It is rare to start an interview with a sigh. However, the first word — “football” — elicited just that from Soenke Wortmann, a very able and highly original German film director who briefly visited Saudi Arabia for a screening of the film that he feels is in danger of being defined by; “Deutschland: Ein Sommermärchen” (Germany: A Summer Fairy Tale). The film was screened to an invited audience of over 300 guests, some 50 percent of whom were Saudi, as part of the Saudi-German culture festival that has run for the past three months. For three years or so as a young man, Wortmann was a promising footballer. “I was semi-professional and I did make two films in a row that were about football. But this is not the only thing I am interested in,” he said in an interview on May 8.
To many both in Germany and across the world however, his definitive documentary film about the trials and tribulations of the German national squad in their attempt to win the World Cup in Germany in 2006 is the work that he is often defined by. It was his second film that used football as its dramatic vehicle.
The first, “Das Wunder von Bern” (The Miracle of Bern) which he made in 2003, was fiction and tells in parallel the stories of the unexpected West German miracle victory in the 1954 World Cup Final in Bern, and the story of a young boy and his depressed ex-POW father who are brought together by the German success. The film is an allegory and a portrait of post-war Germany. With over 6,000,000 cinema visitors, it remains one of Germany’s best-selling films. He gets numerous invitations to travel with the World Cup film — “but I do not show it too much — I have become very ‘picky’,” he said. “Now when I go to film festivals I get more questions about football than about films. There are worse things in the world and I can live with it.”
It is a good choice for an international audience. The subject matter is sure of wide interest and the exclusive ‘insider’ documentary footage reveals the fears and aspirations of heroic figures, making them fallible and human. “You have something you can connect with straight away as the Saudis are very fond of football — and I am sure they will understand the film even though it is to be shown without subtitles.”
He said that to combine making the film with an opportunity to get unique insights into the sport he loves, was for him was a challenging task and a great pleasure for him. “I got the opportunity to be with the team during the whole of their preparation time — in the hotel, the bus, going to the stadium. Before the matches and at half time I was in the locker room during the matches I was on the bench,” Wortmann explained.
“For me it was a great experience and for the audience in Germany it was a sensation because never before was it possible to be that close to national heroes.” Wortmann said that during the making of the film, he did not have many questions to ask. “I just wanted to show the things as they happened there and backstage — that was interesting enough.” He conducted a few interviews to add depth — “but it’s more about the sensation from pictures that had never been seen before.”
Wortmann’s professional life as a filmmaker has focused on areas completely different from football. He reflected that when he started, he was known for comedies and was; “Something of a culture shock for the German audience.” In 1991, his first feature film, “Allein unter Frauen” (Alone Amongst Women), made its debut and was very successful. The subject matter of these definitive films in German cinema was, at first sight, eccentric. Three militant feminists decide that the ultimate proof of their superiority in the battle of the sexes will be if they can convert a leather-clad man (whom they assume to be an oaf, an “arrogant, self-centered braggart”) into what they imagine is an archetypically sensitive man.
It was “Der Bewegte Mann” (The Maybe Man) first screened in 1995 that brought him critical acclaim and established him as a creative and serious director. The movie has a valid subject, the possibility of friendship between straights and gays. It deals in a frenetic but largely sympathetic documentary fashion, with gay life and treats it with relative naturalness.
“Most of the comedies (I make) use as their source what happens when someone special gets thrown into an environment — like a fish out of water where he is completely lost and in an area he does not understand,” Wortmann said. “That’s what happened in both Bewegte Mann and Alain unter Frauen.” With the making of “St. Pauli Night” (Red Light District), he said, he wanted to learn other things in his professional life. “The cycle of my soccer life was ended. I developed an interest in drama more than comedy. People say that if you can do comedy, you can do anything.” He agreed that comedy was a very serious business. “It looks very easy but it is not.”
Wortmann’s next film will be different again, set as it is in ninth century mediaeval Europe. Titled “Pope Joan” — it is the story of the — perhaps real — female pope. To get education when women by law and tradition could not, Joan disguised herself as a man and joined a monastery. She was a deeply religious woman and chose to enter a man’s world to be able to do what she wanted; to learn. She went from Greece, where she had become a respected academic, to Rome and became assistant to the incumbent pope and eventually ascended the papal throne for two years. The film marks the return of Wortmann to the ‘fish out of water’ thread that weaves its way through his comedies but this time with the making of a serious drama. “I hadn’t actually thought of it that way,” he mused, “but that has opened up a new area for me.”