Carolina Hellsgård – director – Wanja

FRED’s Matt Micucci interviews Carolina Hellsgard, director of the film WANJA, which screened at the 60th edition of the Cork Film Festival.

WANJA is the first feature by Hellsgaard, so she talks about how the transition from short to feature was. We also talk about her aims at achieving a type of minilalistic cinema that does not try to manipulate a viewer’s emotions through, for instance, fancy editing or music – Carolina also took over on the editing during post production.

We talk about her relationship with the cast, and the various influences that helped shape her feature, as well as her future project, which she is currently working on and her more general thoughts on female representation in cinema today.

WANJA: The former bank robber Wanja is released from a long prison sentence. As her feelings of loneliness escalate, Wanja sets out to find work and hereby a new identity. Against all odds she lands an internship at a horse race track. In the stable she gets to know the troubled teenager Emma, and a strong friendship develops between the two women. When Emma slips deeper into her own drug abuse, Wanja decides to rescue her.