Valeska Grisebach on ‘The Dreamed Adventure’ and Playing the Long Game

It’s been a long time coming, but Valeska Grisebach is back in Cannes.

The German director is presenting her new feature, The Dreamed Adventure, in the competition lineup, closing out the festival on the final Friday, May 22.

The last time she was on the Croisette was way back in 2017 with Western, which premiered in the Un Certain Regard section to critical acclaim, a confirmation of the promise of her two previous features, Mein Stein (2002), which won the Critics’ Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and Sehnsucht (2006), a Competition entry in Berlin in 2006.

But Western‘s success — it went on to win the German Film Critics’ Award for Best Feature Film, and was a runner-up for the Lolas, Germany’s Oscar-equivalent — didn’t make it much easier for Grisebach to get The Dreamed Adventure made. Her way of working — using amateur actors, shooting without a conventional script — has made it difficult for her to secure traditional financing from European funds and film boards.

“That happens to me constantly,” she says, “even though I’ve already made several films without a conventionally written screenplay, it still irritates [funders]. I hope one day that changes for me.”

The Dreamed Adventure could be the film that does it. The slow-burning crime thriller continues Grisebach’s experimentation with “male-coded genres” that she explored to such powerful effect in Western, which followed German construction workers who set up camp in rural Bulgaria like Union Soldiers in Apache country in an old John Ford movie. In The Dreamed Adventure, the focus is on Veska, an archaeologist working near the Bulgarian-Greek-Turkish border — “Europe’s external border,” as Grisebach puts it — who becomes entwined in a war between rival criminal gangs.

The Match Factory is handling international sales for The Dreamed Adventure at the Cannes market.

It’s been almost 10 years since your last film, and there was 10 years between Sehnsucht and Western. Why do your films take or require so much time to get made?

It’s been different each time. After Sehnsucht, I had a daughter, so that played a role in delaying things. But one reason is research. I could probably spend years researching endlessly. For me research, casting and writing all go hand in hand. And that simply takes time.

After Western, it became clear to me I wanted to make another film in Bulgaria. Because I realized how little I actually know about Europe, how many blind spots I have, and how different Europe feels in Bulgaria compared to Germany. I grew up in West Berlin and was socially conditioned to go further West. It took me quite a while to travel in the other direction.

But I was worried, as a German director, trying to make a film in Bulgaria without really knowing the place. It was clear my research would take time, time to get to know certain places, certain people, to collaborate. Through the research, and the collaboration, my doubts kept dissolving. But because I was moving on very unfamiliar terrain, it was important to give that process time. Then, of course, there are all the financing issues. With every project, it seems I am ready and then have to wait another year to finish financing before I can shoot.

Was there a particular moment that became the initial spark for the idea that eventually turned into this film?

I think that actually came before the research. What deeply moved me when we were shooting Western was talking to people from my generation. I’m 58 now, and people who were young in 1989, during the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had the feeling that we are all deeply connected through those ruptures and through that transformation in Europe, but at the same time separated by very different experiences in the years after reunification and afterward, up until today. That echo still continues today.

I think there was a kind of click moment when people said that the 1990s in Bulgaria were like wartime — a time for men, not a time for women. That was a motif that kept coming up and that interested me, this war analogy. It connected with my interest in genre, especially male-coded genres, and with questions about which roles are assigned to women and men. That was one of the starting points that I then took with me into the research process. I also tried to let those themes that confronted me in reality collide with fiction, almost like sparring partners.

In this film, there are probably fragments of the Western in it, maybe fragments of the adventure genre, but it belongs to a male-coded genre because it’s about conflict as narrative. And this idea of strong vs. weak, of top vs. bottom. Even though I think the film, in its approach, isn’t particularly conflict-driven, but the themes within it are.

Where does this fascination with male genres come from?

Those are simply the films I grew up with. In the 1970s, I sat in front of the television with my father and all those films were still on TV — that’s no longer the case today. I think it’s a very classic, maybe even specifically female experience, that you identify with those [male] heroes while at the same time experiencing yourself as separate from them, or maybe falling in love with them. Men probably feel the same way.

I also realized how much I had deeply internalized that male gaze. Genre interests me because it tells us so much about the construction of society and gender roles. That’s why I find it incredibly exciting to engage with it.

It was interesting for me as a filmmaker to realize how difficult it is to get female characters moving within these genres, how much easier it is to let male protagonists be active.

Once again, here all your actors are non-professionals. What does working with non-professional actors give you as opposed to professional performers?

I think it developed naturally because going out into the world, making contact and doing the research becomes connected with these people. Then at some point, there’s a moment where you say, OK, now we begin, now we begin to play and step into these roles.

I couldn’t say that I’ll never work with professional actors one day. But based on the logic of these projects and what the performers bring with them — their knowledge, their life experience, what is inscribed in their bodies, which later becomes part of the texture of the films, films that are supposed to appear naturalistic— it always made sense.

And in Bulgaria, it simply felt completely logical that I couldn’t explain things to actors from the outside, but their knowledge had to become part of the film.

Filmmaking itself also has a lot to do with not knowing for me. I don’t know everything, and I value that feeling — not exactly a loss of control, but understanding that I don’t have everything in my own hands, that something happens in the encounter itself.

Do you work from a fixed screenplay?

There absolutely is a screenplay. I worked on it for a very long time, and later together with my co-writer Lisa Bierwirth. But it doesn’t really look like a screenplay — it looks more like prose. The construction of the story is there, and there is dialogue written, although I also keep writing new dialogue while we’re shooting.

But I don’t give the screenplay to the crew or the actors for them to read and memorize. Everything is handled verbally. I have to put the script aside and perform it. I have to tell the story and tell the dialogue. And in doing that, something also happens between us.

How did you find your lead actress, Yana Radeva, who plays Veska?

That always involves a lot of luck and coincidence. We cast well over 1,000 women, and then suddenly a casting director spotted her, just standing somewhere on the street in Sofia. She went through the whole casting process and enchanted all of us, also because of her determination to really do it.

During shooting, her dedication to the project was incredibly impressive. I also think that women from Bulgaria from my generation have life experiences that simply aren’t comparable to mine. You can feel how their living conditions kept changing. In 1996, Bulgaria experienced inflation like Germany did 100 years ago [in the Weimar Republic]. These are women with incredible strength, real survivors. Yana originally worked as a geologist. Later, she worked in the casino industry, managing large casinos. She was also a farmer and sold natural cosmetics. She has an exciting and very interesting life story.

You mentioned how difficult it is to finance films like this. Why does it take so long?

That happens to me constantly. It’s always a combination of different things. Even though I’ve already made several films without a conventionally written screenplay, that still causes irritation. I hope one day that changes for me.

At one moment, when [EU subsidy body] Eurimages didn’t support us in the final financing stage, and neither did the German Film Fund, it looked like we wouldn’t be able to make the film at all. After five years of research. That was a bitter moment. What saved us in the end was that Panama Film from Austria came in. That rescued us. But I think [Berlin producer] Komplizen Film and I also pushed ourselves to our limits because there came a point where we realized: We’ve worked on this film for five years, there are so many human encounters inside it, we can’t just say goodbye and never come back.

All the more rewarding, then, to now be going to Cannes and into competition.

It’s wonderful. Truly. No one expects that. You hope for it, of course. I hoped for many things. But the fact that it actually became Competition — that was a huge stroke of luck and a great gift for all of us.

After Western, I experienced what kind of attention a film receives in Cannes, also in the conversations afterward with the press. It was a very special moment for me. Naturally, you hope for a kind of continuity, to return there again. It’s really fantastic.

Now that you’re in competition, does that mean we won’t have to wait another 10 years for your next film?

My dream would actually be to make a series with non-professional actors at the external border of Europe. During those five years of research at the border, we gathered a real treasure trove of stories. It would have to come together faster, of course. And it would be a completely different format and a different narrative structure. But that’s what I would really love to do next.