Elisabeth Scharang on WOODLAND (TIFF 2023) – Marina Richter interviews

After her debut in Toronto in 2015 with the true events inspired thriller Jack about serial killer Jack Unterwegger that screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section of the festival, Austrian helmer Elisabeth Scharang is back in the official selection with her breath-taking drama Woodland about one woman’s struggle to cope with a deep scarring trauma. Set up in a secluded village in Waldviertel, the story unfolds slowly, carefully introducing new elements along the way. This multi-facetted film addresses many illnesses of our contemporary life without being preachy or didactic, focusing on its main character(s) to speak about what happens once we’re torn out of our comfort zone. Says Elisabeth Scharang: “When people get murdered or really hurt, even if you are physically present you feel like you don’t have the right to call yourself a victim”

AWFJ’s Marina Richter sat down to talk with Elisabeth Scharang shortly before the world premiere of “Woodlands”.

Marina Richter: You are in Toronto with your drama “Woodlands” that made it to the official selection of the festival. How does it feel to be back, presenting a completely different, intimate kind of film to the festival audience?

Elisabeth Scharang: Since I am European, I should probably be saying something like “European festivals are all I wish for”, but I am actually very happy that “Woodlands” made it to Toronto because I had a wonderful and important experience in 2015. On my last day with “Jack”, a meeting with an agent led to several invitations to LA where I was introduced to many people. I got a chance to speak about projects and read a lot of scripts. It’s funny, because I never intended to go to Hollywood and make a career there, but what happened back then was immensely important for my work. When you live and work in one country, you carry all your stories on your back. But going to Hollywood and talking to all those amazing producers and seeing posters of my favourite movies on the walls gave me a new perspective on my own work. That is why going to Toronto was very important, and why I am very much looking forward to return.

I had an impression that the whole city was waiting for my film because the audience was amazing. Ordinary people sat in the cinema, and this is precisely the type of audience I am making my films for. As much as I like to talk to you as a journalist right now, I do not make films for critics. They are made for ordinary people who laugh and cry, who often ask me surprising questions that open discussions. They end up telling me their own stories that I can understand, and they make me see my work from their own perspective. Such interactions are always fun, exciting and emotional. I have only good memories of Toronto.

MR: Woodland is a cinematic experience very different from everything you did so far in terms of the narrative and setting. Although its story is based on the best-selling novel by Doris Knecht, you turned it into something else by altering the source of trauma and adding extra characters and side plots.

ES: When I read Doris’ book, I was immediately attracted to it. The story was about the fear of not being able to control something bigger happening, which in her case was the financial crisis. All the money, for instance, invested in art, was gone. In the book, one gets the sense of the fear a freelancer feels when the system in which she was active isn’t functioning anymore. There is a question of a due rent or mortgage, and how to deal with the new situation. At the same time, I was aware that this book wasn’t really made to become a film because there were no dialogues. The main protagonist only speaks to herself and there are no proper scenes described, so I knew that I had to make changes. Additionally, the financial crisis felt very historic at the time when I started working on the script, with the world preoccupied with other pressing questions such as climate crises. Suddenly, we had totally other issues of relevance to discuss, which were – besides the above-mentioned, the #metoo movement.

Regarding the side plots, it was something that came naturally to me. The bond between the man and the woman, although interesting, wasn’t my vision of a relationship I wanted to depict. I didn’t have a feeling that I wanted to speak about something like that, and instead of the love story I was interested in the woman herself. From the very beginning, I invented a new character – Gerti, Marin’s neighbour and best friend. She was not in the book, but she was the one who guided me through the five years of work on the script. Gerti was always there, and I could relate to her. At the end I had to put the script away because I still I didn’t find a key to Marian. I knew that sometimes you just need to wait and that you can’t force things. But then, November 2nd happened and with it this terrible terror attack, one day before the complete lockdown in Vienna. I didn’t immediately understand that something happened to me although I wasn’t physically harmed. When people get murdered or really hurt, even if you are physically present you feel like you don’t have the right to call yourself a victim. But the day after the terror attack, I looked at myself from the outside and I had to recognize that I was somehow falling apart.

Due to the lockdown in Vienna no one was out, no one talked about what happened, but we walked a lot through the woods. Everyone walked a lot. During one of those walks shortly after the attack, the story of Marian and my story started coming together. We began meeting each other with an incredible ease. I sat down and re-wrote the script within one month. At the end, I don’t think that reasons for Marian’s decision to leave her home and the city bare any relevance, but I needed to understand her character. That brought us very close to each other, and from that time on it became easy to follow her on her journey. What happened to me started making sense because I could use it to craft the story.

MR: It is interesting that Marian goes to heal her trauma in a place of her childhood hurt. We don’t know what happened back in past, but that ‘something’ is hanging in the air.

ES: That is why I said that it is not that important why she left her home because it could have been any given reason. The real threat comes much later, and she is ready for it. With many years that have passed by, she is ready to face something that caused her so much pain that she had to flee and leave everything behind including her best friend Gerti. It was not easy to write something about a planless person, about a woman who has no idea where she will be in a week. Yet, I decided to accept her as she is without knowing what will happen next during the writing process. That’s why there are barely any dialogues in the film’s first 15 minutes, and why I described the things of relevance instead. You know, the urban environment and our everyday life is not interesting at all. But when you experience an extreme situation, how do you go to sleep? How do you wake up? What will you eat? Do you meet someone to talk to? Every little thing in our life becomes worth to be analysed. I went into it by just being beside her, taking one step at the time. She didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t have a plot for her. That’s how we moved forward, and from time to time it was surprising to discover what she decided to do. It was quite a ride for me.

MR: Would you say that coming from a predominantly documentary background and being a journalist who is regularly talking to people from all walks of life, was to your advantage while creating Woodlands?

ES: I have been doing a mix of documentary, fiction, radio work, and talks for 25 years now. I cannot imagine leaving any of it behind. I would also like to underline that when you work in the nature, you have no control of it in the slightest. There are no digital effects in Woodland because we had it all during the six weeks of shooting: snow, rain, sunshine, heavy clouds and clear skies. We were that lucky. Once such gifts are there, you’ve got to seize them which is what I have learned from making documentaries. You must cope with what’s there, and I love it. The other thing is that when I shoot documentaries or work for the radio people are coming with their stories and I am grateful for that because they are not getting paid for it. It’s one situation when you engage with actors, and completely other when you are working with real stories and real people. It makes all the difference. Very often this becomes quite challenging for the people in my team because they must be more flexible than working on something else with other film professionals. For me it is just a perfect combination.

MR: Do you search for stories or do the stories find you?

ES: It’s both I would say. I do a lot of reading and research, although not always in a deep way. I have recently created a new radio show called Field Recordings out of the urge to find out more about people’s working environments in the 21st century. I go to a specific working environment and talk to people, and this helps me not constantly telling stories about the world I am living in. I very often ask myself how the others live and manage to make ends meet. We, as the white privileged lot must admit that we most probably do not live the most exciting lives, and the environment we live in also isn’t that inspiring. That is why so many stories end up feeling boring because there are milieus much more interesting than ours. This kind of work helps me to get in touch with other people’s lives and their experiences.

MR: I would like to address the multi-layered narrative of Woodland. The film is not only about one woman dealing with her trauma, but also about her clash with the antiquated patriarchal system with specific ideas about family and gender roles, and harsh weather conditions. How did you put the puzzle pieces together?

ES: It wasn’t easy. On the one hand, in the last 3-4 years I developed a strong interest in film-political work regarding gender quota, or the inclusion of women, and this had a big influence on my storytelling. I ‘grew-up’, so to speak, mostly with men in my working environment. This was the case until approximately 2010. My relationships to women working in this industry grew stronger only in the past 10 years. Two years ago I founded an association of female directors because we needed another kind of discussion. This is all influencing what I am doing in my films.

In Woodland, this is concretely visible in the relationship between Marion and Gerti: their conversational topics, their relationship to Franz, and the question if he is in the spotlight of the story or just at the margins. Everything is very mixed up. I have to say that I did not do much research on the life in the village. I also didn’t grow up in such a place, but in Vienna. On the other hand, my grandmother lived in a very small town in Styria, so I think that I have a very good sensor about what is going on there. But it is more about how women deal with such expectations of them coming from men: how they should behave and what goals they should strive for. For instance, Gerti is going her way in one sense, but on the other she chooses to stay in her position of a victim. Both women have their positive and negative sides. They are not just good persons. This is what interests me a lot, because that is what we all are.

MR: The casting choices are excellent. Did you have a very clear idea about the actors for the two lead characters from the beginning?

ES: I had Brigitte Hobmeier on my mind from the very start. I’ve been wanting to work with her since a while. We met ten years ago at a film party and had a short chat. I wanted to work with her because she has a very special face, and I needed an actress who could express a lot without much talking. I needed to find someone whose presence would be enough in front of the camera. It could also have been the other way around with her playing Gerti since she already had a lot of roles like that. What spoke against it was my wish to see her as a modern, urban woman who comes back to the countryside for the reason that you don’t see that very often in a movie.

I had only two options for Gerti which were extremely different. The other actress was more of a head person and not that warm as Gerti Drassl. I made only one casting with Birgitte and both actresses together, and everything was perfectly clear because they were such a good match. Regarding Franz, there were many actors I would be interested to work with, but I returned to Johannes Kirsch because he played a lot of bad guys and I wanted to see him in a role of a father and a vulnerable man. That wasn’t easy because he likes to invest power, and I told him that I don’t need that and that he should throw it away.

MR: Speaking of a perfect match, you united again with cinematographer Jörg Widmer. Can you tell us something about your collaboration and challenges?

ES: We have planned this film for years. After Jack it became clear to us that our collaboration wasn’t over. We simply shared many interests. We are very playful, and we talk a lot on the phone even if we do not have a project together. It was funny in a way, because the crew would be away for the weekend, and Jörg and I were on the field without assistance. We would explore the woods, fly the drone, wait for the clouds. We basically did all the things together when we didn’t need a big team involved, and we were excited about everything that happened in front of the camera. So, we had a lot of weekends working alone and that was fantastic. You know, just sitting in the house with the view from the window, waiting for things to happen brought us a lot of joy. Even when we worked with the team it happened that the two of us would just disappear with the camera, and my assistant would warn me that I shouldn’t be doing that. Sometimes we simply forgot everything around us in order to make that one shot, so the team just followed. Knowing about our bond and understanding was helpful for the rest of the team.

MR: There is a hilarious story about how you found the cottage which in the film belonged to Marian’s grandparents.

ES: I get very sentimental when I think about it. I spent so much time there that I got the feeling they were my family too. Of course, it’s not what it is, but you could smell and feel the presence of that woman who was born in the house where she spent her whole life. She grew up there, she got married there, she got her children in that house and died in it. Most importantly, she was happy there. The house was full of her pictures always showing her laughing even as an old woman. She loved working in the garden and having a glass of wine, and it felt good to have her around and to know it was ok for us to be there. Her granddaughter who gave us the access to the house obviously loved her very much, which is why everything was left the way it was before. I was allowed to use that woman’s pullovers that were in a very good shape because everything was taken care of. We were totally allowed to use things.

We went to the house with Brigitte a couple of times before the shooting, just sitting in the kitchen while the family were showing us how to make fire – which was really complicated because there was so much smoke. Brigitte was taught how to handle things. I shot some really funny videos, and there is a lot of material to make a documentary about it. Whatever we found in the house was completely amazing: old calendars, postcards, personal items. It’s not a museum, it’s a testimony of one woman’s life.

MR: The music plays an undoubtfully big role in your movies. Can can you tell us something about the original score?

ES: Usually, I make music choices before I start shooting a movie. For me the music is just like a dialogue. It is something I cannot write, an inner voice I am listening to. For Woodland I was waiting a long time to decide, which is not typical for me. I would normally decide very fast about everything. Usually, when I can’t make a decision, I respect that. Strangely, when I started working on this film, I was faced with a multitude of creative breaks. In that sense, I needed to feel how the movie sounded like particularly in connection with the nature. What I knew is that I needed a voice, a female one, but I couldn’t say what kind of. And then I ran into the studio session by Hania Rani on Youtube whom I never heard of before. I used quite a lot of her music as a layout, and I approached her management who told me it was a pity I didn’t contact them a half a year before because she was on the world tour and busy. She has just done the score for the TV miniseries The Lost Flowers of Alicia Heart, and if you listen to it, you will immediately find out why I asked her to compose the music for my film. I was also told I didn’t have enough money to offer. I understood but I knew that she had a concert in Vienna, so I went there. I met her and told her to have one look at the rough cut of Woodland, and if she had no idea what was coming up, I would never bother her again. I also told her that I was sure she was the right person for it. At the end she did watch the rough cut and she said that even if it did not make any sense and she didn’t have the time, she’d do it. Although she was never in Vienna, I simply knew she was the right person. I let it flow, and it happened.

MR: Is there anything you would like to tell us about Woodland that feels particularly important to you?

ES: It seems obvious that this is a personal film, but I can not help thinking about one particular moment that meant a lot to me. It was one of the last days of the shooting with a long dialogue scene when Marian talks for the first time about what happened to her. During the rehearsal for this scene in the house, I noticed that Birgitte was really uncomfortable. The two of us went out and I asked her what was wrong. She told me she was nervous because I was in the same room, and she knew that I experienced that trauma (gets very emotional and teary). It is crazy that you make a film based on the script that you re-wrote and keep it at some kind of distance, and at the end of this whole journey together you realize that it is about your life. We were standing in front of the house, hugging and smoking a cigarette looking at the woods, and I knew it that being there and doing exactly what we did was the only right thing. The film brought it all together. People often say that you make art to heal yourself which absolutely wasn’t my intention, but I think that it’s ok when it happens. Although that wasn’t my focus, it ended up as a healing journey for me. I needed her to be my mirror in order to understand what happened.