"I don’t make the same film over and over again"
"I am constantly looking for something that inspires and interests me," says director Thomas Stuber whose fifth feature film "Der Frosch und das Wasser" ("The Frog and the Water", 2025) will have its world premiere in the Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival’s Main Competition.
"I think that my work so far has been very diverse as I don’t make the same film over and over again," he notes. "I am very curious and like to try out many things, both thematically and in terms of genre."
Stuber graduated from the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg in 2011 with his short melodrama "Von Hunden und Pferden" ("Of Dogs and Horses"), which received the German Short Film Award in Gold and the Student Academy Award in Silver, and has since tried his hand at various different genres - from the mystery/horror series "Hausen" through to such dramas as "Herbert" ("A Heavy Heart", 2015), "In den Gängen" ("In the Aisles", 2018) and "Die stillen Trabanten" ("Dark Satellites", 2022).
"I first have to try them out to see which genres work for me," he explains. "I know that I am perhaps not the right person for animation, and I prefer feature films to series. At the same time, I am attracted to the narrative possibilities that you can have with the crime or thriller genre."
His work has seen him moving between cinema and television, directing two episodes of the "Tatort" procedural series, "Verbrannt" ("Burnt Alive", 2015) and "Angriff auf Wache 08" ("Assault on Precinct 08", 2019), as well as the aforementioned Sky series "Hausen", and he is now in final stages of postproduction on "Der Wanderer zieht von dannen" as the last instalment of a trilogy of "Polizeiruf 110" episodes featuring Peter Kurth and Peter Schneider as the Halle-based detectives Koitzsch and Lehmann.
A particularly fruitful collaboration with the author Clemens Meyer began when Stuber adapted one of Meyer’s short stories for his graduation film "Von Hunden und Pferden" and they subsequently worked together on the screenplays for the feature films "Herbert", "In den Gängen" and "Die stillen Trabanten" as well as the "Polizeiruf 110" trilogy.
"What made working with Clemens Meyer so appealing was that we were both interested in these little stories that are nevertheless told in such an epic way as was the case with 'In den Gängen' which would seem to be a small story in a supermarket on the outskirts of a city. What we did there was create our own universe."
Meanwhile, his fifth feature "Der Frosch und das Wasser" can be seen in many respects as a new beginning and leaving safe ground since it was structured as an international co-production travelling road movie-style through Germany before crossing the border to Switzerland and then ending in Japan, and posed additional challenges in the casting, particularly to find the right person for the lead role of Stefan Busch (also known as Buschi) which was eventually found after taken by Aladdin Detlefsen from the ensemble of Bremen’s inclusive Blaumeier-Atelier theatre.
Stuber was in competition at the 2018 Berlinale with his second feature film "In den Gängen" in 2018 when a screenplay landed on his desk from Gotthart Kuppel, a man of many talents who had made it to Germany’s judo team at the 1972 Olympics and followed professions as diverse as doctor, clown, and theatre director.
"From the very beginning, Gotthart had this brilliant idea of this young man with a great longing for distant places and travel, who suddenly runs away and joins this group of Japanese tourists, is accepted by them and feels at home," Stuber recalls.
"It may be a film all about travel and foreign cultures, but it’s really a small story told in a big way," he explains. "The subject matter and the world shown on screen is different from my previous work - happier, brighter, and more fairy-tale-like -, but I still take my usual approach to the characters and their longings as I always do."
Author: Martin Blaney