PRESSBOOK

PLUTO FILM presents

A film by Jan Speckenbach

Germany, Slovakia 2017, 100 minutes
With Johanna Wokalek, Hans-Jochen Wagner, Inga Birkenfeld, Andrea Szabová, Ondrej Koval‘

World Premiere: 70. Festival del film Locarno

Section: Concorso Internazionale

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 LOGLINE
Nora walks out on her husband Philip and their children without a word of explanation. She is driven by an irresistible force. She wants to
be free. Meanwhile, Philip is trying to manage his work and family life following her unexplicable disappearance. Philip‘s chain is the freedom
Nora is looking for.

SYNOPSIS
Nora (40) walks out on her husband and two children without a her husband Tamás, a cook. Meanwhile in Berlin, Nora‘s husband
word of explanation. She is driven by an irresistible force. She wants Philip is trying to manage the family, his job as a lawyer and his affair
to be free. She roams through a museum in Vienna, has sex with a with Monika. Against his own convictions he has to defend a racist
young man and hitchhikes randomly on to Bratislava. She hides teenager in court. The only person Philip really opens up to is the
her identity by telling little lies. Once a woman of means leading a unconscious coma patient beaten up by his young client. Nora’s
comfortable bourgeois life, Nora now changes her look, works as a desire for freedom is Philip’s chain.
maid and makes friends with a young Slovakian stripper, Etela, and

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 TECHNICAL DETAILS
Original Title Freiheit
Genre Drama
Country of Production Germany, Slovakia
Year of Production 2017
Length 100 minutes
Shooting format 2K
Screening Format DCP, 1:2,39, Dolby 5.1, 24fps
Languages German, English, Slovak with English subtitles

CAST
Nora Johanna Wokalek
Philip Hans-Jochen Wagner
Monika Inga Birkenfeld
Etela Andrea Szabová
Tamás Ondrej Koval’
Lena Rubina Labusch
Jonas Georg Arms

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 CREW
Director Jan Speckenbach
Writer Jan Speckenbach, Andreas Deinert
Director of Photography Tilo Hauke
Editor Jan Speckenbach
Production Designer Juliane Friedrich
Sound Designer/Re-recording Mixer Marian Mentrup
Producer Sol Bondy, Jamila Wenske
Coproducer Peter Badac, Jelena Goldbach
Production Company One Two Films
Coproduction Company BFILM, ZAK Film Productions
Financial Support from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg,
Kuratorium junger deutscher Film, FFA,
Slovak Audiovisual Fund,
ZDF – Das kleine Fernsehspiel

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 DIRECTOR: JAN SPECKENBACH
Jan Speckenbach studied directing at the German Film and Television Filmography (selection)
Academy (dffb) in Berlin. His short film THE OTHER DAY IN EDEN
REPORTED MISSING (2012), 90 minutes, 35mm
premiered at Cannes‘ Cinéfondation in 2008. One year later, his
Festivals: Berlinale, Schwerin, CPH PIX Copenhagen, Busan, Cairo, Schwerin, Paris,
short film SPARROWS started a successful worldwide festival tour Brasilia, Dublin, Glasgow, Taipei, Tokyo
and qualified for the Oscar® as Best Live Action Short. Jan‘s debut Awards & Nominations: German Film Awards Shortlist, European Film Award
feature film REPORTED MISSING premiered at the Berlinale and Nominee – European Discovery
was nominated for the European Film Awards in 2012. His second
feature FREEDOM will celebrate its world premiere in International SPARROWS (2009), 12 minutes, 35mm
Festivals: Cannes 2009 (Next Generation), Hof, Kiev, Lodz, Vienna, Hong Kong,
Competition at Festival del film Locarno.
Cleveland, Huesca, Bilbao, Uruguay, Bratislava, Berlin, Hamburg, Montreal, Dubai,
New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Moscow
Awards & Nominations: Premio Danzante for Best Short Film at Huesca Film
Festival 2010, Oscar® Shortlist 2010 Best Live Action Short
www.spatzen.net

THE OTHER DAY IN EDEN (2008), 30 minutes, 35mm

Festivals: Cannes 2008 (Sélection Officielle – Cinéfondation), Hof, Rio de Janeiro,
New York, Barcelona, Taipei, Lünen, Rome, Landshut, Bilbao

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 DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Something fascinates me about disappearing. Already my first
feature dealt with a missing daughter. Now in FREEDOM a mother
leaves her family. The act of disappearing has two sides: there is
temptation on the one hand, but brutality on the other. A woman
walks out on her husband and her two children. A strong urge pulls
her away, something inexplicable that she cannot resist. Her desire
– or addiction? – for freedom leaves the others chained to their own
uncertainty. One person’s freedom is another person’s prison.

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 INTERVIEW WITH JAN SPECKENBACH
Let‘s start with the title, FREEDOM. How did it come about? separate film.
The title introduced itself at some point during the writing process. It That was the difficulty. I was determined to tell both sides without
originally had a sarcastic touch. Sarcastic, because Nora presumab- denouncing either. It would have been easier to stay with one figure.
ly won‘t find freedom. But the sarcasm has now retreated into the But to me, that was excluded from the very beginning. I wanted the
background for me. The film actually poses the almost provocatively dialectic. I also wanted the paradoxical bond between these two cha-
general question as to freedom. For us all, the concept is a common- racters. Both must change if they want to make their way, and both
place: so much a part of the myth of the Western world is our aware- must also forget. I liked the idea that by her departure, Nora makes of
ness that we enjoy freedom, that we no longer question it. But when Philip the man whom she might not have left. Which is why metamor-
you think about it at greater length, it suddenly collapses into its com- phosis was so important to me – everyone should be transformed,
ponents and seems almost devoid of meaning. parents and children alike, because life is a permanent transformati-
Of course one must ask: freedom from what? The freedom that a on that we mostly aren‘t aware of. Thanks to the children, who grew
refugee from the Middle East crisis zone yearns for is naturally not almost two years older during the course of production, it becomes
the freedom Nora seeks. It seems almost tasteless to compare the apparent that time cannot be turned back.
two. After all, she has everything: money, a husband, children, work, In the last third of the film, you break with the chronological narra-
what more could she ask for? And yet she is evidently looking for tive style and suddenly jump back into the past.
something that goes beyond all this. Does she have the right to do
It‘s the evening before Nora leaves. The last evening as a family. We
so? That‘s where things get complicated. If you say no, you deprive
see her with the children, with her husband. She seems transported,
her of some aspect of her freedom. If you say yes, you‘re joining her
absent, although she‘s still there. We gain insight into the mute state
on her path.
of the marriage, into Nora‘s perplexity, perhaps into her inner emp-
You vacillate between two perspectives, that of Nora, who leaves, tiness in this life of work and dinners, children and conversations. So
and that of Philip, who remains. Each part has the potential for a many people, especially women, keep themselves on an even keel

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with anti-depressants and beta-blockers. Nora abstains from all that. those suffering from the disease have to be locked away. The paral-
But it‘s apparent that her departure has nothing triumphant, nothing lels are apparent. Why do those who lose their personality, be it by
arrogant about it, but that she is driven by a wordless agony. It was oblivion or otherwise, run away?
important to me that you get a sense of her distress. You don‘t have Your main protagonist shares a name with the heroine of Ibsen‘s “A
to understand her. But you shouldn‘t condemn her. Doll‘s House”. Nora and Philip are also lawyers, as is the husband of
The River Lethe plays an important role, not least because of the Ibsen‘s Nora, and, as in Ibsen‘s play, your Nora unflinchingly leaves
introductory sentence, but also due to the presence of the Danube, her husband and children.
on whose banks the cities of Vienna and Bratislava are situated. The basic impulse is the same, and it has lost hardly any of its ex-
Berlin on the other hand only has the Spree, a pretty petty stream plosive force. In this, Ibsen was very successful. And the name is,
by comparison... Yes, the Lethe. I‘m fascinated by the role of memo- of course, a bow to him. In Nora, when considered as by Ibsen, the
origin of her search lies in the question as to who she really is. This
ry, for it is this that really constitutes us as human beings – and also
is still provocative today. One‘s primary need to find oneself is more
the role of forgetting, which is a necessity for continued existence.
decisive than the responsibility towards others, including children.
People who cannot forget anything go insane. These days we have a
very casual relationship with memory because we think we can save My Nora is in a sense even more radical because she does not justify
everything electronically. We take photos by the day, but hardly any- or express herself, she just acts. Why she takes this immense step
will always remain undetermined, and why? Presumably because she
one still has these pictures ten or twenty years later. We have ex-
doesn‘t know herself. Because only her path itself might explain why
ternalised memory, and thereby outsourced it. It‘s a sort of cultural
she took it. That‘s why I was more interested in what comes after the
amnesia. I exaggerate, of course. But something becomes apparent
decision, and not so much in what led to it.
through this heightening. Forgetting, in the form of dementia, is also
one of the civilisational diseases of our time. With dementia there is
a tendency to run away, which is a huge problem in the care sector:

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 CAST: JOHANNA WOKALEK
Johanna Wokalek is a German stage and film actress. She studied Filmography (selection)
under Klaus Maria Brandauer at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in
2017 FREEDOM
Vienna and in 1998 had her first movie role in Max Färberböcks
AIMÉE & JAGUAR. Since then Wokalek has played in numerous 2015 IN YOUR ARMS
movies and acted on stage. From 2010 to 2015 she was part of the 2012 THE PURSUIT OF UNHAPPINESS
permanent ensemble of the famous Vienna Burgtheater. In 2008 she 2010 THE COMING DAYS
received the Bambi Award for her portrayal of the Red Army Faction 2009 POPE JOAN
member Gudrun Ensslin in Uli Edel’s THE BAADER MEINHOF
COMPLEX. Other award-winning appearances in German films that 2008 THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX
Wokalek is best known for include Hans Steinbichler’s HIERANKL 2008 NORTH FACE
and Til Schweiger’s BAREFOOT. She played the lead role in Sönke 2007 SILENT RESIDENT
Wortmann’s film POPE JOAN in 2009. Since 2014 Wokalek has also 2005 BAREFOOT
been playing roles in operas, most recently in spring 2017, when she
played the french speaking lead role in the highly praised enactment 2003 HIERANKL
of Jeanne d’Arc at the Frankfurt Opera. 1998 AIMÉE & JAGUAR

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 CAST: HANS-JOCHEN WAGNER
Hans-Jochen Wagner (born December 20, 1968) is a German stage Filmography (selection)
and film actor. After graduating from the Ernst Busch Academy of
2017 FREEDOM
Dramatic Arts in Berlin, he started at the Burgtheater Vienna in 1997.
He played at various other theaters before coming to the Schau- 2016 THE BLOOM OF YESTERDAY
spielhaus Düsseldorf, where he has been part of the ensemble since 2013 SILENT SOMMER
2006. His first leading role in a movie was 2003 in Stefan Krohmer’s 2012 CLOSED SEASON
THEY‘VE GOT KNUT. In 2012 Wagner received the Festival des 2012 LORE
deutschen Films Special Award, as part of the ensemble for Sören
Voigt’s film IMPLOSION and in 2014 at the Deutsches Fernsehkrimi 2011 IMPLOSION
Festival he received the Award for Outstanding Solo Performance 2009 EVERYONE ELSE
in POLIZEIRUF 110 – DER TOD MACHT ENGEL AUS UNS ALLEN. 2006 WINDOWS ON MONDAY
Films that Wagner is best known for include Cate Shortland’s LORE, 2006 - 2013 POLIZEIRUF 110 (TV series)
Maren Ade’s EVERYONE ELSE and Franziska Schlotterer’s CLOSED
SEASON. 2003 THEY‘VE GOT KNUT

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 /freiheitfilm

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