Interview with Jessica Hausner, member of the Feature Film Jury

You know how it is to be selected in Competition since you were in Cannes two years ago. How do you think this experience will influence your role in the Jury?

In a way, yes, it will. I have been so lucky to have been at this Festival several times so I think I know about how it works and that helps. But it’s something completely different to see a whole selection.

What does Cannes mean for your career after five selections?

Cannes is the one the biggest festival that really shines a spotlight on your films, in Competition and also Un Certain Regard or other selections. My first film was selected in Un Certain Regard. It did help because the people who fund your film have more trust in you if a Festival like Cannes has already screened your film.

Each one of your films is a new experimentation, there is always a new way to film, a new idea for a shot or a new genre. Is it necessarily a new challenge each time?

It’s something that interests me a lot, to develop a certain film language, my own film language. From film to film, I develop it further. I wouldn’t even say it’s something different every time, it’s more like finding variations or finding new versions of my film language and this is my biggest pleasure in being a filmmaker. It’s a challenge and a pleasure to invent the “mise en scène” but also the cinematography.

How do you direct your actors? 

I tell them they have to be patient. It’s a very practical thing but in the shooting of my films, we repeat every scene quite a few times because we have long shots and sometimes they are very complicated. Because it’s not only the main actors, it’s also the extras, the camera’s movements, dialogue… We have to rehearse it a lot, to repeat it a lot and even if there is the tiniest mistake in the backgrounds, we have to do it all again. Sometimes the actors in the front were brilliant still we have to repeat it and some actors get frustrated with that, which I also understand.

You are also known as a producer with Coop 99. What kind of projects do you support?

I personally very much like films that go on over to a risky side in that they try out to use an unusual film language. I do think that the way a film is made says something more political than a political story.

“It is a political statement to make a film that is not in a conventional style because this is an attempt to open up your awareness for the world.” I find that very important for me, whereas to choose a daring topic but then to make a very conventional film out of it does not intrigue me so much.

 I find that very important for me, whereas to choose a daring topic but then to make a very conventional film out of it does not intrigue me so much.

Do you think genre cinema is less accessible for women or in some parts of the world?

The interesting thing about it is the diversity and the inclusion that happens nowadays and sadly we become more aware of the fact that genre is something very specific of a white male cinema basically of the US. It’s not something universal. So now that we see more films made by women, more films from Africa, from Asia, we suddenly understand genre film is just one section of a very specific part of the world and a gender and other people from other parts of the world have completely different ideas about style and storytelling.

Do you remember a cinema screening that particularly moved you?

Let me think… When I saw Paul Verhoeven’s film Turkish Delight (Turks Fruit). I saw it when I was just starting to study directing in film school, I was twenty or something, and it was a very hot summer in Vienna and no one went to the cinema, everyone went to go swimming. I had just separated from my boyfriend, I didn’t feel like having fun and I went to the cinema every day and I saw Turkish Delight. I was so fascinated by this film and it made me cry so much. I was deeply moved by that film and I saw it several times, I kept going to that screening.