When one thinks of the cinema of Berlin, few films strike such an emblematic chord as Christiane F., Uli Edel’s 1981 cult classic. The film is based on the 1978 biographical book Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, later published in English as Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. Christiane Felscherinow was an abject, disillusioned teen from a poverty-stricken high-rise in the Neukölln district of Gropiusstadt.
Initially through a local journalist, Felscherinow documented her life story in detail, from her domestic difficulties to her kindredship with a group of teens who lurked in and around West Berlin’s largest train station, Bahnhof Zoo, and became her dysfunctional and drug-affected family. Three years later, Edel’s film stayed true to the text, and for the lead he cast an unknown teenager from West Berlin: 13-year-old Natja Brunckhorst.
This is Berlin to me: a place pivotal to my relationship with cinema. Going alone, paying with my own pocket money, finding my voice.
The film, aided by a soundtrack from David Bowie, premiered to critical acclaim and has since become a staple of international underground cinema. Brunckhorst, too, became a German cinema icon, quickly nabbing a role in a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film. She retreated from public life for her young adult years, but has since returned to the screen for a prolific film career that has spanned acting, screenwriting (for which she won a LOLA award in 2001) and directing.
Her most recent film, Zwei zu eins (2024) – also based on true events – is a comedic crime romp starring Sandra Hüller and set in the aftermath of the fall of Wall, in which a Communist family discovers a bunker full of soon-to-be-worthless money. The film was recently released in the UK as Two to One, and is now enjoying an international breakthrough. We sat down with Brunckhorst, now 58, to talk about her defining role as a teen, her approach to screenwriting, and life as one of Germany’s most enduring cinematic talents.
First, congratulations on the international release of Two to One. What has it been like to see this project hit theatres internationally?
What can I say about Two to One? I really enjoyed the film. And I’ve seen it many times now! You know, sometimes you work on a film for something like eight years. It’s easy to forget the film itself, [and] then you sit in the cinema with the audience and you laugh and they laugh with you. For me that’s a sign that the film is good.
Recently I’ve been at international screenings and I’m still enjoying it every time I see it. The main reason being because I love the actors I cast so much. I’m really in love with them. I’m in love with Sandra Hüller, I’m in love with Olli Dittrich and Max Riemelt – all of the actors, who are [all] really well-known in Germany. Their characters in this film are so lovable, so I’m so happy this film has now been sold all over the world a year later.
The film has some real humour at its heart. Do you find that different audiences, say, the British audience you premiered to just a few months ago, respond differently to different moments?
You know, I was standing in front of the audience at the Chicago Film Festival and I said, “You know I’m German, and as you know, Germans have no humour, so is there someone here who understands German?” And someone put up their hand. I said, “Well, when they laugh, you all laugh with them.”
That’s my kind of humour – I love British humour and was born and raised with Monty Python. It’s in me. I was born in West Berlin, so I’ve had a lot of British people around me growing up. I take their humour for my work. And on the other hand, I love the colours in French films, so I always feel like I’m making films from the colour influences of French cinema, with that British humour – that’s my way to make films, taking different pieces of inspiration.
What made you want to make the switch to directing?
I’ve been in the film industry for 43 years now, so I have various positions of knowledge ingrained in me. With directing, I just feel like this is my place that I’ll stay now. Starting out directing, I always thought it meant you have to know everything to the end degree, and I didn’t, so I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it and I had a fear regarding it.
I then began to realise it’s actually about having the best experts in their departments around you, and you’re the one bringing everyone together, making everyone feel connected. If you have wonderful experts and a team of actors, you just have to be nice to them!
Actors I obviously know well, their feelings and needs. I’m not sure a lot of directors know enough about this – actors have to open up their souls, and to do this they have to feel really safe. And in order to do this, every actor needs something different. You have to get a feeling and love for the actors so that you’re there if they need you.
Christiane F. is such an integral part of Berlin’s contemporary film history. Could you talk a little about being cast as Christiane F. and the film’s cultural impact, both at the time and now decades later? It’s so interesting seeing how the landscape has changed, walking past the locations now and thinking back to the film…
I’ve [talked] so much about this movie to so many people over the years. I was very young, 13 when we started shooting, and [turned] 14 while shooting. And actually – because previously people have asked, seeming to presume something different – I actually had a hell of a fun time shooting it and playing the role!
There’s a difference [when] you’re aware you’re playing a role or if you’re not aware. I always knew I was playing a role. As a young girl, I just had quite a naive take on it, and that was wonderful. I just did what the director said. He said walk from there to there, I walked from there to there. Say the line there, I said the line. Vomit on the wall, I vomited on the wall.
There was no bad thinking about it, I just did what was asked of me and I had so much fun in the experience. My husband once said that I had my heaven there because it was such a ‘held’ [supported] experience with all the team, they were so friendly. And I was there everyday – I mean, I was in every scene. So I was really a part of the team.
I came every morning like a soldier coming to the set. In my world, I saw the work of filmmaking as a complex thing, composed of little pieces, very tiny pieces, even just walking from here to there. And then you’re putting all that together into the final film. I like it; it’s like a puzzle. This structure always worked really well for me.
I imagine being summoned to national prominence at the age of 14, acquiring that level of fame, was a challenge. Was this why you left for England and Paris?
Yes. No one told me that would happen after Christiane F. was released. You know, beforehand, they just said, “We need a thin girl to play this role, do you want to come to the casting?” And I was just like, sure, if I have to. Very nonchalantly! I went, the rest is history but no one said afterwards, “It might be a hard time for you, people will stare at you.”
When the film was released when I was 14, I couldn’t even go to see it legally! I had to go to school every day for an hour on a public bus being harassed. It was no joke. I had school classes coming to “look at where Christiane F. lived”. I’d come out of the house and they’d shout, “There she is!”
That was a hard time. I was cutting my hair really short and wearing 50s suits – this was the start of the 80s, so it was sexy to be male as a female, so I was wearing the suit and everyone thought I was a little boy. Only then I could walk through Berlin a little more at ease. So I left early, at 15, for London.
Can you talk about your path back to the film industry? What was the drive to eventually return to the screen?
After the film, I was getting sent so many scripts, so many. They were piling up. I was 14 and was not able to sort them out. I didn’t understand what I was meant to do with them. And no one really asked me if this was something I wanted to pursue. My parents had other things to do, they had their lives to live. I was sitting with these piled-up scripts, staring at them, saying no because I didn’t know what to do.
But I always loved acting from the start. I loved being on set. I loved these puzzles to piece together, the way I see filmmaking, as I mentioned before. When I was 17 or 18 someone approached me, asking if I wanted to do it again – there were always people getting in touch like this. I learned later the key is to find the right projects, and when I was young I didn’t have enough help to figure that side out so I just said no to it all.
Later I grew up and could make choices, and it was then I decided to go to acting school. This was after living in London and shrugging the whole acting thing off, still finding my way after those experiences. After London, I was in Paris modelling for some time. People were casting me as the tiny heroin-chic Christiane F. type, and then I also realised modelling wasn’t my path.
So I came back to Germany and said, “Well, what now?” I was 18 or 19 at the time, ready to ask myself what it was I wanted to do with my life. And it was clear – I think I do really want to try acting – so I went to acting school. After acting for some time, life changes such as [having] children made acting not so easy, so then I began screenwriting. The structure of family life helped me with the screenwriting process.
Today, you’re based in Hamburg, but you grew up in West Berlin. Did you have any cinema experiences growing up here that had any influence on your work as a filmmaker?
I think Berlin is a city with lots of great small Kinos. In the 70s and 80s I began my cinema career looking at films at the Kino. I had two friends, and one of their fathers owned a Kino at the time. I must have been about nine; we were standing in front of the Kino because at the time that was where you went to get your sweets. We were standing there and written on the board was “West Side Story”, and I thought wow, I want to see that. My friends were only interested in the sweets, so I went in alone.
I was in the first row with my sweets watching West Side Story, and it absolutely blew me away – the emotions, the music, the visuals. It was really special. That was my first movie experience. [Later], sometimes my father would take me. We’d see Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Woody Allen pictures. After that me and one of my girlfriends would go to the cinema all the time.
The Delphi Filmpalast. I remember my first experience there, where I paid with my own pocket money to see Dr Zhivago – two 11-year-olds watching Dr Zhivago in the Delphi Filmpalast. Also [went there] with my first date when I was 12, to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And then last year we had our premiere [of Zwei zu eins] at the Delphi Filmpalast – that was a real full circle moment.
You’re screening your film at a cinema where as a child you had life-changing film experiences. This is Berlin to me: a place pivotal to my relationship with cinema. Going alone, paying with my own pocket money, finding my voice. All these experiences of Berlin cinema happened before that casting director came up to me in school asking if I wanted to audition for Christiane F. So Berlin was for me the city of cinema. And people are going to them still. It’s alive with Kino culture.
What’s next for you? Any new projects lined up?
(Laughs) Always! If you ask Steven Spielberg he always says, “I have several projects in various stages of development.” And this is also true for me. Some may come to pass eight years from now, some will happen a lot sooner. I’m always researching, writing and working on various projects and planning ahead. There’s definitely a lot in the works for the future.
