When a place becomes the main character

A look back at 2018: Salka Tiziana is out and about in the Sierra Morena in Andalusia with Director of Photography Tom Otte and senior lighting technician Marvin Hesse. It's July and the thermometer reads 46 degrees. It doesn't get much hotter than that on the European mainland. The three of them are spending a week scouting the locations for the last time, where they will be staying with the rest of the team for around three weeks in August.For the Time Being will shoot Tiziana's graduation film at theHamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK). The scorching heat can also be seen later in the film. In the faces of the actors - but above all in the numerous pans across the bleak and arid landscape of the Sierra Morena, which is the real protagonist of the film.

But why would a Hamburg native shoot her graduation film in southern Spain? "It's not an autobiographical film. However, I have a close connection to the region, as my mother and her family come from the area. My grandparents were farmers and I spent many summers there in the countryside," reveals Tiziana. She grew up in Barcelona and the 28-year-old studied in Berlin, Hamburg and Buenos Aires.

In her early 20s, she travelled to the Andalusian low mountain range for the first time in many years. With a more distanced view that raised new questions about the relationship and hierarchy between man and nature. The idea for the film came to her after her return - but it was not realised until years later at the HFBK in Hamburg.

It was here that she met Director of Photography Tom Otte (recent winner of the 2020 German Film Critics' Award for the short film "For Reasons Unknown"), with whom she has worked on and off ever since. And who found the right images for her feature film debut: "We share an interest in looking very closely at specific places and their design and incorporating them into the creation of a film - as characters, not just as a backdrop. For 'For the Time Being', we only worked with natural light and studied the lighting conditions very carefully in advance," says Tiziana. "It was the same with the sounds and noises of the cicadas and the wind, which in all their variations give the place its own, multi-layered voice," reveals the filmmaker. This creates a very specific atmosphere in the film, which literally breathes life into the landscape.

And the people in the film? The story is quickly told: A mother from Germany is travelling with her two sons to visit her father's family in the Sierra Morena. The father is supposed to join them from another place, but the flight is cancelled. We don't find out why he is travelling alone. And so mother and sons spend their time with their Spanish grandmother and aunt in the countryside - they hardly talk, but rather pause for a moment. "The title 'For the Time Being' describes this temporal intermediate state of waiting. And in this standstill, the perception of the surroundings can be sharpened," says Tiziana. The same effect that also sets in with the audience after a while.

The film has already completed a short festival tour. It was shown five times on the big screen at the Max Ophüls Prize 2020, celebrated its international premiere at the film festival in Rotterdam (where the curators of the streaming platform MUBI also became aware of the work) and was most recently screened at the Berlinale as part of the Critics' Week. Not a bad start for a debut film. However, festivals and cinemas have currently shifted to digital - and the streaming offer atMUBIcould be the last chance to see "For the Time Being" for the time being. With this in mind: seize the opportunity!