Von Trotta is one of few German filmmakers attending the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where her film Searching for Ingmar Bergman is premiering on May 15. She told DW how the homage to the Swedish director came about.
The topic was actually offered to her, Margarethe von Trotta said to DW in an interview, listing the reasons: Firstly, she always told everybody, everywhere that legendary Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman had been her “master.” And secondly, von Trotta recalled, it was Bergman who inspired her to become a film director herself.
German director Margarethe von Trotta’s new work Searching for Ingmar Bergman will premiere on May 15 at the 71st Cannes Film Festival in the section “Cannes Classics,” which presents restored masterworks of film history, as well as documentaries on significant directors and film artists.
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Ingmar Bergman was born 100 years ago on July 14. Events commemorating his centennial birthday are expected to take place over the next months, and von Trotta’s work will likely to play an important role.
Searching for Ingmar Bergman contains clips from various films made by the Swedish director, as well as interviews with his artistic companions and family members. The German director traveled a lot for her project, visiting the original locations of Bergman films and exploring the cinematic universe of one of the most significant directors of the 20th century.
Von Trotta also met famous Bergman collaborators, such as actress Liv Ullmann and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere. She interviewed Bergman experts, as well as directors of various generations in order to find out how the Swedish filmmaker has continued to influence filmmakers through today.
A friendship with Scottish roots
But why did von Trotta choose to produce a documentary for what would have been Bergman’s 100th birthday? She had already met Bergman in 1977 in Munich. Due to accusations of tax evasion, the Swede had left his home country for Germany, where he directed films and also worked in theater.
It was only 13 years later that the contact between them grew closer. In 1990 Trotta and Bergman were both jury members of at the European Film Awards. As the jury’s first president, Bergman had the right to appoint the jury’s members: “That fall, we sat together, all by ourselves, in a remote golf hotel in Scotland.” Von Trotta remembers that the location was chosen by Bergman because “he was afraid of too many people around him.” Actress Deborah Kerr, screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Greek director Theo Angelopoulos and French actress Jeanne Moreau were also there.
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