Lunch with Kleptomami

An interview with Pola Beck, director of Kleptomami

 Where did the inspiration for the character come from? Was what she was going through something you were able to relate to or had experienced?
A few months after my son’s birth, I realized that I was not as cool and relaxed as I had always thought I would be as a young mother. To everyone around me I was a “role model mom”, but deep down inside I had the feeling of exploding and I was suddenly full of fears. My original wish “I want to make films, I want to work until I drop dead” changed to “Child and career? I just want to sleep.” I found myself stealing in a drugstore, I realized I had to face myself: “Be honest, stop playing perfect mom.” The shop-lifting had become a kind of substitute adventure in my new life on the “nursing pillow”. Thus, I decided to make a virtue out of necessity and to capture my “misery” cinematically. I really felt the need to deal with the contradictory perception of today’s motherhood. I believe that many young mothers (and also fathers) in western countries are like my protagonist. They are torn between their own claims and the reality in which they find themselves after the birth of their child. Mom and sexy. Career and child. Careful but fearless. We must conceal things in order to function. It is important to me, however, that we can also laugh about it.

 Can you tell us about your aesthetic choices? The use of montage for example? 
I wanted to create a very special, unique world for this film and I was very interested in “melting” two different worlds together. So the first step for this film was to research archive material. We shot real footage and the VFX artist merged it into the archive material. I really wanted to audience to question what’s real or what’s specially made for the film. An inspiration for merging archive and real footage was the music video Up&Up by Coldplay made by Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia.

 What motivated you to go down the dark humour route for this film?
Oh, the author Daniel Thomaser has a very dark humour. We developed the story together but the dialogue is his. Now he has become a father himself, and he suffers sometimes. But I console him, he is a great daddy.

 Can you tell us about casting the characters? 
Rosalie Thomass, who plays the main protagonist Lucy, is a famous actress in Germany. Luckily, she is a friend of mine, she is married to a director I have studied with. So I just asked her without casting her. Sebastian Schwarz, the male protagonist is a famous theatre actor and I knew he was able to play comedy. He is amazing, he just looks at the camera and I start laughing. I wanted someone for the security guy who is able to play funny but not ends up to be a cliché character. The same goes for the third protagonist Monika Oschek. I didn’t do a casting for this film. I just researched the actors and called agencies. They all loved the project and said yes immediately. It’s not always that easy.

 What are you keen to explore for your next project? 
I love family stories with strong emotions and I really want to make a great love story one day. Like Blue Valentine. But right now, I am doing a youth series, the German adaption of the Norwegian hit Skam. I am casting hundreds of young people between 15-20 now and it’s a marathon. Wonderful work. I have started “stalking” young people on Instagram since we are looking for absolute newcomers.

 What sort of freedom would you say the short format allows? 
To try out much more crazy stuff. After my first feature film, I thought I would never make a short film again. Felt like “going back to film school”. But then after shooting Kleptomami I was so happy I did it and my love for shorts is back now since I had so much freedom and just followed my instincts while making Kleptomami. When you develop a feature film there are so many people who try to influence you, the producers, the commissioning editor, the distributor, etc. And it takes ages. Kleptomami took eight months from idea to completion.

Kleptomami is being shown in International Competition I6.