02/02/2026 - The German director speaks about his first feature film, winner of the Best Feature Film award at the this year's Max Ophüls Prize

(© Clermont-Ferrand)

At this year's Max Ophüls Prize, Ben Voit’s Gropiusstadt Supernova [+see also:
interview: Ben Voit
film profile] won the Best Feature Film award. The German director has written an intimate drama about the fear of losing the people closest to you. We spoke to the director about his first feature, his personal link to the story, his cast, and the setting he chose.

Cineuropa: Can you identify the starting point for the film?
Ben Voit: When we were in our early twenties, my best friend's brother received a deportation notice. After storming out of the apartment in anger, we couldn't reach him anymore and imagined the worst. The day before, we had been joking around and suddenly everything was on the brink. With the film, I tried to dive into the perception of a boy whose imagination becomes more real than reality itself. The fear that someone might disappear has the same impact as if that person were actually disappearing. It was important for me to distance myself from the real brothers and give myself creative freedom, while at the same time doing justice to them. I spoke with them a great deal about everything that happened and especially what could have happened. I created extensive research documents with countless possible paths. But at some point, the film found its own way.

What do you associate with Gropiusstadt, this Berlin neighbourhood?
I’ve been living in Berlin for about 13 years, in the north of Neukölln. Gropiusstadt is in the south. Many of my friends live there, and we spend a lot of time there. The reason we chose to centre the film so strongly on this neighbourhood is that the real story took place in a large-scale housing estate. In addition, the film is set on New Year’s Eve and Gropiusstadt is a magical place for that. The high-rise buildings are the only place where you can see the fireworks from above. And if you walk a little away from the blocks, you suddenly find yourself surrounded by nature, on a hill, with a skyline that you won't see anywhere else in Germany.

The neighbourhood feels like another protagonist in the film. Did you develop something like a character profile for this place?
I always sit in the places I write about. I can’t sit isolated in a room and invent a story. I let myself be strongly influenced by encounters, people, situations.

What elements were important to you in shaping the main character?
What mattered most to me with the main character was a shared feeling: the fear of being left alone. His brother is being deported and his girlfriend receives an offer from an acting school abroad. Everything in the film disappears, burns, fades away, while he does his best to try to hold on to it.

You said you had to make this film. Why now, why as your first feature film?
It’s hard to describe. A professor once said, “if you want to make films about your youth, make them fast, before you forget everything.” This story never let go of me. It embodies the troubles of people who are sent away and left behind. A source of so many nightmares. Our lead actor, Mo Issa, said he wanted to make this film because it’s a film about his neighbours. When an idea follows me for so many years, I have to get rid of it by releasing it onto the screen.

Can you describe your casting process?
I’m not looking for transformation artists. I’m looking for people whose personalities are close to the characters. I come from documentary filmmaking, and I’m interested in authentic expressions. With Mo Issa, I knew immediately that he was the one. He’s a special performer and a sincere person. His brother in the film, Walid Al-Atiyat, is also from Neukölln. The two of them already knew each other and shared a dynamic I could build on. With the character of Stella, it was unclear for a long time who she might be. Then Berfin Sönmez came to the casting and essentially rewrote the role. She wasn’t interested in how I had imagined the character; she simply brought her very own personality to the table, which was everything we didn’t know we were looking for.