Interview with director Frédéric Hambalek – “What Marielle knows” in the cinema: Suddenly glasses!

In “What Marielle knows”, twelve -year -old Marielle sees and hears everything her parents do – even if they are not near them. Is that a kind of return carriage against helicopter parents who even have a baby monitor with a camera these days?

In any case, it wasn’t thought that way. But it’s nice if this association exists. Of course, this phenomenon of the surviving and over -protecting parents is available in our time. If you talk to my parents’ generation, you can see that this is also a pretty new phenomenon.

Privacy issue is particularly strong in Germany. In “What Marielle knows” Julia and Tobias do not know how to deal with their new role and behave incredibly clumsy. A A little bit like they are the children. They are fighting, speaking in children’s language and seem to want to prove themselves before Marielle. In the end, this is an upturned reflection, the balance of power is also distributed differently.

That’s correct. The emotional core that resonates is how a child experiences who the parents are really, while in real life you are slowly developing more and more understanding of his parents and their real life over the years. Marielle experiences it like in a crash course in the shortest possible time. Due to marial new skills, the parents are suddenly glasses. On the other hand, it is an (impenetrable) black box for the parents and also for the audience.

Why did you decide to take parenting and not the view of the traumatized child? It is certainly not easy for Marielle to cope with all the new impressions and to see the parents in a new light.

It was particularly interesting for me as a two -time father because the parents have the real problem, so to speak. Upbringing also means living something that cannot be met. But you try to maintain an ideal, even if you often fail because of it yourself. One wonders whether there is another more honest model, whether there should be secrets or not.

Interview

Imago/DTS news agency

Frédéric Hambalek was born in Karlsruhe in 1986. From 2007 to 2014 he studied in the subjects of film science and American studies at the University of Mainz. During this time he gained initial practical experience in the film area. His feature film debut »Model Olimpia« was premiered in 2020 at the Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia. With his second feature film “Was Marielle Weiß”, Hambalek was invited to the Berlinale competition in 2025.

Laeni Geiseler (14) visited a musical school from the age of four from the age of four until she was twelve, in 2022 she had her breakthrough with the mystery series “Snow” as a girl with visual skills. Brigitte Hobmeier and Robert Stadlober played their parents at the time. To what extent this experience influenced the collaboration and what convinced it during the casting?

She came in and played a very difficult scene with a force and credibility straight away that it blew us away. Working with Laeni was really great and confirmed this first impression. At the first flap I realized how big her independence and how good her feeling of rhythm is and how much she can feel in Marielle. It is very smart and very talented. So I was able to deal with her like with all other actors.

The mother embodies Julia Jentsch. She is dressed by her marriage, wishes “a different taste, a different smell”. Why should Julia Jentsch play this role?

I find Julia Jentsch in every role in which I see her just always incredibly personable. It was interesting to fill the mother’s figure with her, which I just can’t be angry. As almost all of the characters in the film, Julia very often does unappealing things. So I thought: Then let’s see how far the sympathy is wearing and what that does with the viewer. At Felix Kramer it was a similar idea – only in the sense that Felix often appears as a man very physically and I give him a role in an intellectual milieu where he is rather weak.

What do the two have in the game brought in?

I generally do not speak so much with the actors beforehand, but let them do them first. I have often built on their ideas how a scene should be. Felix likes to improvise, for example by taking a break or putting a demand that is not in the script. When Marielle tells her father what the mother does because she hears and sees everything, even though she is far away, the two laugh a lot and are more relaxed. That just happened in the game of Laeni and Felix.

When Felix Kramer plans to give someone slap in the face in his role of father, he pulls out his wedding ring. They also had violent advice on the set. What was important to you?

We implemented the scene with the help of a stunt advice. Nobody was really driven, the slapes in the face are of course an illusion. If you represent something very intensive, you don’t need an incredibly dark mood on the set. We have often tried contrasting emotions. The question is ultimately: who are the figures? Are you totally serious in this very dramatic scene, or may you try to loosen up the mood because everything is so serious? All actors had a lot of fun because the scene itself has something tragicomic, which one would not suspect from the description.

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There are no special effects. Marielle confesses to her parents that she has telepathic skills. From then on the part of the script is. What models did you have for the film?

The first was Luis Buñuel for me because he suddenly made a requirement for people with whom they had to deal with without really seeing it. I am always amazed at how well this illusion works in the cinema. I wanted to focus on absolutely essential and, above all, show how the parents and daughter behave in this situation. And it just means leaving everything that could somehow distract or could go in a different direction. For me, the other role model was Ruben eastlund, which I admire very much to how he shows people how they try to cope with a situation, fail and thereby expose their own weaknesses.

“What Marielle knows”: Germany 2025. Director and script: Frédéric Hambalek. With: Julia Jentsch, Felix Kramer, Laeni Geiseler. 87 min. Start: April 17th.