In Heart of Fire, director and scriptwriter Luigi Falorni ("The Story of the Weeping Camel") chronicles the moving and heart-stopping story of a seemingly hopeless childhood. The producers of "Sophie Scholl" and the Oscar®-winning "Nowhere in Africa" have created a film of profoundly moving humanity…
The film is inspired by the book 'Heart of Fire' by Senait Mehari, in which the author describes her childhood, including the time she spent as a child soldier in a camp of the Eritrean liberation front ELF. As producers, what was your main interest in this story?
Sven: Someone escapes from another continent, from a great injustice, ends up in Germany and tells her story. You feel personally involved, as a human being, not just as a filmmaker.
Andreas: This film shows the growth of a conscience. Some people are already opposing injustice in their childhood. They understand what is good and what is bad. This child has to master conflicts that appear unsolvable even for adults.
Films that play in Africa have become a genre of their own in the past years. Viewers have certain expectations – stunning landscapes, grand romances...
Sven: I really wonder whether this is what people truly expect. 'Heart of Fire' concerns a genuine human drama from the African continent.
Andreas: This is guaranteed by a director like Luigi Falorni. The fact that we sought out a documentary film director for this feature film makes it clear how we approached the film's style and contents.
You were not allowed to shoot in Eritrea. Why?
Andreas: We tried very hard to shoot on original locations in Eritrea. We sent all the versions of the script to the Eritrean government. In a letter of 17th April 2007, the Eritrean government sent us the following justification for their rejection of the project: “At no point in the history of the Eritrean war of independence were children and youths under the age of 18 allowed to take up arms in the war. Those youths who surreptitiously left their schools of their own free will to join the liberation struggle were demonstrably sent back to their schools and caretakers.” They simply do not want to accept that they clearly violated the U.N. convention in the past.
Is it true that pressure was exerted on the participants from the Eritrean secret service?
Sven: You can say that the Eritrean government and its supporters do not want this film. They make it personally and unmistakably clear to whomever they get their hands on.
You shot exclusively with amateurs. According to what criteria were they cast and how were they coached?
Andreas: They had to be Eritreans since they had to speak the native tongue Tigrinya. In the workshops, we didn't want to simply see them as actors, but we wanted to find out what their personalities were like in order to cast them accordingly. MP
No comments:
Post a Comment