ROALDIES

Short Talk with Fabian Weißenborn (director) and Pia Haltenberger (producer)

Germany / 2023 / 25’41’’

BEST STUDENT FICTION FILM Category

21st IN THE PALACE International Short Film Festival 2024

Synopsis: Manfred dreams of performing with his band on a big stage for one last time. When he hears about a music competition in Bremen, he sees it as his chance. Manfred's friends and former band members Franz, Klara and Rudi, however, do not want to take this step. But what they do not know: Manfred is sick. Really sick.  So the chaos group sets off for Bremen in their rickety tour bus after all, but they will never arrive in Bremen.

Biography: Fabian Weißenborn was born in a small town in the Bavarian alps, but moved to Munich quickly after school to start working in the film industry. He discovered his passion for film in primary school and took his parents to the cinema anytime possible. It´s the joy of life and the many opportunities living on this planet, that inspire him to make movies and show what it´s worth living for. Being a director means staying that fascinated 15-year-old boy for a small part, which is the most amazing thing he can imagine!

Fabian Weißenborn, director

In The Palace: You show the struggles of a band in a specific age category, which was once young, performing on stage, living their dream, but now they have a problem with going on stage. Why is that?

Fabian Weißenborn (director): I think that they had never been a good band or something and they actually never performed on big stages, but they still have this dream to do so, regardless of being older. For them that is something that is still missing in their life, it is important for them to fulfill this dream.

In The Palace: What was the meaning of this movie, what did you want the audience to understand from it?

Fabian Weißenborn: In my opinion most student films are kind of depressing, which is totally fine. I do not have to watch them, but we wanted to create something that is 100 % fun. So, when the audience comes out of this movie they will feel happy. All the good vibes in this movie are really important for me.

In The Palace: How was the work with the music? Did you have a writer or you worked with music bands for this film?

Fabian Weißenborn: Music was kind of tricky and the performance part we pre-recorded was a catastrophe. We did not rehearse it in advance and we had two hours to do the full recording and the actors never played together. We had a few friends to play the instruments and the actors to sing.

In The Palace: What other challenging situations have you had?

Fabian Weißenborn: The car was a challenge.

In The Palace: Really?  The car looks amazing in the film, I was about to say that I loved the choice of vehicle.

Pia Haltenberger (producer): Especially production-wise we always called the car “one of our main stars” as well as definitely it gave us a headache, it broke down like two or three times. It is beautiful, but it was tricky, but also as Fabian mentioned, when we were recording that very last stage scene, we had some difficulties with the location, because there happened to be a misunderstanding: we were told we can stay there till the end and then we were kicked out by ten. That was a bit funny. We had a lot of fun working with such experienced actors, that was the first time for us.

In The Palace: Tell us more about how you found the actors and how you decided on the whole plot?

Fabian Weißenborn: The story is based on the fairy tale “Town Musicians of Bremen" by Brothers Grimm and in the fairy tale there are these old animals that go to Bremen to become musicians. We adopted the story, but we changed the animals to humans. Finding the actors was kind of easy, because there was an agency called “60+” and they only had older actors and they were really a handful

In The Palace: How was working with them?

Fabian Weißenborn: I was a bit scared in the beginning, because they were so experienced, however, they were super sweet and working with them was fantastic. They were telling jokes all day and we learned a lot about celebrating and enjoying life from them.

Pia Haltenberger: I feel like they were the life of the party, to be honest. A lot of our crew members were our age and sometimes we stayed so focused, trying to do the best we could, that we might have lost the fun spark, a little bit, out of sight. And the actors definitely brought that back to us.

Author's view (Petar Penev):

A rather light-hearted take on the not so fun themes of aging and nostalgia are on the forefront in the graduation film by film student and director Fabian Weissenborn, driven by his idea that ‘ it’s easy to overcome bad times with humor and good friends’.
 
Rather that a statioary retrospection the life the charecters in this film manage to use nostalgia as a drive to push forward and try and live their best life in the present as one never knows when the final opportunity for happiness wil close its door. The journey is not presented as easy as rearly anything in life is but the tradeoff proves more than worth it to bring a light to a hardship.
 
Reminiscent of an old-school road trip movie while keeping young in spirit this bittersweet exploration of friendship and mutual support and the meaning they have is sure to leave a smile on your face and keep you thinking on its themes.