Anna Justice

Anna Justice is not slow to blame her family for her becoming a filmmaker! It’s in a good way, however, because "I grew up in a large, close family and really like being around and living with people! Filmmaking is about teamwork, getting to know people, forming and making relationships." There it is: she puts things up front and center, no dissembling here.

Her English is excellent, having originally wanted to be a translator and going to the US, ending up in L.A. although she "actually wanted to go to Canada!" But it ended happily because she "got to see a lot of films and realized I was starting to think I could make them!" especially as "painting and photography were already something of a passion for me. I spent a lot of my free time after school trying to learn and understand them, teaching myself as much as I could about them."

School in America being too expensive she applied to Berlin’s DFFB: "A great decision, I never regretted. It gave me time to try things out, I met a lot of great people and it really helped me to find what I wanted to do." She also started adapting, doing rewrites, and has just optioned an Australian novel, "Beatle Meets Destiny", by Gabrielle Williams. It’s "a story about change, chance and everybody doing the wrong things! It can also be used as a practical guide on how to get yourself into a real mess over ordinary things!" It is a comedy, in case you are wondering.

Anna Justice is "into quirk!" and quirky characters when it comes to comedy. "There was room beyond this very simple boy-meets-girl story for humorous filmic expression. You can relate to the characters because they just mess up so much in a humorous way."

Some directors are driven by style over character, with her it is the reverse and Anna Justice is not about to let something like genre hamper her style: "My previous films have all been very different," she explains. "Right now I’m doing a political thriller. There’s no title at present but it’s a French-German co-production, a TV-movie, about nuclear energy. I’m directing it, not rewriting it!" she adds.

She recently worked on a fairytale, "Pinocchio", which was "a double feature, giving me more time to tell the story." Definitely not the Disney version, hers combines 3D animation and live action, something she would love to do again." I thought it wasn’t my material but once I got started I realized there is a lot of creative freedom here. As difficult as it was technically, it was extremely interesting."

"Pinocchio" made her realize "I really like challenges. You shoot live action, then empty plates, live action shots with nothing in them, for the animation to be inserted afterwards. You have a medium shot of rocks, then a close up of them, then a close up of blue sky. Editing is cutting empty shots together. You have to envision the final result while working from a storyboard. It’s complicated and needs a lot of preparation."

Anna Justice makes no bones, no complaints, about being "a gun for hire. People see my work and hire me, which is great. My agent, Mechtild Holter from Players, has given me the opportunity to very different films, which is great, without getting typecast. I’d love to do another fairytale and also a historical drama."

She has done one already, of course, "Die verlorene Zeit" ("Remembrance"), a WWII drama. Here she set herself "the challenge of not making just another concentration camp film. It’s really about what occurred in Poland in 1944." Once again she undertook research she describes as "immense" but then "condensed everything into very few scenes."

Because it is also a true story, she went for "authenticity by having all the characters played by nationals of whichever country, Germans, Poles, Americans, speaking their original language." She even undertook Polish lessons, describing directing "all-Polish actors in all-Polish scenes" as "interesting.""I had to trust them and also work with the translator, working off their expressions and body language."

"You give away a great deal of control in these circumstances and it was great! I really enjoyed just listening to the sound of voice and watching their gestures and deciding whether it worked for the scene. It was actually very enjoyable to trust them. I invite them to change the text if they want to, I want creative input from the whole team. Someone has to say yes or no, of course, that’s my job, but I like it to be a team effort. When working with children (this lady clearly knows no fear!) you have to do it playfully, figuring out the problemwithout them feeling they have to serve a rigid system of scenes and text."

She also knows the importance of serving the material, hence "my political thriller will be a political thriller! The fairytale was a fairytale! I watched all the other 'Pinocchio' films and didn’t want to do any of that! I always start trying to do the genre."

Even though she was "a director for hire, they became my films, as if they had always been my projects. Take "'Pinocchio': there are some thirty versions!" So how do you do your own? "The writer went to the source," she explains, "and also invented new characters for the dramatic arch. It was so much fun. I am fascinated by exploring the technical possibilities of film, that’s why I love changing genre." Returning to her current project, she is "watching a great many thrillers at the moment to get my mindset as to how they work."

Like other directors, she uses music, not when writing but "when I need to think about things. Or not about them! Just to get a feeling. It captures the mood. I play it to the DoP for example, sometimes to the actors. For my upcoming film I’m looking at French pop songs, partly because a lot of the action takes place in France." She continues: "Whether it captures the mood of the whole film or just a scene or sequence, music is an essential part of inspiration.” She is also a converted and now convinced fan of the value of storyboarding: "it helps all departments."

When it comes to fellow directors, she admires "Many. Everyone who has made a good film, from the beginnings of filmmaking until today, including documentaries. It seems unfair to pick a few when there are so many interesting, beautiful, funny, captivating films out there. The same goes for actors.” However, when prodded, she names "four fantastic directors: Michael Haneke, Michael Mann, Mike Leigh and Wes Anderson."

During those times when she is not sitting in that folding chair with the word 'Director' on the back, Anna Justice "loves to work in the garden! And I would love to start painting again. I read a lot and am also the mother of two teenage daughters." In any event, one thing she is sure about: "I hope my future projects will include more foreign language films. I really like to do that."

Author: Simon Kingsley