Award-winning German writer-director Nora Fingscheidt (‘System Crasher’, ‘The Unforgivable’) returns to the Oscar race with another story about a woman fighting her inner demons. Her critically acclaimed fiction début ‘System Crasher’ was Germany´s entry for the Oscars in 2020, winning a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film in 2019.
Fingscheidt joined ‘The Outrun’ production when four-time Academy Award Nominee Saoirse Ronan (‘Lady Bird’, ‘Blitz’) was already attached as producer and star, making the writing process that much easier. “It’s great to write something with Saoirse in mind because it gives you a lot of liberty,” says the director. “A scene may read very simple on the page in terms of, ‘She walks along the shore, takes her headphones off and listens to the waves,’ but because it’s her, she has this magic that she can brush her teeth and it’s interesting to watch,” adds Fingscheidt.
Based on the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot, who co-wrote the screenplay with Fingscheidt, the film is an honest drama about addiction and recovery, following the 29-year-old Rona (Saoirse Ronan) who returns home to the Orkney Islands after ten years away in London.
Fingscheidt aptly brings the different contrasts of rural and city life, sobriety and drinking, reality and fiction together in a moving portrait of healing and acceptance, taking us on an immersive visual and acoustic journey that is further elevated by a career-best performance from Saoirse Ronan.
The German writer-director felt an immense responsibility when bringing the raw and personal memoir to the screen, even having Liptrot’s parents read the script before going into production. She was acutely aware that herself and Saoirse Ronan will move on to next films but Liptrot and her family, and the small community of Orkney, will live with this film forever. “My goal was that no matter how good or bad the movie turns out, I want to make sure that they walk proudly and happily through the streets of Kirkwall afterwards,” reveals the director.
Fingscheidt spoke to Awards Focus about building the trust with the book’s author Amy Liptrot, working with Saoirse Ronan and echoing Rona’s different emotional stages with the cinematography.
Awards Focus: You co-wrote the screenplay with the author Amy Liptrot. What were some of the biggest challenges within that process?
Fingscheidt: When you write a script about a memoir together with the real person on whose life this is based on, it’s a very continuous delicate balance between how much we can simplify, dramatize, take out, while still being respectful and true to the core story into her life and family.
AF: Did it make the writing easier knowing beforehand that the main character is portrayed by Saoirse Ronan? I understand you immediately left room for improvisation already on the page, writing the dialogue in indirect language.
Fingscheidt: Every once in a while, when we wanted to hit really specific points, like, “I don’t know if I can be happy sober” or “It never gets easy, but it gets less hard;” there were a few things where it was clear, the scene structure was clear. But the way the actors use the language I wanted to leave it to them so they would find more depth in the character.
It’s great to write something with Saoirse in mind because it gives you a lot of liberty. A scene may read very simple on the page in terms of, ‘She walks along the shore, takes her headphones off and listens to the waves,’ but because it’s her, she has this magic that she can brush her teeth and it’s interesting to watch. So, that was a big plus and made the writing process easier.
AF: Most of the film was shot on real locations from Amy’s life. You went to the Orkney Islands multiple times due to the lambing season and bird’s nesting being at different times.
After you had gone once, did it change your approach for the next steps having been there and experienced the environment first-hand?
Fingscheidt: We went four times in total. I love pre-shoots, even though it’s scary because production isn’t yet fully financed. We’re in a small team, we don’t really know what we’re doing, we’re sort of experimenting, but it also has to fit the film. But it gives you a moment to step back, evaluate and look at what really worked, which scenes are good, where it is maybe too documentary-like and what style do we want to dig further into. Once you’re in the main shoot you just don’t have that time anymore because you always have to deal with what are we shooting the next day and next week.
So, it’s a great benefit to have the option of going and taking a step back. I also think the extremeness of this physical work of lambing and farming actually inspired us all to understand how Rona grew up and what forces she was confronted with. The lambing season is not just nice, cute little lambs running around, it’s brutal – they die, they get stuck. It is beautiful but it’s also quite tough and then we thought how is that influencing her teenage years, her times in London, her use of alcohol – it’s all connected to an edge that is there within her life in every aspect.
AF: Could you talk about the lambing scenes, I understand Saoirse actually delivered seven lambs in total. This movie beautifully marries reality and fiction throughout. Why was it important to have the lambing scenes on camera with Saoirse doing it herself?
Fingscheidt: It tells us so much about the contrast of her character’s two worlds, farming is very hard work, and you don’t get a lot of vacations, it’s very physical. It was important that we get this episode, there’s a whole chapter in the book about it, it connects her with her father and her childhood years. Then of course we wanted it to look as real as possible and went full on documentary mode which meant we had to be there in the lamb shed at 3:00 AM, waiting until a lamb wanted to be born. A lot of things had to work together, the camera had to be at the right angle, the lamb had to be fine and healthy.
AF: You mention the physicality and the hardness of the farm work and I’m curious about the physicality of being drunk and how you wanted to portray that in the film?
Fingscheidt: It was a lot of brainstorming with the sound team and the DOP in terms of how we can make the experience as immersive as possible and put us in Rona’s shoes. When she is liberated, the camera’s liberated and when she’s sober, the camera is very static and clean. When she’s bored, the colors are bored, but when she’s drunk the camera messes around and loses its focus. It’s not just the drunk scenes that are told from her perspective, it’s hopefully the whole spectrum of emotions and states of mind.
Then comes a lot of experimenting with lenses and styles. You have to hold back a certain esthetic to leave room to go further as the movie progresses. I would say at the beginning in the first scene where we see her drunk, we’re still doing fine and the more the movie progresses the more radical the visual and the acoustic storytelling gets.
AF: Let’s talk about building that trust and openness with Amy, not just in the writing process but you kept this going throughout the production and later in the edit as well.
Fingscheidt: If somebody gives me so much trust in terms of, ‘OK, I will let you make a film about my life’ and it is a success story but it’s not a glorious one. It’s a very personal story also about her parents and I felt this incredible responsibility towards Amy and her family because I thought me and Saoirse are going to move on to the next film, but Amy will have to live with this film forever and so will her parents. Orkney is such a small community, everybody who wants to see the film can go see it and my goal was that no matter how good or bad the movie turns out, I want to make sure that they walk proudly and happily through the streets of Kirkwall afterwards. Anything else would have broken my heart.
The key to that is just to open the process and discuss it. Amy is an artist, so she does understand the need to leave things out, in reality she has a brother, he’s not in the film, but I wanted to make sure they were okay with that. Her parents read the script before we went into production. Amy could always visit us on set and could see all the rushes because there’s no point in hiding something. If she gives me so much trust, she’s getting it back.
AF: I am curious about the practical challenges of shooting in these remote locations in Scotland. Was it perhaps also a blessing in disguise?
Fingscheidt: It was both. It was super challenging practically in terms of how we’re going to get food, where we are going to sleep, how do you get those cars on the island. But then the beauty that comes with it, you’re stuck for two months in this extreme situation and it’s like you do the ultimate boot camp aka team bonding experience because you’re stuck on a tiny island together. You see each other all the time and it is very challenging but it’s a blessing as well because you really need to grow together as a family.
AF: Being out there in the elements, was there a wildlife sighting or weather incident that specifically stands out to you in terms of the power of nature?
Fingscheidt: The respect of the gales. We always had to make sure it wasn’t too windy because it’d get dangerous. If you’re at the edge of those crazy cliffs, and of course we had a security team and there were lines that digitally were taken out later, we were secured to those climbing lines. But there were moments like, “Oh, if the wind gets any stronger than this, it isn’t safe for us to film anymore,” so the power of nature was very visible.
AF: This is a very personal and moving film. Has there been a reaction or response that especially moved you?
Fingscheidt: Many moments. It’s not a film for everybody, it is quite challenging structure-wise, we are asking you to embark on this journey. Once you do, it gets quite trippy and I’ve had amazing, very moving audience reactions, but I do remember when we showed Amy the first rough cut.
She burst into tears and said that weirdly the film made her see connections between her childhood trauma, the ability of healing from it and the addiction, how it’s all connected and all one. And for me it was all there in the book, it was so obvious, I thought she had processed it all long ago but the movie sort of gave her another dimension to things. That was a very powerful moment, and I love how proud she is of the film, it makes me really happy.
Sony Pictures Classics’ ‘The Outrun’ is now available for viewing in theaters.