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Cocoon by Leonie Krippendorff 2
Courtesy of Peccadillo Pictures

Leonie Krippendorff on her lesbian sexual climax-of-age film, Cocoon

The European nation director's second film is an honest, awkward portrayal of girlhood that takes place in the summer streets of Irving Berlin – present, she talks motion-picture photography first period scenes and the brutality of teen years

Earlier writing and directive Cocoon, Leonie Krippendorff hadn't seen a lesbian coming-of-age romance quite like it. "There are lots of queer films mark in Berlin," the 35-year-early German filmmaker says over a WhatsApp video telephone call from a written material pull in one's horns in Sicilia. "But I found it very strange when I accomplished there were no German films about two schoolgirls falling dotty that had had a theatrical handout. 14 is the age you first free fall in love with hoi polloi and have your maiden experiences. Internationally, a film with this story isn't new, but in FRG, it is."

Cocoon, so, is just about two schoolgirls falling crazy, merely that's one of many layers. For much of its running time, Krippendorff's touching, richly felt character study delves into the solitude of Nora (Lena Urzendowsky), a 14-twelvemonth-old who's unsure of who she is or if she even matters. Among classmates, Nora receives little care, exclude for when she's roundly humiliated; with her older sister, Jule (Lena Klenke), and Jule's friend Aylin (Elina Vildanova), Nora tends to be the third somebody walking slightly fundament because she's been unopen out of the conversation.

What changes for Nora in that excruciatingly calorific summer in Berlin is a chance meeting with Romy (Jella Haase). Perceptibly, this life-altering moment – substantially, at the time it seems life-time-altering – occurs around half an hour into moving picture. Before and so, Krippendorff invites viewers into Nora's globe: living with an alcoholic mother; expressing her creativity via video diaries; and besides the steep-stakes drama of getting a period at school.

On sort, it's riveting; as a logline, perhaps it's not quite Tenet. For that cause, Krippendorff struggled with investors. "What's special about Cocoon is how it's done," Krippendorff says, occasionally interrupted by a give chase spring into her lap because it's waiting to be fed. "For financing a film, information technology's good to have engrossing topics nary one's talked all but ahead. But my elevator pitches aren't exciting! Topics about normal life don't seem exciting at first, simply I think they're the most important thing to talk of in films, because they're what very move on us."

"If you sky it as a lass finding herself in unmatchable summertime, it sounds like a typical coming-of-senesce story. But I'm making it a different elbow room. How Nora gets her stop is to a greater extent realistic than in other films, and I dig deeper into the feelings that teenagers get."

As it's so rare to depict a girl's first period in a film, surely that'd make a fantastic elevator pitch? Krippendorff shakes her head, saying, "I had to fight for having six scenes screening Nora getting her period, and then meeting her friend, and and so this otherwise girl washes the blood, and so she's falling somnolent, and in that respect's blood in her bed, and she has to wash information technology." The director rejected requests to cut this sequence down to one vista. "IT's not good 'puzzle a tampon in, problem resolved' – information technology's a process you pass."

"If you lurch it as a childlike girl finding herself in one summer, information technology sounds like a typical coming-of-long time history. But I'm making it a divergent way. How Nora gets her period is more than hard-nosed than in other films, and I dig deeper into the feelings that teenagers have" – Leonie Krippendorff

Another suggestion was for Nora to meet Romy within the first 10 proceedings. Cocoon, though, deviates from this musical genre figure of speech, and also explores the subtleties of coming KO'd. No declarations are fully successful yet and in that location's zero press in any direction. Nora, at a party, wonders if being soft on with a charwoman mechanically makes her a sapphic, or if it's more complex than that, and a validating stranger responds, "Well, I suppose it's cool." From scene to shot, Nora's evocative facial expressions are as if we'atomic number 75 observation her think over her new identity in realistic time. "Many films about orgasm extinct show such favouritism from the outside, but Nora's non passing through that. She's same much in the process of dealing with herself."

The likes of Nora, Krippendorff grew up in German capital and later attended film school at Potsdam. Her graduation exercise feature, Longing, attained undeniable reviews in 2016, and Cocoon premiered at this year's Berlin Film Fete. Regarding how autobiographical Cocoon is, Krippendorff refers to small inside information such as Nora injuring a tree branch during a game of cards. "In quadruplet years, I had four broken arms," she giggles, "and I had loads of summers with this big cast, and being so sweaty underneath."

Perchance that designation with Nora is wherefore Cocoon feels nostalgic despite its current scope. The colors are warm and hazy, the soundtrack includes bursts of David Bowie. When it intercuts to Nora's smartphone videos, they resemble time capsules of a bygone era. Well, 2019 is a bygone era, but you have sex what I mean. "I thought this was going to be the summer Nora will always remember," Krippendorff explains. "I wanted the film to feel like a memory already."

That aforesaid, Cocoon deals with present-day issues in a refreshing fashion, and arrives a few weeks after VICE published a thoughtful, Ammonite-divine article entitled "Why Are Whol Lesbian Films Set In The Past?" Krippendorff has ne'er used social media but mat up it was integral to Cocoon. "For me, being a teenager was brutal, because I found it disturbing to have a consistency that was changing. I was questioning if those feelings are changing for a generation growing up with societal media. But I think the heart of IT always stays the same. They'Re just confronted with other slipway of expressing themselves, and have another sort of pressure growing up."

Lena Urzendowsky, Krippendorff tells me, only signed capable elite group media recently as she's become to a fault famous to not have an online presence. Before Cocoon, Urzendowsky had only done smaller TV roles; next year she'll be leading Amazon's big-budget miniseries refashion of Christiane F. As Nora, Urzendowsky embodies the character with such ease you forget that it's an actor. "The tautness in Lena's trunk changes when she's performing," Krippendorff enthuses. "We would practice how Nora dialogue, how Nora walks, how Nora moves, even what was Nora's favourite meal. We knew everything virtually Nora."

"For me, being a teenager was barbarous, because I found it disturbing to have a consistence that was changing. I was questioning if those feelings are changing for a generation increasing up with social media" – Leonie Krippendorff

Although there are numerous exceptions, many canonical lesbian movies in the arthouse sphere are directed by men. Todd Haynes' Christmas carol, Lukas Moodysson's Fucking Amal (which beat Titanic at the Swedish box office), and – though it's no longer fashionable – Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Vividness. Krippendorff grew rising with these films and says she isn't so bothered just about what is or isn't the male gaze. "Lena was nervous before the masturbation picture, so I showed her scenes from Fucking Amal and Disconsolate Is the Warmest Colour. I love maybe not every break of these films, but I sustain been influenced by these films. Not so much as a filmmaker, merely as a person."

"I wouldn't say that the view of those characters are from a stare that I wouldn't see myself in. But I think with topics like how you deal with a woman's body, a woman can tell it in a different way, and go deeper, and personify more intimate, and know better what is important to show." She pauses. "Merely filmmaking is about empathy. Everyone says Cocoon is for young girls, but I've seen so many old men touched aside the film, because they look so connected to Nora." So they place with the social stiffness? "Yes. At the heart of information technology, we'atomic number 75 all confronted with the same doubts and insecurities. Perchance indefinite twenty-four hour period I'll write a film and you North Korean won't think a female did it."

During the November portion of lockdown, Krippendorff has swapped German capital for the Sicilian island of Lipari ready to pen her next screenplay. The active volcanoes around the landscape are fuelling her imaging. "I'm writing just about an intersexual nipper who has to adjudicate on a gender, and is confronted with these amazing volcanoes," she says. "You project the dope. It's a magical sprite-tale world here."

A we are speaking in Nov, it's just in front Cocoon has a UK release in some cinemas and on VOD. Krippendorff doesn't unsure from naming her preference. "I write from the stand. It's so much about feeling what Nora feels, and you can feature a large feeling if you learn it along a big screen out. There's a point where Nora is finding herself, and she needs more space, and the screen is opening night. IT's one of the most sentimental moments if you watch out Cocoon in a cinema, only if you watch it on a laptop computer, 90 per cent of people Don River't even recognise that IT's happening. Information technology's really successful for cinemas."

Her dog is barking to indicate it's hungry, so I mother wit I should wrap it up. A final question: if you're penning from the stomach, what's it like to follow your stomach-glorious story on a movie house screen at the Berlin Film Festival? "No matter what I write, it will ever feel trailer truck-life story," she says. "Cocoon, especially, because it's set in a worldly concern I grew up through and through, and that I live much about. I was terrified before the premiere, and I'm ever hurt if somebody says even a unimportant, bad sentence about the film. With critics, it's really distressing for ME, the intact work of showing it.

"But connected the other hand, it's so pulchritudinous to share then many feelings that you had, and to and so discover that so numerous the great unwashe had the same feelings – people you wouldn't expect. Much of these people don't divvy up your reality, and you would never connect with them in another situation. But observance a film unitedly, you can, because information technology's such a beautiful way of communication." Especially if it's semi-autobiographical and from the tolerate? "IT's both terrifying and very beautiful."

Peccadillo Pictures will release Cocoon in select UK cinemas and on VOD on Dec 11