Unfolding on New Year’s Eve 2019, Strangers in the Night follows six characters who are looking for meaning and comfort in a world that – only a short time later – will change much more than they ever thought possible.

Matthias Krepp is an Austrian director who studied in the directing class of Michael Haneke at the Vienna Film Academy. During his studies, he directed several short films in collaboration with Angelika Spangel and Dominic Kubisch. His feature-length documentary debut, Sand and Blood [+lee también:
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Cineuropa: Tell us about the title of the film. Originally, Strangers in the Night would have a slightly romantic connotation, but here, it seems a bit more bitter and cynical.
Matthias Krepp: I was aware of the original connotation, and it even gave me a certain pleasure to reinterpret it. I don’t want to deny that there is a certain amount of both bitterness and cynicism in the film, but I hope that irony and humour are also noticeable, which soften the implied cultural pessimism to some extent.

Why did you set it in 2019/20? There’s a sense of dramatic irony in the characters hoping for a better year with the audience knowing COVID-19 is just around the corner.
I already had early drafts of the script ready before the pandemic. Of course, some very fundamental things changed, but the basic setting and a certain living-in-the-end-times atmosphere were already present. When the pandemic hit, I adapted and rewrote some parts, and made a clear decision to set the film on the eve of the pandemic. At that time, I was also convinced that there would be dozens of lockdown films within a short period, which surprisingly didn’t happen. I found it interesting to make a movie whose protagonists were unaware of the turning point the next year (and the subsequent years) would bring.

You’ve been known for your documentary work. How different is the process for you when you approach a documentary as opposed to a work of fiction?
In German, I would say these are two very different pairs of shoes! The working methods traditionally associated with documentary filmmaking – jumping spontaneously into a situation, constantly reacting to unforeseen events, making quick decisions, improvising and so on – honestly make me a bit nervous. I like preparation beforehand. Of course, also during the shooting of fiction films, problems arise constantly, essential factors are overlooked and so on. I feel proud when I manage to solve such problems.

Can you expand upon your time in the directing class of Michael Haneke at the Vienna Film Academy and how that has shaped your perception of what cinema can be?
When speaking of Haneke as a professor, one could use terms associated with his films: precision, preparation, craftsmanship and so on. All of that would be accurate, and I believe he saw it as his task to pass these themes on to his students. But, in my opinion, he was never intent on forcing his students’ films to fit his aesthetic vision. Some colleagues would probably disagree with me at this point, but in reality, the films of some students he greatly supported have nothing to do with his aesthetics. In this regard, there was a lot of freedom. Personally, I especially liked the small tips he sprinkled in, almost casually. For example, he once said in a directing exercise to a colleague, who described a character’s emotional state with too many adjectives, that one cannot expect an actor to play two emotions at once. Of course, there are situations in life where one might be sad and scared, or angry and insecure at the same time. If one wants to create such emotional ambivalence in a film or play, one must structure the scene so that the actor or actress can switch from one emotion to another. It seems quite logical and obvious, but in its brevity, it is a tool that can be brought out in the appropriate situations.

What is next for you?
I have several projects, including a long-term documentary film project that is still at the financing stage. It is somewhat thematically and stylistically related to Sand and Blood. I must, and want to, mention at this point that I am working as a co-director on this project, with Angelika Spangel (who also worked as the director of photography on Strangers in the Night) as the director. In Sand and Blood, she was the co-director; here, it will be the other way around. Additionally, I am writing a first feature-length fiction film, which has little thematic connection to the previous projects.