Being influencers on your interpretation by opening and closing certain doors
Interview with director Felix Freidlein and screenwriter Johannes (Johnny) Rockstuhl on Walz Alone (Walzer Allein, 2025)
The fiction short film Walz Alone (Walzer Allein, 2025), directed by Felix Freidlein from HFF film school in Munich, was screened in Bratislava at the Visegrad Film Forum at the Film and Television Faculty VŠMU. After the projection, we talked with Felix and Johnny not only about the film itself but also about the phases of development, the struggles they faced, and how Taylor Swift ruined their plans of casting a tuba player from Switzerland.
Walzer Allein thematizes social anxiety on one hand but also deals with the “midding” concept, or a term which describes a feeling of the quiet pleasure of being near a conversation or gathering while feeling happily invisible, safe, and without the pressure to participate. In this short film, we follow a middle-aged man who looks very uncomfortable, and at first we don’t understand why. He enters an empty, closed bar, but as the story goes on, more people show up, and we get even more confused. The story is full of surrealistic elements and, at moments, we are not sure if what we see is happening only in the protagonist’s head, while the film moves between fear and imagination.
Was this your first time collaborating together on film? How did it start?
Felix: Technically, it’s my second-year movie. In the first year, most of the people studying directing do their own stuff, and then, as it goes on, you are encouraged to work more with other departments, so this is actually the first time I haven’t written the script by myself but wrote it with someone.
Johnny, did you have just an idea for the script or did you and Felix talk about it and maybe realize what you wanted to do?
Felix: I remember him approaching me at some premiere or something.
Johnny: No, no, it was like the Christmas party of our film school. I approached you because I kind of had more than an idea — it was like a very early draft of this movie about a guy going late at night into a bar, a pub, and suddenly somebody with a tuba — or I don’t know if it was a tuba or something else in the first draft — comes in and approaches the character, and he is scared of it. I kind of got influenced by the Angelopoulos film Landscape in the Mist.
There’s this one scene — it’s about two boys who want to go from Greece to Germany because apparently their father lives there. They go by train, and everything goes bad. It’s a beautiful film. There’s this one scene where one boy goes into a restaurant. He’s very hungry and doesn’t have money, but he still wants to eat something, and he’s very alone. Then there’s this beautiful moment: the door opens from outside, and a violin player comes in and plays a little piece. Then it’s over. I was really fascinated with instruments appearing in places where you don’t expect them.
In one evening, I wrote a very weird early draft. I think in the first draft the ending was everything going up in flames. And I approached you, right?
Felix: The only ending I remember is that at some point everybody starts dancing alone.
And then at the end, the camera goes outside into the street, and everybody’s dancing outside, and they all fly into the air.
Johnny: Yes, haha! And I disappear into the sky or something. So it was like throwing something at the wall, and I approached Felix, and then we developed the story.
When you started working on developing the script after the first draft, what was the dynamic of working on it together like?
Johnny: We agreed that the core of the script had to be a metaphor about something, so that’s one of the things we talked about a lot. Like what it should be a metaphor of, what it should definitely not be a metaphor of. How do we make sure that we leave certain doors of interpretation open and close certain others? Stuff like that.
Towards the end, we got a lot of pressure from our producers about having to cut down the script because it was still too long. We cut out a lot of overly complicated parts. But I think also a very important point of the script development was our main character, the protagonist, played by Torsten Danner. Felix was already working with him and really liked him.
Felix: Yeah, actually I wanted to try out different things. We talked to a bunch of different people and had mostly Zoom calls with some actors. Some of them I knew, some I didn’t. In the end, I think we chose the one we vibed with the most, or who was the most up for it — who really wanted to make the movie.
Did you have some criteria in mind, like the way he talks, looks, or a certain vibe on screen?
Felix: I want to say yes, but I couldn’t explain it at all. I guess it’s just a feeling — this feels right, and this doesn’t. I liked the idea of trying to subvert male characters. Like in the first movie that I did at HFF, I tried to cast a really strong-looking person who seems to have a perfect grip on his life but then struggles to make a phone call for the rest of the movie because he’s so scared of it. So I think I tried to go in that direction. I guess it’s mostly just about the actual lovely person who is the actor.
How did you imagine the waitress in the script, and how was she chosen as an actress?
Felix: I think there was some kind of seminar at the film school where I saw her, and I thought she was a really good actress. I think we had one other person we wanted to talk to, but because of scheduling it didn’t work. So she was pretty much the only person we even talked to in casting because I thought she was awesome. When I talked to her again, she was really interested in doing the movie, and we talked for many hours about it, which I feel is honestly the best approach for casting — to find somebody who really wants to do the movie. In general, I try to cast as diversely as possible, which is really difficult sometimes, even when it comes to extras.
And Johnny, how did you imagine that character?
Johnny: I always knew, or we always knew, that she was going to be a very difficult character because she’s the only one speaking apart from our main character. There’s this fine line between reality and the supernatural, and she moves that line, which is very difficult. In the script, we actually paid attention to what she does, where she goes, and why.
Felix: We did huge documents for backstory for both of them. But I honestly don’t remember most of it. (laughter) It was more just to get an idea of who the character was when talking to them. Especially with Torsten. Even though you don’t actually see most of it in the movie. Because it’s so vague and metaphorical. But you still need to find a way to talk about it. So I think it was helpful to write down as much as possible — like what this character’s normal day looks like, how he grew up, all of those things.
Johnny: And as you said, it’s about opening and closing doors of interpretation. Opening doors is fun. But closing doors — that’s the hard part. Because we don’t want this, we don’t want that. And the dynamic between them was very important for closing doors. Because this is not a horror movie, even though it starts as one. But as soon as he gets this funny drink, we know it’s not a horror movie anymore.
How did you imagine going from one phase of the film to another? What does each one represent for you?
Johnny: Oh, you definitely need to talk about Paula Bennett, our production designer.
Felix: Oh yes. This was also the first time to work with a set designer. Unfortunately, you can’t study set design at the Munich Film School, which literally everyone complains about. I don’t even know where I found her. But I found a really great set designer. She was just starting out. And I think now she studies in London, so she’s probably gone forever (laugh). It was really nice talking to her because we didn’t have any money. We had to find all of the bits and pieces, all of the furniture. We had to go to my grandparents and take their chairs and stuff. I think we had like six or seven different stages of how the bar looks, depending on each scene and how it kind of turns from this very bare, empty-looking place that has a lot of potential into this mess with lots of people and the stage, and then at the end it turns into this very cozy, wholesome space, representing the protagonist’s hopes and feelings as well.
Johnny: I think so, too. The way the bar looks kind of represents everything. The chaos in the middle part was the most important thing. Then the shot at the end where he dances — we said this is going to have to look like a bar where we really want to hang out and drink a beer.
It really had a pleasant energy. You wouldn’t be ashamed of dancing in that kind of environment.
Johnny: Yes!
Felix: Yeah!
Were all the side characters described in detail in the script, or were some of them created along the way? How was it directing all those extras?
Felix: You know what characters were actually in the script, Johnny?
Johnny: A lot of them actually. Because we had a very good but also annoying professor. After every script we sent her, she was like, okay, it’s good, but you only write “the group”. She also said, it’s not just the group. There’s this character and this character. Tell me about those characters. Then we actually did a whole Excel sheet where we thought about 20 different characters. It’s not a super elaborate backstory, but we cast it that way. We had friends who are film students our age who were willing to help us, but we didn’t want a group of people in their 20s. Being in this bar would be weird with this older man. It’s about opening and closing doors, as we already mentioned. If it’s all young people annoying him, then it would be about young people. But we wanted a broader society.
Johnny: We really wanted to find older people, which was very difficult.
Felix: I feel like when you shoot a short film on weekdays, during the day, maybe even in the morning, all you can find are students, young people, and older people who don’t work anymore. I feel like that’s what mostly ended up in the movie.
Johnny: That’s a great opportunity for film students. Cast older people. They are super happy to be part of a young, dynamic group. They are like: “This is so interesting, this is so fun!” And they have never been on a film set before, maybe, and they want to experience that. It can be very rewarding to work with people older than 60 or 70. And they have a lot of free time!
How did you approach them — these older persons, maybe non-actors, as I assume?
Johnny: Yeah, there was also a big part of our second assistant director, Emily, and my girlfriend too (laugh). She is a very calm and lovely person who approached everyone very kindly. She had to hear a lot of weird stuff from older men like: “I should have done it this way and this way!” But she was always nice to them. She replied: “Yeah, sure. Okay, let’s go!” But it was difficult. And as I said on stage, it was extremely hot in this bar. It was midsummer, so there were many people.
Felix: It was 30 degrees outside. There was no air conditioning in the place.
It seemed like there was no air conditioning, to be fair.
Felix: All of the black curtains, to simulate night, made it even hotter.
Johnny: Yes, and then a lot of people — the big scenes in the pub were challenging. But everybody had a good time. We drank a lot of water. A lot of the money went on buying water, which was good.
Felix: Also, we wrote the script with certain characters — like someone actually playing the violin, someone actually playing the tuba. It’s one thing to write that, but another to find a composer and then someone who actually plays the tuba and has time to be in the movie. I think the tuba woman was supposed to be an old lady in her 80s. I even found one at some point, but she lived in Switzerland and it was too expensive to bring her. At the same time, there was a Taylor Swift concert in Munich, so all the hotels were booked. It was impossible to find a place for her to stay.
I remember getting really desperate and sending a nicely worded email with a list of all the musicians we needed. Then I googled for hours — music schools, bands, anything — and sent it everywhere. That’s how we ended up finding most people.
Johnny: They also all needed to learn how to dance. We had a choreographer, Anna. She’s also in the movie and she’s great.
Felix: We had multiple rehearsal days, but we couldn’t rehearse in the location, which was really difficult because it was open all the time and they wouldn’t allow us in. So we used empty seminar rooms.
Johnny: Like this — 20 people dancing here.
Felix: We found a really amazing choreographer who came up with everything. It was so nice to trust someone and let them handle things.
What about the location?
Felix: Huge issue… [tekst nadaljuje v enaki lektorirani obliki]
Thank you so much, guys, and see you around dancing.
Both: Yeah, definitely!