Between nightmare and trauma

"One of the most intense scenes was the last scene with Sandra Hüller, which we shot in 30 minutes. Two or three shots with a hand-held camera, that's all. But we weren't ready for what she offered us with her acting. Everyone on set had a lump in their throat. It was difficult for me to fulfil my role as Director and continue to give instructions. I didn't know whether Sandra was still playing her breakdown or whether we would have to stop filming. But a few seconds after filming ended, she started making jokes again." Directors Michael Venus fondly remembers the intense time on the set of his debut film "Schlaf". A rather atypical film for the German film landscape of recent years. A mix of horror, psychological thriller and drama. "Arthouse horror" says Verena Gräfe-Höft, who produced the film with her Hamburg-based company Junafilm. And this arthouse horror has made it into this year's Berlinale programme. It is being shown alongside just three other feature films in the "Perspektive Deutsches Kino" section.

In his new film, Michael Venus wanders between nightmarish sequences and historical horror. A film that takes place most of the time in the fictional village of Stainbach, which is surrounded by forest and where something is not right. Sandra Hüller and Gro Swantje Kohlhof have taken on the leading roles as mother and daughter. Hüller has long been an integral part of German cinema, while Kohlhof has been on the radar of many cinema-goers since her first major cinema role in "Tore tanzt" in 2013. The conditions for a cinema debut at the Berlinale could therefore not be better on the ensemble side.

But how do you actually get into the horror genre as a debut film? Verena Gräfe-Höft and Michael Venus already knew each other from their studies at the Hamburg Media School. "We wanted to work together back then, but unfortunately that didn't work out in the very tightly knit study programme," reveals Venus. However, they had already talked a lot about genre films during their time at university. "In our university group, which also included 'Schlaf' Director of Photography Marius von Felbert, Michael was always the one who knew the latest series and said 'Verena, have you seen this yet? And ultimately, it was thanks to a series project that she eventually moved into the horror genre: Venus was already writing a mystery series during her studies together with Marvin Kren and Benjamin Hessler (both Script Writers for "4 Blocks" and currently "Freud"), but German television was not yet ready for the format at the time: "Although we had received enthusiastic support for the elaborate concept and we were allowed to write the first scripts, we couldn't realise it. The programme makers in linear pre-streaming TV didn't know what to do with it," says Venus.

He then met Verena Gräfe-Höft again at a job, who rekindled his passion for the mystery and horror genre. It was in 2013 that they first talked about "Schlaf" together with Script Writer Thomas Friedrich. "At that time, Thomas and I had just started to explore the topic of patriarchy. Something that worried us both. At the same time, Thomas had created another horror film and was open to Verena's suggestions. Despite fantastic exaggeration or grotesque exaggeration, horror films are strikingly often films that confront the audience with socio-political dimensions and depict collective fears that are extremely realistic," says Venus.

The nightmare sequences in "Schlaf" are likely to linger in the audience's memory long after the film is over. The characters often don't know whether they are asleep or awake. "Our film has developed into a narrative about nightmares and trauma, fear and repression, guilt and atonement. We wanted to superimpose a myth on the mystery that connects all the characters. We looked closely at the phenomena and myths of sleep, the forest, fairy tales, pre-Christian mythologies and so on," says Venus. In other words, material that is very suitable in a modified form for a film entitled "Sleep". In addition to the world of legends and myths, the film also tackles the real horror of German history - National Socialism in the form of forced labourers.

The project was filmed in Hamburg and the Harz Mountains in 2019, with the script phase spanning almost four years. " Once we had found the location in the Harz Mountains, the story of the location was retold. So we wrote another version of the script," says Venus. The story in the film is not set in the Harz Mountains, but in a place that could actually exist anywhere in Germany.

Post production took place almost entirely in Hamburg. The editing even took place in the same building where Verena Gräfe-Höft and her company Junafilm are based. "We have several editing suites here - so our editor Silke Olthoff was always just a few doors away. That's quite a luxury, as you don't have to make any appointments," says Gräfe-Höft. The film is now completely finished and will celebrate its world premiere this week at the Berlinale. What do you want for a debut film in the horror genre? "It will be exciting to see at which genre festivals "Schlaf" is screened worldwide. We also hope that our film will get the discussion about German genre films rolling again and bring horror film fans together," says Gräfe-Höft.

Executive Producer and Directors will soon find out how the film is received by audiences. And how are the two of them sleeping at the moment? "I'm not nervous yet, but I'm very excited. "Sleep" is a cinema film, and it's primarily made as such. And the fact that it will have its world premiere in one of the most beautiful cinemas in the country, the Kino International, feels like a dream to me," says Michael Venus - so the sleep level seems to be right. For Verena Gräfe-Höft, this is not the first time that a film she has produced has been shown at a major festival: "But I still have palpitations. The audience's breathing and laughter - I perceive it all very intensely at a big premiere. And yet: I'm sleeping really well at the moment!" So it's almost done. Now only one thing is missing: the premiere on 25 February as part of the 70th Berlinale.