Matthias Schweighöfer, star of “AMRUM” by Fatih Akin, wanted to work with the famous “Edge of Heaven” and “In the Cut” Director for years before an opportunity arose, he told Steve Pond during the Thewrap Thewrap conversations of Thewrap in partnership with Brand Innovators.
The German Schweighöfer had built his own career not only as an actor in projects like “Valkyrie” and “Army of the Dead” by Zack Snyder, but as a full -fledged director with films like “The Manny” and “You Are Wanted”.
Things worked for Schweighöfer and similar to work together after “he reminded me and said to me:” Matthias, there is this cool thing called “amrum”. I didn’t want to direct him.
The resulting film explores the story of a family that has trouble dealing with the death of Adolf Hitler during the Second World War, a subject that raised the eyebrows among those who wondered if the moment of the film is wise, given the increase in anti -Semitism in the world.
The film is also the first from Schweighöfer to Cannes.
It is “very important that people watch this film,” said the actor, “because this story has this kind of little approach, but it’s huge.” In the film, Nanning, 12, member of the youth Hitler, tries to comfort his mother, a Nazi devotee, after Hitler’s death by suicide.
“A young boy tries to make his mother’s honey bread because he does not want her to die,” said Schweighöfer, “but in the end, it says a lot about our time that you really have to fight for good things.”
“You have to look to your left and to your right, what is really going on and what is the future?” What could you do? What is your share?
The conversation of Cannes with Thewrap also discussed the subject of Tom Cruise, which is also in Cannes for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”, but with whom Schweighöfer worked on “Valkyrie” of 2008. He said that the two have established a friendship on the set of this film of the Second World War. “I mean, to be honest, I like Tom … We had, like, every day together, and we shared a makeup trailer together. So I asked him all the stories [about his career,]”Said Schweighöfer.
A particular story that he shared was to ask Cruise how he and Cameron Crowe won the rights to Sigur Rós’ song “The Nothing Song” for “Vanilla Sky”. Cruise told Schweighöfer that he was actually flew to Reykjavik to convince the group to let them use the song.
He also worked with Zach Snyder for “Army of the Dead” of 2021, an experience which led him to direct the prequel, “army of thieves”. Snyder called him about the opportunity to lead, which Schweighöfer was impatient to try.
“And then Hans Zimmer came on board, and Hans and I did the post on the film, which was fantastic,” he recalls. “I have screenshots of zoom calls, because it was a pandemic, and it was Zack Snyder, Hans Zimmer and I, I have a lot of photos of that. It was pretty cool. “
