Susanne Heinrich is a German filmmaker and author. She published four books between the ages of 19 and 25 and was nominated for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Following her first short film, “Pulse,” she was accepted into the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin.

“Aren’t You Happy?” premiered at the 2019 Edinburgh International Film Festival on June 24.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words

SH: A young woman roams the big city in search of the next place to sleep. On her way she meets therapists, models, enlightened mothers, the new precariat, and lots of men. It’s a portrait of our Western neoliberal society in 15 model scenes.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

SH: The film goes back to my discomfort in society. I was always told I was free, but I felt my decisions didn’t matter. Whether I slept with someone or bought an ice cream [it was] a gradual difference. I was told we were all oh so individual, but I only saw conformism and repetition everywhere. I was bored, disconnected, and exhausted.

At about the same time, I politicized myself in a student uprising at our film academy and began to read theory. That changed everything. I began to politicize my depression. To step out of the way and recognize similarities and structures instead of telling individual psychologizing stories enabled me to have a sense of humor. This suffering has become the stuff of a comedy about our society.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

SH: I’d like them to be productively confused.

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

SH: The most challenging moment for me was when [producer] Philippe Bober joined the film and our collaboration [involved] going back to the editing. The film was already finished in my eyes. Going back to seeing the film as material again was super difficult.

[That] one year of additional work [also] claimed many private victims. For example, I had to continue to make debts to my family.

W&H: How did you get your film funded?Share some insights into how you got the film made. 

SH: My movie’s a hybrid. It started as a student film. The German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) [sets] their contributions at 120,000 euros [or about 136,000 USD] for editing room, camera and lighting equipment, postproduction etc. In addition, we had 11,000 euros [or about 12,500 USD] which we could freely dispose of. That’s almost nothing: a few trips with a van, a little catering.

From the moment Philippe joined the project, first as a world sales agent and then also as a co-producer, people were paid for the first time. We did a scene with rotoscopy, which was very expensive. And the post-production had to be repeated. So the film suddenly became more expensive. Philippe took a financial risk because he believed in the film and my artistic vision.

W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

SH: I used to write books. When I had a tough writing crisis, I remembered a positive experience with a director with whom I had once transformed one of my books into a script. At that time, I had the feeling that I was translating it back into its actual form. I wanted to get to the bottom of this feeling, so I applied to a film school.

For me, nothing else came into question but to change the medium. Making art is my way of being in touch with the world.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

SH: Worst advice: I was told at a screening of my film, “You can’t revolutionize cinema like this.” I think it was because the speaker doubted that you could just dictate new rules. That strengthened my anarchic determination. So perhaps it wasn’t a bad advice after all because it had a good effect.

Good advice is rare. I’m just noticing that I probably find advice problematic in general.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why?

SH: Oh, there are so many! I love Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s “Teknolust,” especially because it’s a playful alternative to the many male monolithic-monumental sci-fi disaster movies about the final man-machine battle.

W&H: It’s been over a year since the reckoning in Hollywood and the global film industry began. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?

SH: Perhaps there is now a climate in which sexist utterances can no longer be made so easily without triggering a shitstorm. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, because that doesn’t really lead to a reduction of misogyny but rather to an optical correction that sometimes makes it more difficult to thematize the underlying structure.