula Antoniak), in the west of Ireland. The main setting was a house that originally belonged to Oscar Wilde's family. "Illaunroe", as it is called, is a simple fisherman's house on an inlet in "Lough Fee". Wilde's father left the house to Oscar Wilde and his half-brother Dr. Henry Wilson. Wilde once wrote a poem about this lonely and peaceful place and called it "Lotus Land". A fresco from that period can still be seen; it was painted by a friend of Oscar Wilde's. Many furnishings such as books, maps, paintings and furniture are still authentic. For Urszula Antoniak the place has "an incredible charisma."
The filming took a total of 26 days, two of which were in the Netherlands and one day in Spain, in Vejer de la Frontera . Vejer de la Frontera is a well-preserved small town from the 12th century that is popularly known as 'pueblo blanco' because all the buildings there are painted a very bright white lime paint.
Urszula Antoniak wrote the script for six months alone. The pre-production lasted three months before shooting for six weeks. Finally, it took another three months until production was finished. More than a year of creative work went into her film debut.
During the outdoor filming in Connemara, there was hardly any stop for stationary cameras due to the sloping landscape. Urszula Antoniak recorded the entire film on 16mm film material. The handheld camera was sometimes a choice and sometimes a must, some hill country filming locations couldn't even be reached by truck . The climb up to the top of the hill alone took 40 minutes. The lighting equipment was also very limited. Since the external lighting conditions constantly changed, it was difficult to produce a constant light. The weather also thwarted the team several times. Frequent rain showers softened the ground, the ground was turned into deep mud and the sloping terrain did its part to make the filming a special adventure again and again.
Despite the extreme conditions, Urszula Antoniak includes the landscape in Nothing Personal to a special degree, making her the third leading actor in the film. The vastness and size of the landscape make the people in it almost disappear and become small dots on the horizon. In this way the landscape is related to the people in the film. Nothing Personal thus takes on a further dimension of the plot.
In addition, there are scenes in Nothing Personal in which the director observes human faces like a landscape, she uses long and calm shots. Ultimately, Urszula Antoniak has repeatedly chosen filming locations, such as the house “Illaunroe” and the Connemara area, which in her opinion have a “certain aura” .
Lotte Verbeek as Anne
In preparation for her role in Nothing Personal , Urszula Antoniak Lotte Verbeek showed the film "Sans toit ni loi" (Free of Birds) by Agnès Varda . The leading actress in this 1985 French film, Sandrine Bonnaire , lived on the streets for weeks, practicing her role as a homeless person. Antoniak asked Verbeek to prepare for her role as a loner using a method reminiscent of Stanislavsky. ( The "Stanislavsky System" describes a certain acting theory that was further developed by Lee Strasberg based on the ideas of Constantin S. Stanislavski. This technique was intended to make the actor appear as authentic as possible to the viewer.) Lotte Verbeek agreed to this and so she had to spend three weeks without music, mirrors or human company. Verbeek was also not allowed to see any footage of her own portrayal during filming.
Reviews
- “Urszula Antoniak's feature debut Nothing Personal was the festival's big winner”
- "A surprisingly tight debut ..."
- "Bottom Line: Solitary characters find a bond in a captivating film about two loners".
- "Dutch actress Lotte Verbeek brings character and screen appeal to a tricky, underwritten role ..."
- "A beautiful film that tells the story of two solitudes that come together, ... .."
- "Sensuality in the conflict between rebellion and wisdom".
- "Magnificently embedded in the Irish landscape, its colors and natural sounds without exhibiting them for their own sake, but using them as a sounding board for the inner feelings of the protagonists, Antoniak tells quietly but emphatically about pain and its overcoming ..."
- “In her concentrated, almost archaic work, the Polish director describes the encounter between a young woman (Lotte Verbeck) and an old man (Stephen Rea) - two sore souls who approach each other like two shy in the loneliness and wild nature of the Irish Connemara Animals. "
- "Antoniak doesn't make heroes of her two reluctant partners, she doesn't even give them a psychological profile, but at most a contour."
Awards
The film won six prizes at the Locarno Film Festival in 2009 ( Best Actress : Lotte Verbeek, Best Feature Film Debut, Prize of the Youth Jury, FIPRESCI Prize , Cicae Award, Special Mention by the Ecumenical Jury ). Nothing Personal won four awards at the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht : Best Film, Best Director, Best Sound Design: Jan Scherma, Best Photography: Daniel Bouquet. Shortly thereafter, the film received the Silver Giraldillo Award at the 6th European Film Festival in Seville . After all, Nothing Personal was very successful at the 2009 Hof Film Festival . At home in the Netherlands, Urszula Antoniak's debut was also celebrated as a successful film. The main actress of the film Lotte Verbeek was given a special honor, she was chosen by an international jury as "European Shooting Star 2010" . At the Marrakech International Film Festival in Morocco in December 2009 she was named “Best Female Performance”. The ten selected newcomers were presented at the Berlinale on February 13 and 14 . At the 2010 European Film Awards ceremony, Verbeek was nominated for Best Actress and Antoniak was nominated for Best First Work .
Web links
- Nothing Personal in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Nothing Personal on nothingpersonalthemovie.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Nothing Personal . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , February 2010 (PDF; test number: 121 467 K).
- ↑ Location Illaunroe: 53 ° 35 ′ 13.2 ″ N , 9 ° 49 ′ 15.6 ″ W
- ^ Martin Blaney: Nothing Personal. Sreen Daily website. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Dan Fainaru: Film Review. Sreen Daily website. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Ray Bennett: Nothing Personal-Film Review. ( August 21, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ) The Hollywood Reporter website. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Derek Elley: Nothing Personal ( September 11, 2010 memento in the Internet Archive ). Website variety. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ↑ Roberto Rippa: Nothing Personal> Urszula Antoniak. Website Rapporto Contidenziale. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Giovanna Barreca: Nothing Personal. Radiocinema website. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ^ Walter Gasperi: Locarno 2009. Website Kultur Online. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
- ↑ Sebastian Handke: The Moving Generation. Website Tagesspiegel. Retrieved March 2, 2010.
- ^ Claudia Schwartz : In the global village cinema. Website of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Retrieved March 2, 2010.