Playing straight to the audience

Austrian actress Sophie Rois talks about watching Krtek, typical women’s film roles and the ambiguities of Weimar Germany

The guest of honor at this year’s Days of European Film was Austrian actress Sophie Rois, who arrived to present her work in Tom Tykwer’s latest film “Three” (Drei). While taking a few days off from her frantic theatrical performance schedule, and just shortly after having been awarded the Lola for Best Actress — the German equivalent of an Oscar — for “Three,” Rois talked to Czech Position about what it meant to her to come to Prague for the festival.

“I was flattered by this invitation because it’s a country with a great tradition in film, a big avant-garde tradition and a tradition of being very witty and funny,” Rois said. Although she couldn’t produce a list of directors’ names, she said the type of film and theater produced here is close to the type of work she prefers to do, particularly in the more experimental and open world of the theater.

Not that her experience of Czech cinematic culture is confined to the avant-garde. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s, I went to Berlin several times and, of course, you could watch TV from the GDR (East Germany). They had a lot of Polish and Czechoslovak films, and as a child I remember Der kleine Maulwurf (Krtek) and Pan Tau.”

Read the full article at Czech Position

photo - © EurofilmFest