Next door in Steilshoop: ‘Lord’ celebrates its world premiere

A conversation she had with her grandmother a few years ago about her grandmother’s fear of losing the home she’d lived in for so long was the inspiration for the film. “I offered to let her move in with me in my shared flat – but she wouldn’t hear of it,” says filmmaker Caren Wuhrer, laughing. But she couldn’t get the subject out of her head and began to think about how to bring it to the screen. The character of Lord was introduced fairly quickly: a 17-year-old who grew up in poverty on the outskirts of Hamburg – and who finds an ally in 78-year-old Betty.

Research in Steilshoop

Wuhrer began visiting youth centres in and around Hamburg and talking to the young people and staff there. She also spent time in the Hamburg neighbourhood of Steilshoop – the very neighbourhood where *Lord* would later be filmed. “We kept going back there to see how the neighbourhood, with its 22,000 residents, functioned. And, of course, to find the flats for Betty and Lord. According to the script, both flats had to be next to each other, in the same building, door-to-door – and affordable for a debut film’s budget. That was anything but easy,” reveals Executive Producer Markus Mayr, who produced the film with his Hamburg-based company MÄKSMY Films – his feature-film debut as well.

A real door-opener (in the truest sense of the word) was Location Manager Aykut Akcil, who grew up in Steilshoop: “Without Aykut, the project would have been very difficult to pull off in this form. He knew everything and everyone in Steilshoop and was a huge help to us with many of the locations. We only managed to secure one of the two flats used for filming thanks to his help,” says Markus Mayr. Aykut Akcil had previously taken part in the GetOnSet programme run by the Hamburg Media School and MOIN Film Fund, which is aimed at people looking to make a career change into the industry. ‘Lord’ was his first project as Location Manager. It’s also a first for lead actress Lina Isabell Sturm: this is her first appearance in a feature film. “We found Lina at an open casting call with over 400 applicants – it quickly became clear to us during the casting that with Lina, a genuine ‘Lord’ had walked through the door. Lina is a very sensitive person, and she really gets to grips with the role, both emotionally and in her performance. It was a wonderful and intense collaborative process. What’s more, she could do 13 pull-ups. So she was exactly the combination we needed,” says Wuhrer.

Nordlichter Programme

“Lord” was filmed in the spring of 2026 over a mere 21 days, 18 of which were spent in Steilshoop. The film was produced as part of the Nordlichter talent programme run by NDR, nordmedia and the MOIN Film Fund, with a budget of 1.15 million euros. “The Nordlichter programme shortens the time from the start of development to the start of filming because the funding is secured. That’s great, but the time pressure involved in developing the script right through to the finished version is enormous – everything happens very quickly.” Wuhrer adds: “Once it was confirmed that we’d be joining the Nordlichter programme, I started on the treatment and then the script. The core of the story remained the same throughout the entire process, but we had to try out a lot of different ideas and discard many of them in order to keep adapting the story to fit the budget.” Fortunately, the team behind the camera was well-established: Wuhrer already knew Director of Photography Felix Tonnat and editor Maxi Willmann from their time at the Hamburg Media School, where the three of them had worked together on their graduation film.