Dominik Graf at the Berlinale : You have to expect from the cinema something

count your Film "The winner" in 1994 was unusual for the German cinema. An action drama with a star cast, at that time, 12 million Mark expensive. How did it come to the project?

I had met during the shooting of The cat "at the end of the eighties in düsseldorf, SEC-work on the Thriller" people who told me fascinating stories. The producer, Günter Rohrbach was interested from the very beginning and dealt with our desires, what we wanted to tell, seriously. But he wanted to get at is expected to be an expensive movie, the big audience“ – which, Yes, everyone understands, ultimately, always something different.

The movie has, at the time, aroused great expectations, also because after the success of Tarantino suddenly genre cinema was announced. The German criticism was of behavior, but rather. What was your reaction?

I had high-flying dreams, too high maybe. Some of the films also change, because the times change around it. A so unscrupulous, murderous political intrigue appeared to the just fresh and cheerful flipped normal German citizens, probably impossible, although so shortly before the SEC Showdown in the bathroom of the Small occurred.

Now is the restored version of "The winner runs" at the Berlinale. The Film earned after 25 years of a revaluation?

A re-evaluation, I don't expect you to, because the kind of Genre - Mix that we envisioned at that time, in Germany, as at least strange, if not degrades perceived. But I'm very happy that the Film is now, finally, in a certain sense, complete.

What scenes had to be restored?

There are about 15 minutes out of the cut scenes added back in, albeit in a VHS-Aesthetics, because the Negative is gone. The digitization is trying to the content and presentation of gloomy Film in the presence of rescuing. Some, for example, the extreme light-situations and the tonliche in terms of dynamic range even almost better than back then.

A point of criticism at that time was the "non-circular" dramaturgy, especially in the first hour. You could start with this criticism of something?

I was able to start very well, because it was just meant to be. A long, in the Details even tremendously slow introduction, in the private scenes of the police officers are almost more important than the Action. And then, after about 70, 80 minutes, only to explode with the Whole and leads to a classic Genre-the Situation with extortion and persecution. We said at the time that you need a dramaturg to think as an different to have the police out the genre from the old baking tins - lift: the women – there were hardly any female police officers, which would be essential today – the families, the Sex at home, Sex in the longed-for "big world", who enter the police. All of this should be important, a wider space than usual. And then there was, of course, from the first Moment a Ghost movie. There is a realm of the dead, against which the protagonists fight, so to speak, from the beginning. My two favorite genres in one.

Everything that was criticized in 1994, 25 years later – according to their crime scenes, according to "Hotte in Paradise", "In the face of the crime" and "three lives" – much better. The winner of the "in principle" a 12-million-Experiment?

Yes, maybe. In "The cat" had supported the authors, and I, the pattern is still quite joyous, prompt was a success. Of course, mainly because of Götz George in the lead role. After that, I got three, four, very innovative Scripts for the series "The investigators". As a result, I felt, so to speak, a different Narrative tone and breath, and wanted to wear to the movies.

Dominik Graf, 66, has more than turned 50 films for television and cinema. He was often a guest of the Berlinale.Photo: photo: Martin Schutt/dpa

What lesson have you learned from your experience with "The winner"?

You have to expect from the cinema something, always the limits – to- the – explore. Not according to the labeled drawers around the nice, light-hearted commercial film, and in contrast, the small fine art film support work. But to insist that movies are bigger than the plans and the desires that connects the industry with the movies. And you have to fight to See his films for another, the classic defend against the cheeky and Modern, try to go a whole new way. Errors are included as an Option.

Just a year after that, you have made then laughs for television, "Ms. Bu", is now considered a "crime scene"-a classic. If a learning process took place, has taken place in them very quickly.

My search for the "winner" was lengthy. I had been looking forward to the "winner"of rotation on the uneven lighter "Ms. Bu". But the wonderful screenplay by Günter Schütter suffered heavy, in my insecure Director, I staged it a little too cute to make only this time things are different.

did you then still in the mood for the cinema?

The cinema as a play-place is with us, always a fetish, in a double sense a projection surface. The commercial films have, of course, we never have the longed-for audience figures with really stubborn narrative quality can connect. The rejection of the audience should not take it ultimately, but important. Important it is to develop.

are you interested in working on the "Tatort" and "Polizeiruf 110", because within the Format ultimately, however, much room remains?

There were and are always the authors for me who can make out of the supposed ready-made clothing, of evening television Amazing. Good genre cinema in the television works like a mole heap: Everything is happening underground, in Secret, and suddenly, an extraordinary Film – if it succeeds – and spoiled, so to speak, of the landscape. Because he may not fit into the consensus. My writers Christoph Fromm, Günter Schütter, Rolf Basedow and Markus Busch, I owe it all.

do you Believe that Netflix can offer young genre film makers a new perspective?

The series hype weakens gradually, but the streaming services are not expected to produce soon a more game-movies, the give the boys a good chance. Public Produce, as I knew it still, with the people that fired the really Tell and those that still do so today, according to executives: has The made Legendary. And always the best editor were under fire from their superiors. Maybe what is to come, in spite of all the turmoil there is still time, before the structural reforms have their most devastating effect.

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panel discussion with Dominik Graf: "a Genre in German Film and television": 11.2., 16 At (Deutsche Kinemathek); "The Winner": 11.2., 21: 30 (HdBF)