Nora Fingscheidt – System Crasher #TIFF18

PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Nora Fingscheidt, director of the film System Crasher.

To listen to the interview, click on the ► icon on the right, just above the picture

Having met filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt after the premiere of her new film, System Crasher, earlier this year at the Berlinale (where she was awarded with the Alfred Bauer Silver Bear), we meet her again on the occasion of the screening of the film at the 2019 Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj, Romania. Still completely shaken and stirred by the power of the film, we ask her to tell us more about the making of the film but also how System Crasher could contribute to the discourse of child welfare. Fingscheidt talks with us about her research in several institutions, a painstaking four-year-long writing process and meeting the Helena Zengel, the young actress who plays the lead role of nine-year-old girl Benni, who is simply a force of nature. But celebrating it also as a work of powerful cinema, our conversation touches on influences, tone and rhythm, with passing reference to the legendary Francois Truffaut, whose works from The 400 Blows to Small Change to The Wild Child and beyond did much to tell real stories that mattered about children.

System Crasher: She is small, but dangerous. Wherever Benni ends up, she is immediately expelled. The wild 9-year-old girl has already become what child protection services call a “system crasher”. And she is certainly not looking to change her ways. Because Benni has one single goal: to be back at home with her mommy! But Bianca is scared of her own daughter. Mrs. Bafané from child protection services is trying her best to find a permanent placement for Benni. She hires the anger management trainer Micha as Benni’s school escort and suddenly there is a seed of hope. Will Micha be able to succeed where all others despaired?