“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”, interview with director Ollie Launspach

At the Future Frames – Generation NEXT of European Cinema 2026, organized by European Film Promotion and the 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Ollie Launspach presents Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, his graduation film from the Netherlands Film Academy, previously selected for the shorts competition at IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. What began as a portrait of his partner Sterre and the effect of his gender transition on her became, over the course of making the film, something closer to a self-portrait.

Starting a conversation with a camera

The film grew out of a conversation Launspach and Sterre had never quite managed to have. “Sterre and I hadn’t really talked about the influence of my transition on her for over three years, and for some reason we weren’t able to have that conversation. So I decided to use a camera as a way to start that conversation.” It worked, if in an unconventional way: “When you put a camera in front of your girlfriend, she will talk.” They started recording before either of them thought it would become a film.

The camera turns around

Launspach knew, in the back of his mind, that documentaries about the people closest to a filmmaker tend to end up being about the filmmaker too. “I knew the kind of cliché of a filmmaker making something personal and eventually, around the midpoint, needing to turn the camera around, because there’s always something inside of the filmmaker that is interesting and kind of turns the story around.” Still, the shift caught him off guard. After many conversations with Sterre that seemed to go nowhere, he feared the film was failing, until he reviewed the footage. “I watched all the interview material and I came to understand that something was happening with me during these conversations, and that was something I needed to explore more.”

A personal story, universally felt

Launspach admits he resisted the idea of making a film about himself. “I was at first very opposed to the idea of making something about myself. It can be very annoying to watch a filmmaker talk about himself a lot. So I was scared to be an annoying filmmaker.” What he found, instead, was something more widely shared than he expected: “I heard myself projecting a lot of negative thoughts about myself onto Sterre.” A feeling, he says, that reaches far beyond his own experience: “Having those negative thoughts about yourself is something not only trans people have, that’s something many, many people have, but it’s not much talked about.”

The privilege of European cinema

Asked what it means to him to be a European director, Launspach, still getting used to the title itself, points to the room European cinema leaves for personal, uncommercial work. “I feel like there’s a lot of space to experiment and make really author-driven films, which I think is the most important thing. I would love to make films that aren’t made for commercial purposes but are really truly about real, authentic people and stories, and I feel like Europe is the place to do that.”

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