Eva Trobisch

Recognizing what shapes and connects us

In her third feature film, „Etwas ganz Besonderes,“ director Eva Trobisch sensitively and subtly portrays different realities of life in the East German province. The compelling cast is led by 17-year-old Frida Hornemann, who makes an impressive debut in her first role as Lea. The supposedly unspectacular living conditions of her family in the film are shaped by conflicts and financial insecurity. Film producer Peter Hartwig in conversation with Eva Trobisch about the search for vitality and credibility.

Eva, a very important point is the location where this film is set: Greiz, this town in southeastern Thuringia, just near the Saxon border. What was the reason you chose this very important location for the film?

The reason is quite earthly: My grandpa comes from there. And it was him who gave me the idea about ten years ago when I asked him, „Grandpa, tell me the story of your life.“ You really can't ask your parents, grandparents, and relatives that often enough. As a family, with my mother and my sister, we then drove along the milestones of his life. He showed us where he was born. And I was terribly startled. I was totally impressed by the place and a bit ashamed that I didn't know it at all, that I had been quite ignorant toward this part of Germany. I knew the Uckermark and Mecklenburg, but this landscape was completely new to me. And I love this blue of the fir forest and these hills, and I found all of that insanely beautiful. I also wasn't aware that this residential city exists, which holds so much stately architecture, but which to a large extent is no longer inhabited at all. This grandiosity on the one hand and this unexploited potential at the same time, this melancholy of emptiness, embedded in this gentle landscape—all of that pretty much blew me away.

Your film is also a cinematic family constellation with the many characters you portray. Nature as well, the archaic, the forest, and the story with the horse, which also tells us something about the state of the family. Is there even a main character, or are there simply multiple main characters?

For me, it was clear from the very beginning that the DNA of this project is precisely that there is no main character, but rather that it is a multi-perspective film, that many different stories are told from many different points of view. Then, of course, there are a few dramaturgical tricks to navigate through a script and an edit without everyone flying completely off the rails and somehow still managing to stay somewhat on track. You build in a few passing of the baton moments. I focused on the father and the daughter: one enters the scene and the other leaves the scene simply to provide a guiding thread. But it was always clear to me that I wanted to tell a story, so to speak, with the family as the main character, and within this family in the microcosm, something that is transferable and translatable to the macrocosm, socially speaking.

You chose this place very consciously; the people and things are integrated into this environment. What role does home play for the characters?

For me, home and identity and one's own history are something I struggle with a great deal and that occupy my mind immensely. On the one hand, I feel that we all need this, and that it provides meaning and shapes identity. At the same time, however, I also grapple with it. I feel that this whole concept of identity, or even identitarian politics, often stands in our way or is the seed of many terrible things in the world: exclusion and demarcation. I don't have very warm feelings for patriotism either. Naturally, the film revolves around this: How important is identity? What is one's own history? Who is allowed to tell it and whom do we listen to? Why do we tell our own story the way we do, and not differently? These are the questions that continue to preoccupy me while working, while writing, and also on a very personal level. This film doesn't manage to answer anything either; rather, it is an invitation to exchange and conversation. In that sense: It is not a film in the sense of singing the praises of a lovely homeland without any hidden depths, but rather an offer for engagement.

But precisely for this reason, it captivates with an incredibly pleasant, predominantly unexcitable quality: normality in the language, the texts, and the story. How did you approach the preparation for the project with your actors?

I am always looking for vitality and authenticity. And because film is so expensive, complex, and elaborate, and involves so many people, it is naturally always terribly difficult to achieve that. The feeling that everything is happening without our intervention and we just happen to be there with the camera is often much more work than one thinks. In this case, it was especially important to me that this family has a certain tone and resonates together, and I believe they come from the same stable. In that respect, it was important that I did chemistry reads, that they all got to know each other beforehand. Even before we went into rehearsals, they knew each other pretty well. Then we spent another week at the main location in the guesthouse, a month before shooting, cooking, letting the cameras roll, and playing endless games. Everyone had to have a secret with every family member, that was the assignment. Then we improvised a few scenes from their past, so really building a shared collective memory body and occupying the place and breathing it in and becoming familiar with it. And it was a lot of fun.

For the role of Lea, you've practically found a newcomer, Frieda Hornemann from Leipzig, only 17 years old and never stood in front of a camera before. As I see it, she had an insanely difficult role to play, this inner turmoil between the opposing sides, this personal search: Who am I? What was it like working with her?

It was actually really easy. She is just like she is in the film, in her very own way. The casting process for the film was very elaborate, and I had so many great girls. But Frieda walked in, and I had the feeling she completely didn't care whether she got the part or not. And if not, she'd just play volleyball or goodness knows what. She was incredibly unruffled and had no need for attention at all. I thought that was great. Actually, the character was originally supposed to be a bit more conflicted, a bit darker, more abyssal. And then this bright, healthy, and unruffled being walked into the casting room, and I felt that she really hadn't thought about how she comes across to the outside world yet. And that's what the film is about: There's a young girl who gets into this shuttle for the first time and suddenly looks at herself, her family, and her own story from the outside. I thought that was an absolute gift. And that's the magic of casting, that you are sometimes truly surprised and suddenly throw everything overboard and think: No, actually this is much more exciting and much better.

Your film also tells of the question: How does a family work and how much work goes into it? They say a relationship takes energy and work. What role does family play in your personal life?

It's also an ambivalent one, because on the one hand I question why you are automatically supposed to be closer or more connected to people who brought you into the world or are biologically related to you than to people you consciously choose. I'm also a big fan of chosen family and chosen kinship. At the same time, they are of course the first formative years, and you don't really get rid of them after all. And somehow you also want to deal with them. In my own very private development, I first rebelled against my family, who experienced the major systemic break. And the older I get, the more closely you look and the more you can acknowledge what you were given, what shaped you, and perhaps what connects you as well. A friend of mine said at a screening at some point: „That's a coming-of-age story in three generations.“ And I liked that a lot. The idea that you aren't only pubertally or adolescently developing when you're a teenager, but actually shed your skin again and again or always have to ask yourself the question: Is this the life I want to live? Does this work for me like this? That was also an initial spark for the story of the film. Why do the young always have to set out? Why can't the grandparents say for once: I've had enough, and I'm going to take another look at how things could be done differently!

Thank you for these wonderful insights into the work on your film and for the pleasant conversation.

Recorded by Ralf Hermersdorfer

© FILM OHNE GRENZEN e.V., 2026
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