Berlinale – as if reality is its own satire

The title of her film asks how to be “normal”. How does that work?

For me, the questions were more relevant for me: Who is to determine what is normal in the position? Who defines reality? In it I found this area of ​​tension that makes up the film and its characters.

It is about 26-year-old Pia, who has just been released from psychiatry and is now trying to arrive in the supposed “reality”. How did you get that this could be the fabric for a film?

I have accompanied many people in the circle of friends through crises and have experience with psychotherapeutic context myself. That’s why I dared to tell something like that. And then the world has also become more stressful and chaoting. Corona has changed perception. When I wrote the film in pandemic, it was clear to me: This is a topic that not only affects close confidants of me and myself, but a larger context of people. I thought that I could contribute something by sharing my experiences and starting to talk about it seriously. At the beginning of such a journey, it says to find a language for this. There is little on the topic that does not work as horror or as a drama of the affected. Of course, it is presumptuous to try to do something light -footed in a difficult fabric. But I thought that it might need it. That was a high -risk project. My greatest fear of the film was that you tried to make a cool thing out of mental problems and to capitalize on it. It was important to me that that didn’t happen.

How did you find the language for this film, which is “light -footed”, but also told about existential crises?

I come from work with lai. You learn to develop narratives in the collective. In this case, however, it would have been negligent to work with people who do not know the big machine film and may have psychiatric backgrounds. Therefore, it quickly became aware that I would like to work with professional representative. In the screenplay process, however, I listened to an incredible number of stories from many perspectives. We had specialists for every facet of the film. The scene with the kinesiologist was written by a kinesiologist. What has to do with the company was written from a management consultancy. The story of mother and daughter, the main characters, is based on stories of psychiatric patients.

Perhaps it seems strange when people say that they felt like they would turn into a werewolf. A friend of mine waited every evening on a street corner that a well -known rapper picks them up with the helicopter. Of course that has something totally tragic, but I thought: What if you try to understand that as a reality? The stories from the field of management consultations seemed no less strange to me. I wanted to compare these realities as equivalent. That was something I knew from the network culture. We also see this worldwide – for example, Donald Trump tries to achieve the sovereignty of language on the Internet. Language defines our reality. That is why it is important to take them for themselves. I wanted to tell the story of a world converter who has had a long experience with standing between the worlds.

You call your film as Arthouse Graphic Novel. What is that?

I am strongly influenced by graphic novels, comics and animated film – and I come from Austrian realism. For a long time, as in the Berlin school, a concept of authenticity, which was often confused with realism. Because there is also a made world. I found it exciting to think about authenticity outside of realism. Because an animated film can also be emotionally authentic. It seemed to me to be a logical consequence of how I was socialized in film.

The result is a film between deep seriousness and over -the -top comedy. Was it a balancing act to find the right tone?

It was a tightrope walk to keep the tonality of the film in such a way that you as a spectator. Especially from younger people, I keep hearing the concept of the “sensory overload”: an overflowing of stimulus that somehow belongs to the current attitude to life. This is extremely advised with what I am currently experiencing absurdism in the world. A lot is very bright and very loud and very excessive. It seemed to me that reality had become her own satire, and I tried to reflect that. It is difficult to balance that because it is already demanding. But I wanted to balance it in such a way that the film can still be easily consumable and can be positioned in the mainstream. Nevertheless, it is subliminally a critical-theory submarine. I tried to acquire the aesthetic language of Netflix and then get through the back door with a critical theory. That’s why the cast is chosen. There are people who are known in the Austrian mainstream – and maybe also in German.

For example, her leading actress Luisa-Céline Gaffron, who played in many German television productions. How did you get together?

We didn’t know each other before. I had never seen her playing and she didn’t know any of my films. I just knew that she was an activist. So we came together completely impartially. We met in Berlin, where she had just moved to her apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, sat on moving boxes and ate Pho, a traditional Vietnamese soup, from a box. We just started talking about values ​​and how we want to work. I was so impressed by her attitude so that I thought: Okay, I want to work with her because it can be possible to enter into a partnership at eye level. There has never been a casting and we have never been rehearsals. I wrote the script with her in my head and always checked in whether that’s okay for her.

Your short film “Strawberland” from 2012 has won several prizes. Why do you report back to your first feature film more than ten years later?

From Germany I am constantly asked how we can bring such films through the support structure in Austria. The truth is: we fight for these films for ten years. You always have to present a finished, tangible product with a fixed genre. But good art just starts to get exciting where it is no longer predictable and where it may become dangerous and subversive. For me it was often said: we cannot categorize that. It was often not easy. And it hasn’t become easier either. I got five rejections in a row for my new project. I hope that with “How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the other World” we could prove that it has a value to make this form of work that is not quite as confectioned.

What does it mean for you that the film celebrates its premiere at the Berlinale?

I feel very much seen. It was a good coincidence that the “Perspectives” competition for first -time works was launched. Probably with the same thought that I also had. I wanted to take as many people as possible in the project who might not get this chance otherwise. The cameraman hadn’t even made a short film beforehand. The composer had never composed film music, and many of the cast have never been in front of the camera. The Berlinale is the best and most beautiful place that could have happened for this film. Then he opens the diagonal in Graz, this is my house festival that socialized me in film. The film has its Austrian theatrical release in autumn, and we very much hope that it will also be released in Germany.

“How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the other World”, Austria 2025. Director and screenplay: Florian Pochlatko. With: Luisa-Céline Gaffron, Elke Winkens, Cornelius Obonya and Harald Krassnitzer. 102 min.
February 18, 9:30 p.m., Cubix 5; February 20, 12.30 p.m., Colosseum 1; February 21, 9:30 p.m., Stage Bluemax Theater