Two-hour film done in one take wows Berlin festival audiences

"Victoria," the first German entry in competition at the Berlin film festival, might have seemed like just another film when it premiered on Saturday (February 7) with the glamour of the red carpet and a good-looking actress, but it had an element that no other film in competition was likely to have.

The film, which is mainly in English, is shot in just one take but covers over twenty locations and is over two hours long.

"Of course it's absolutely brainless," said the film's director Sebastian Schipper. "It's the most arrogant, ignorant, stupid thing you can do. To shoot a film in one take is absolutely moronic but we did it and it was at times... of course, now it's all glamorous and we're in competition but we've been very close to catastrophe more than once and not just out of catastrophe but also sitting at home and shaking your head about the amount of ignorance that you believe in."

"Yeah it worked," he added. "It's amazing. It's one of the most single, amazing things... probably it's easily my top ten, probably my top three I've been part of. It's really been wonderful and crazy, yeah."

The story follows the titular character Victoria (Laia Costa) as she meets a group of "real" Berliners as she leaves a nightclub but soon finds herself embroiled in an armed robbery and the consequences of that crime.

"Everything is improvised, everything," Costa admitted on the morning of the film's premiere, "so I couldn't be like 'I don't know what to say now'—that's not going to happen because I'm living that. Even if I had nothing to say, I'm saying something because I'm here with you now and it's real life and no lines at all, no blanks. Even if you have a blank, it's good because something has happened to you and now you are like this and that's working."

Schipper admitted that surprisingly there were three takes—all of which were good. However, throughout the course of the 140-minute film, there were incidences which brought the production to the brink of failure.

"On the last take, there was a Russian couple and they had been partying as they should and they saw one of my actors having a panic attack and that was the moment when we didn't have a boom and we just had my cinematographer all in black and they thought that poor guy is having a panic attack or needs help. At first, I was yelling at them 'No, go, step back' and then the guy was a little bit 'what?' 'No, sorry, sorry, sorry we're shooting a film and then he was all talkative. He was like 'Oh really? What's it about? Where can I see it?' and I went 'oh please, I have to go back. Please be quiet. Don't come over there'."

For the actress Laia Costa, though, she couldn't get enough of the film making process.

"After I did it I was just complaining because I wanted to do it again so when they said the first shot 'It's done, we have it', I was like 'Fuck, no, no, no, we have to shoot it again please one more take' and when Sebastian told me about being in this amazing film festival, I was like 'You know what? I want to do another one take and if I have to say no to a great film festival, I would say if you said to me please let's do another one take' so it's like a drug thing. I want more, I want more."

"Victoria" is one of the 19 films in competition, the winner of which will be revealed on Saturday February 14th and will be presented with the Golden Bear. — Reuters