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In 2018, she starred inTransit, her first collaboration with the much adored Berlin School auteur Christian Petzold.
Though her appearances in the film are relatively brief, she and Rogowski showed hints of their tremendous chemistry.
As withFrantz, even amid the horrors of war, romance bubbles to the surface.
Thus far, at least.
Its been over a year sinceUndinepremiered at the Berlin Film Festival.
How was that experience different for you?
The Berlinale was always this huge, huge festival in my own hometown.
I was like,What just happened?
How do you thinkUndinewill be received by American audiences?
Well, thats really hard to tell.
Its a good movie for her.
Shes such a compelling character, and therere so many layers there.
How did you interpret that side of her?
He just loves shooting one take, and then youre really nailed, like,Okay, thats it.
That was quite a challenge.
Its sort of the modern sirens call.
That made it really alive, and beautiful that people were actually listening.
Petzold Im thinking particularly aboutTransitnow often deals with a sense of timelessness.
Along with the historical stuff, I think Undine exists outside of a specific temporal space.
Its almost as if shes out of tempo with everyone else.
Yeah, I really like that about Christians way of telling stories.
He doesnt just bring the story to fact, like, the story happens here and then.
He makes it more universal by pulling the conflict out of context.
Its set today, but really it happened nearly 100 years ago.
I want to talk a little about your earlier career.
Youve been performing since you were 14, right?
Five years on fromFrantz, is your career where you imagined it would be?
Oh no, no, absolutely not.
I always loved acting; I always loved shooting, telling stories, finding characters and discovering scripts.
And I always think thats more interesting than imagining myself what kind of character I would like to play.
In that time youve worked with a lot of the great contemporary auteurs Ozon, Petzold, von Donnersmarck.
Were there any particular lessons you learned from them?
They all work so differently.
Shooting a movie is so stressful, youre working with so many new people its so exciting.
Filmmakers all have their own vision.
You have to be able to deal with that, to be fluid, and to be open.
I mean, for me, Hollywood right now is just, its just a word its … somewhere.
But I would love to work in different countries, and to shoot in English or different languages.
So I would love that.
But Im not forcing anything.
I think anything that happens, it happens for a reason.
And if not, thats a reason, too.
