A second nudge towards Home Stories was that as my first film "All Is Well" came out, there were TV interview requests. I watched myself thinking about where to do the interview. At the Paris Bar in bourgeois West Berlin? At home in front of my bookshelf? At the neighborhood bakery around the corner? Or at the playground I often went to with my child? I was amused as well as annoyed by myself and my thoughts about curating my identity in the most coherent way. At the same time, it was a very practical process: where should we go? Where and who are you? 
I was unsettled that this preoccupied me so much. And I asked myself how we decide the way we want to appear to others? Who do you want to be if you could choose? And can you choose? I am interested in the individual and socio-biographical influences we use to shape the image of ourselves that we show to others.

A third impulse was that ten years ago, my Grandfather showed me for the first time the city of Greiz in Thuringia, the place where he was born. It ended up as the setting of HOME STORIES. Before he introduced me to Thuringia, I associated the "East" with the sprawling plains of Brandenburg or Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but I did not know this dense, stately city in the middle of a deep forest. There are ravishing Art Nouveau boulevards, but they are completely empty. No cars, no people, young birch trees growing out of a few villas. I found it exciting to show unusual pictures of East Germany. Even in its untapped potential - a turn-of-the-century villa we filmed in cost the buyers as much as a parking space would in Munich. 

Last, there was a dramaturgical impulse. After my first feature in which I followed my main character every step of the way, I really wanted to make a film from different perspectives. Because I experienced the reception of "All Is Well" sometimes as one-dimensional. Understandable perhaps - due to the narrative perspective, you identify primarily with the main character. But this quickly turned all other characters into mere antagonists. That annoyed me because I love and understand all my characters, even if they are problematic. This sense of justice towards my characters was the reason to use changing perspectives as the DNA of my next project. 

Accordingly, the result is that HOME STORIES invites you to look at it from all sides...

Eva Trobisch: Yes, in the editing phase we often did test screenings to find a narrative balance for the different strands. Even in early versions, everyone saw a different, very personal film. Some went along with a character up close, identifying with Christel (Rahel Ohm), for example, and keep Kati (Eva Löbau) at bay. Others felt the exact opposite. Some were extremely concerned with the story of Lea’s parents’ separation. For some the teens were in the foreground. Others saw the historical aspect of the story as essential. I always stood there amazed at how everyone took their own stories away from the film, depending on their own lives and backgrounds. 


How did the film find its final form?

Eva Trobisch: The concept of a choral film was set from the beginning. On the one hand, I wanted an open narrative, but at the same time, a multi-perspective film most of all needs leadership, focus, otherwise you quickly get lost. A contradiction in terms. The challenge was always to adjust the handover of the baton between the characters so that the relay did not miss. There were people who read the book and were irritated, they sometimes did not know what it was about, who they should follow. In both the script and the editing, I was advised so many times to simply concentrate on one or two strands and abandon the ensemble approach. But that would have felt like a resignation to me, like a huge failure, not only in view of the film, but somehow also in view of the world. I really wanted to find a narrative equivalent for my perception of the permanent simultaneity of things and topics, the equality of perspectives.

HOME STORIES very much relies on its strong ensemble cast. How did you find your actors?

Eva Trobisch: For Lea, the process was fairly straightforward - we simply held an open casting call. It was important to me to find a girl who had not been in front of the camera since the age of three and was a full professional. Frida brought to the table a disarming immediacy that swept me away! Normally, I would not have scheduled the biggest day of shooting for the first day, but for logistical reasons there was no other way, and we had to shoot Lea's TV performance on Frida's first day of shooting ever. In retrospect, I am glad we did, because of course we were able to fully incorporate her lack of experience, all this unfamiliar territory, on all levels, into the character. And the amazing naturalness that Frida gives to this show performance continues to blow me away.

Surprisingly, the part I looked for the longest was not Lea. It was Matze. I wanted to show an interesting male character, someone who may be flawed but is also likeable. I struggle with the idea that women should  only be  to talk to women and men only to men. In addition, I had dealt with stereotypes of the "East German man" before. In contrast to East German women, who have a reputation for independence and sexual freedom since the fall of the Berlin Wall, men are considered professionally less than worldly and, without any assets to contribute, unsexy on the marriage market. Matze is someone whose self-worth has not exactly been coddled - he is shamed and constantly deals with humiliation. During the casting, I noticed how much easier it was for me to work with female actors on this feeling of denigration. With women, I was familiar with the tools for writing a resilient, dignified character. I was inexperienced in conceiving humiliation for men. Then Max Riemelt came along and went through the casting scenes with his head held so amazingly high that it truly impressed me. 
Overall, however, it was an organic process in which the family was always the main character. A kind of mobile that you have to balance out again and again when you bring in something new. 


It is also a film about different types of Germany: the casting shows, romantic Germany with forest and castle, the history of Germany with a very unusual view of Intra-German reality. 

Eva Trobisch: The international title of the film is Home Stories. I was born in East Berlin and then grew up in reunited West Germany. My "Home" has two "stories": The one about the socialist community - one for all and all for one. And the one of individualism, of capitalism - you are something special, and if you just work hard enough, you can do anything! Both narratives have a strong influence on me. I am working with – and chafing against - both. Both narratives have a strong influence on me. I am working with – and chafing against - both. The family stands for the ideal of community, of roots that you can´t choose but that still condition who you are, and of responsibility to others. The casting show stands for a liberal dream and focuses on the individual. Both narratives are attractive to me, but they also make me want to undermine them.

What I like about the title Home Stories is that it consists of two archaic and existential words that, when put together, create pop-cultural meaning. I liked the parallel plot of the home story of a casting show, which raises the question of one's own identity, and Kati's efforts to tell a modern homeland story in her museum by treating Intra-German history equally. Narratives are  constantly detached, overwritten, leveled. Depending on the political system, there were several narratives and uses for Greiz Castle: from a princely residence in the German Empire to an old people's home during the GDR - in the spirit of public property - to the renewed exhibition of Prussian splendor after the fall of the Wall. A clever approach by Kati. But also, a general interpretation of a history that overlaps with her mother's very personal life story.