Maria Schrader’s latest project is “Unorthodox,” the critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries based on Deborah Feldman’s memoir of the same name. The German multi-hyphenate directed the four-part story of a young Jewish woman who leaves her ultra orthodox Brooklyn community and begins anew in Berlin.

Schrader previously helmed features “Love Life” and “Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe,” and co-directed “The Giraffe.” She also wrote or co-wrote the scripts for those films as well as “Silent Night,” “I Was on Mars,” and “RobbyKallePaul.”

On the acting side, Schrader’s many credits include “Deutschland 83” — which was co-created by “Unorthodox’s” Anna Winger — “Fortitude,” “Nobody Loves Me,” and “Aimee & Jaguar.” She received Bavarian Film Awards for the latter two, and the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for Best Actress for “Aimee & Jaguar.” She also took home a special Bavarian Film Award for directing “Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe.”

We recently spoke to Schrader live at a Girls Club event. A community for women creatives, culture-changers, and storytellers, the Girls Club will be hosting more live events and opportunities such as this in the future. We are offering the first month free for those who are interested and identify as a woman. Please email girlsclubnetwork@gmail.com to receive an invitation and let us know a bit about who you are and what you do.

“Unorthodox” is now available on Netflix.

This interview has been edited and condensed. It was transcribed by Sophie Willard.

W&H: The response to “Unorthodox” has been great, right? Everybody loves it.

MS: To be honest it’s overwhelming. No one had expected something like that. At the end of the day, we’ve been this small German production, and sometimes we felt under the radar of Netflix.

The moment they put up the the ads at Times Square on the big billboard, we were like, “Wow, something is really happening. They seem to believe in it.” But that it would be received in the States, that it’s in the top 10 [most-watched projects on Netflix] in so many countries — it’s overwhelming.

W&H: How did you become involved with the series?

MS: I knew the showrunner, Anna Winger, before. I acted in her first show, called “Deutschland 83,” and in “Deutschland 86,” so we met there. We had a plan to work in this constellation before. She’s seen my movies, which I had directed before, and she came to me, and introduced me to the book and to Deborah Feldman, and I instantly thought, “That’s something for us.”

W&H: How did it get to Netflix?

MS: Anna made contact with Netflix, and I think they were just the fastest ones to respond.

W&H: Was it an independent German TV production made and then sold to Netflix, or did Netflix pay for it?

MS: It’s an original Netflix show, and we found a German service production company.

W&H: Thank you for sharing that because sometimes it doesn’t happen in that way. So this is your first TV miniseries that you’ve directed? You directed all four of these episodes, correct?

MS: Yes, correct. Fortunately.

W&H: Yes, because you can see the consistent vision throughout the series. But you started as an actress, and you’ve also been a writer. I remember seeing “Aimee & Jaguar” — such a beautiful movie. When did you decide to add directing to your résumé?

MS: I started out actually being a theater actress. My first contact with film was writing the scripts. I collaborated with my partner back then, and we invented the movies for ourselves. So I was writing the script to be able to act in the movies.

We did three or four feature films together. From one to the other, my position became more responsible — I was involved in the whole process, I learned how to edit. The last one is called “The Giraffe,” with the fabulous David Strathairn in it, and like “Unorthodox,” it was also shot in Brooklyn and Williamsburg. That was back in 1997. I co-directed.

W&H: So it was a natural progression for you.

MS: Yes, I was always interested in the making, the procedure, the technical aspects, but also being involved in asking what’s the story about and why we are telling this? What’s the aim and how do we get there?

W&H: I watched the making-of documentary, “Making Unorthodox,” which I don’t think Netflix does a lot of — these 20-30 minutes of behind-the-scenes. I thought it was really fascinating. I highly recommend that. How did that come about?

MS: It was our initiative. It’s Number 2 in Netflix rankings in Israel. Number 1 is the series, and Number 2 is the making of! It’s been watched a lot.

W&H: I wanted to ask about the research. When you went to Williamsburg, was the script already complete, or was it ahead of the script being written and you guys dug in and really tried to understand life in Williamsburg?

MS: As I remember, I think the first draft of outlines or the first draft of scripts had been there. But in my memory it all happened in parallel at the same time.

The moment we got the green light from Netflix, we already knew that we had to deliver within a year. So the writing process, researching, casting, location, finding the team members — it all kind of intertwined and started at the same time.

W&H: Now Deborah didn’t go with you to Williamsburg. You had another kind of tour guide in Williamsburg. Talk about your experience in Williamsburg.

MS: Well, we went twice. The first trip was by the end of January. It started with just walking the streets, looking into stores, getting as many impressions as we could. By then we were already accompanied by our supervisor, the wonderful Eli Rosen [the show’s cultural consultant and Yiddish translator, who also appears in the series].

W&H: Yes. I want to talk about him. This was January 2019, correct?

MS: Correct. A very short time ago, and we started shooting in May. I remember that we got to New York, we knew that Eli Rosen would be our guide into this world, and also be on set. We hadn’t met him; we arrived in New York, and we knew there was a show at the Jewish rep theater and he would be on stage. We were very exhausted, and there were some of us saying, “Maybe we better go to bed,” and I said, “No, no, we’ve got to go.”

And so I saw him on stage, performing “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish. And he was brilliant. And I thought there are many brilliant actors on stage, actually. I immediately wanted to meet these people who are capable of using Yiddish as a mother tongue for different reasons.

Eli Rosen was born in Borough Park [in Brooklyn, New York, home to a large Orthodox Jewish community], he lived that life, he married within the community, he left as a grown-up, and then very late became an actor. There are other people who just learn Yiddish to be able to perform on stage, or have different relations to that language, maybe from their parents’ side, but not as vivid language. So there are various approaches.

W&H: Eli is New York-based. I would guess there are only a couple of people in the world who could do the job that he had to do for your show?

MS: Yes, he is. He combines a lot. He lives, he knows a lot, it’s in his system, he knows everything. Then since he left that life and started to get into acting, he also has this distance to look onto it, understanding and knowing our needs. He translated the script, he worked with the actors.

W&H: I was thinking there’s a difference between being a man in Williamsburg in that kind of life, and being a woman. They’re such different roles to dive into, such as being a girl who gets married at 17 and has never experienced anything in her life. In particular, seeing the life of what women have to do in this community — my understanding is the women are taught English because they have to earn a living, because the men are learning in the home all the time. It’s fascinating to me the unique roles in that community. How did you learn all the different pieces of everybody’s job, for lack of a better word?

MS: We had the possibility to meet people who still live in this community and who led us into their homes. They were very open. I think within the community and within the rules there are pretty liberal people.

W&H: That’s not common. 

MS: Of course, but also when you walk the street it’s like everywhere: some people really don’t want to get into contact with you, and others are open.

W&H: What I love is that you made such a specific context so universal, and translated so we can all relate to it. I know a lot of people here probably have never seen a Satmar Jew before. I have. You won’t if you don’t go to Williamsburg — in Borough Park they don’t look the same as in Williamsburg. So it is a very insulated community. I’m sure it was a goal of yours to figure out, how do you make such specificity universal?

MS: I think first of all, the story of Deborah’s is a very specific story because she grew up without parents, which is totally unusual, and without siblings. She was raised by two very old people in an empty house. And this is very atypical. The specifics — it’s very beautiful how you put it — the specific aspect is also that her marriage was under pressure and unhappy, and actually not working.

Would it have been different — and there was romance involved, and they both had hopes for the marriage — Deborah wouldn’t have left. I think these are the individual stories and choices which exist in every kind of society. There is happiness, there is unhappiness. So it was very important for us to get the details right but stay close to this specific story of Deborah — Esther in our case — and allow the air for the possibility to imagine the neighbor leads a different life. So we are far away from condemning or judging or generalizing.

W&H: I also think that that was such a beautiful part of this: it wasn’t judging. Because it’s very easy to judge people who spend their life this way. The women are not allowed to be free citizens in our culture. When you look at it from our perspective, for me particularly, I do everything I can to ensure that women have rights to bodily autonomy, can have a life, and then it’s hard to look at these people who are living in what feels like the 1800s, and not feel judgement. I didn’t feel judgement for the first time, as me watching something about this community, and instead felt love.

MS: It’s wonderful that you say that. It was a big goal. Aside of the fact that it’s of course a very sensitive topic to portray, or at least portray a few individuals of a community, who does not want to be portrayed in any way — that makes it sensitive.

On the other hand, I would say it goes for every kind of film. It’s every kind of narrative in films because the beauty of making movies or television narratives is to offer an experience to let people dive into a story and identify — even though it’s an uncomfortable thing, or unsettling. She was proud. She visited us on set and you could feel that she was excited.

I think there was also an aspect of being overwhelmed, especially in Parts 3 and 4: these two episodes really dive into the unhappiness, and into the intimacy. For me, it’s the core of the unhappiness, this pressure put on such a young woman’s shoulders about the most personal and the most intimate part of her life which she didn’t experience herself yet.

It’s terrible what happened to her, and what also happens to Esther in the story, and I think it was tough for [Feldman] to experience — it got to her again, watching the series, even though she thought it was long behind her.

W&H: Let’s talk about Esty in the series, portrayed by Shira Haas. I mean, those eyes, oh my gosh. She is a revelation. Talk about casting her and how you were able to elicit her performance. I’m speechless. She was so good.

MS: Yes, she’s amazing. And it was obvious in the first minute I saw the recording of her on my computer. We received a lot of recordings from England, from Germany, from Israel. We’ve seen a lot of young women, a lot of actresses. And sometimes we would look at these casting scenes for a couple of hours. When I saw Shira, it was like a wake-up call. There was something very special: I saw Esther. I thought, this is so big and so delicate at the same time.

She lives in Tel Aviv. So I went [to Israel], we met, and then with her help we tried to find the right actor to portray her husband. We worked a couple of days together, and instantly we felt that we can communicate, we share a view on the whole project, and we just fell in love somehow.

“Unorthodox”

W&H: I wanted to talk about the scene at the lake at the end of Episode 1 in terms of how you set that up. When she walks into the water and takes the wig off, it’s almost like another mikveh. Shedding her skin, pure life, the sun is setting — talk about that shot.

MS: I will share some secrets with you on this. It was our very last shooting day in Berlin before we went to New York, and we were supposed to shoot that scene on the beach two or three times before, and it was bad weather. We were under incredible pressure. Every time I said, “No, let’s not go there if there are not 1,000 people on the beach like usual.” We had bad weather every time, so this last day of shooting was our last chance, and we knew we had to go. We were lucky, and we had a sunny, beautiful day.

As you can see in the picture, the sun is just about to go down in the moment she walks in and takes off the wig — somehow we were just very lucky to capture it all. It was a lot to shoot on that day. The last drone shot for instance was done almost in the dark. The sunset was a long time behind, [so fortunately] we could still use it.

This shot when she walks in was a beautiful combination of work from two very talented people: our DOP, Wolfgang Thaler — and his colleague who [operated] the steady cam, who was able to follow — and of course, Shira, who gave these steps a sacred “taste.” It’s only her and the camera, being able to sense and to follow in the same need somehow, so we couldn’t rehearse.

It was the last five minutes. She and I had spoken a lot about it and exchanged our thoughts, and the camera just followed. This is one of the beautiful gifts you’ll receive as a director, because as a director you will always stand in a passive position the moment “it” really happens. You can only prepare, and then you hope for the best.

W&H: You were directing actors in three different languages so seamlessly. Linguistically it can be so, so challenging. How were you were able to manage that?

MS: I think the compliment goes to the actors who work so incredibly hard, and especially Shira and Amit Rahav, who plays her husband. These two very talented actors learned this language from scratch — they did not know Yiddish before. For me, to be honest, it’s easy. I know the lines by heart, the moment I start the scene. I prepared, I have the script. Yiddish is also, in words, quite close to German.

Sometimes if you direct in a different language than your mother tongue, which I also did in my previous movie, you sense different things. You know exactly what they’re saying but still you have maybe a stronger emotional bond. It’s not difficult, the moment you know what they say, and you’re prepared — and I, of course, was very prepared.

W&H: This is a question from Laura, a director from Switzerland. She loves the series, especially how you represented the protagonist and her journey. The question is about the portrayal of sex and sexuality. Did you work with an intimacy coordinator? If yes, how early on? And if not, did you work with the actors during these scenes and prepare them?

MS: I only can imagine what an intimacy coordinator is.

W&H: It’s a relatively new job now, that is becoming quite big in terms of protecting actors on set, and dealing with sex scenes in a way that is very positive, proactive, and safe. It’s all about safety.

MS: I personally never experienced that as an actress. I think it’s a very good thing that this exists.

We didn’t have that [on the miniseries], but I think we also didn’t need it. First of all, it was very clear to me, to Anna Winger, that showing dysfunctional sexuality cannot allow any kind of sexual exploitation at the same time. You cannot portray dysfunctional sex, and at the same time, make it look sexy, right? At least I can’t. We didn’t want that. So practically, it meant that they don’t undress. They’re fully dressed, Shira was protected with a couple of layers.

We talked about what they both needed, if they felt comfortable. In comparison to other sex scenes and sets, in terms of body contact, I think it was easy; in terms of emotional impact it was not easy, of course. Sometimes it’s a bigger step to undress emotionally, than to get rid of clothes.

W&H: Good point. I think also it might have helped that pretty much all of you were women, in terms of the leadership of this entire production. What was that like? Was that intentional?

MS: Yeah, probably. I’m coming from a [certain] generation. You mentioned “Aimee & Jaguar.” It was a big thing back then, it had a very liberal sex scene, I was naked a lot of times [in it]. And it was — at least in Germany and German speaking regions — the first lesbian love story on the big screen with a really big budget. I was — I don’t know how many times — asked, “How can it be that [this has] a male director?”

I always answered, “I was very happy to have this director. He was the best director for it, and I was very sure about that. He made the movie, he wrote the script, and I trusted him.” So I wouldn’t say, “Here are specific subjects, and they belong to women. It can only be a woman [who can] direct this piece, like ‘Unorthodox,’” for instance.” I think there are absolutely men around who could do it, too.

W&H: The filmmaking world has changed since that time. I think now, it would probably be questioned if it was a man directing “Aimee & Jaguar,” because of how things are, and who gets to tell stories. Probably when your movie was made, a woman wouldn’t have been able to tell that story, just because of the opportunities that women had at that time. That’s part of this movement now.

MS: That is absolutely, totally true. But I also took the liberty in my last movie: I had 80 speaking parts. Three were women. Everyone else were men. No one questioned me then.

W&H: That’s good. Women should [be able to] direct movies about men. These are the conversations that we’re having now, as a culture. It’s all about representation. Once we move the movement more towards people having opportunities other than white men, then we can bring it back in to: maybe guys should be able to direct women’s movies.

MS: I’m absolutely with you. It’s true. I think it was from the first moment — also since we have such a difference in age — it was a very intimate relation, and I think Shira and I trusted each other very much. [Not only because I’m a woman, but] also because I was an actress. It’s not necessarily given that you find this connection only because you are a woman.

W&H: I agree with you completely. Now, you talked a little bit about your collaboration with the DOP in terms of creating the cinematic vision of the film, the look and tone, and the authentic feel. Were you influenced visually by any other films?

MS: I did my last movie, “Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe” with Wolfgang Thaler already. His fantastic capacity is that his background is documentary; he finds images, he finds compositions in no time. He has less interest in creating a world, than in finding the images in the existing world.

The series is not primarily style driven, which I quite like. It’s beautiful yet it’s close to the characters. It’s very important to us to have the characters being the motor, being the engine of a scene, and not having the camera dictating or dominating in any way. So his camera is quite humble, I would say, and at the same time beautiful and elegant.

The production designer [Silke Fischer], I also worked with on my last movie. She also did “Toni Erdmann.” It was quite clear – since we shot every New York City interior in Germany — that we would like to build a sound stage to make New York as the surrounding city believable. So we built this apartment of the newlywed couple in the studio. It was a big decision because we had a very small budget, so the beautiful view you see outside the windows is a photograph.

W&H: In the behind-the-scenes video, we see that the Berlin part of Esty’s life is not based on what happened to Deborah. What was behind the decision to deviate from her time in Berlin versus her time in Brooklyn, which was based on her life?

MS: Well, as you know, Anna Winger and [co-creator] Alexa Karolinski were writing the scripts. I was sitting with them and we were discussing it — I remember that I was also surprised by the fact that no child should be involved. That was my first reaction. I think it’s a beautiful decision. I think it was important to also protect Deborah in her life in Berlin right now a little bit. And, of course, the decision to have her be interested in music and not in books, like Deborah was, is cinematic and sensual.

W&H: The music stuff really, really works. So, when Deborah left to go to Berlin, she had her son.

MS: She left the community, and first stayed for a couple more years in the States — she went to the Sarah Lawrence College, she got herself an apartment with her little child, and only moved to Berlin I believe when he was already three.

W&H: I was also curious as to the conversation about how we don’t really know what happens with the baby at the end the miniseries. It felt to me more up in the air about what was going to happen and if she was going to make her own decision but later down, you never know what’s going to happen with her mother-in-law.

MS: I like this very last, very private moment that she may come into the cafe, expecting this group of new friends, but then they’re not there. She looks at this little compass, and she finds herself alone again, having said goodbye to her husband. Leaving him behind, even though there’s still a huge feeling, it’s a big step. But maybe for the first time she’s finding herself alone with herself, and not weak.

W&H: You said you had a small budget and shoot. Do you feel comfortable telling us what your budget was and how many days you shot for?

MS: I’m not sure why would I not be allowed to say that?

W&H: People in the U.S. get nervous, but I think people need to be honest so that everybody knows what’s happening. This has been the problem for so long as everybody’s been separated from each other and not sharing the reality. Whatever you’re comfortable with. How many days did you shoot?

MS: Fifty. We only shot four days in New York, running around, trying to get what we could such as the pawn shop, of course. For everyone who is from Europe, we kind of had something like you would have for two primetime television features.

W&H: There’s another thing for me that resonated so much, that I always think about. The Satmar sect was created post-World War II to replenish the Jews who were gone in the Holocaust. The beauty of Berlin welcoming this girl, whose entire world was based on replenishment, into this community resonated so much with me because when I go to Germany, I feel it. I’m not Satmar but I feel being a Jew in Germany very differently than I feel being a Jew in other places. I was wondering if that came into your mind, if people have talked to you about that as their response to the miniseries.

MS: I experienced it even before. I’m not sure if you’re aware — my first movie I was shooting in Israel, and I remember so well when I went to Israel and was asked all the time, “Where are you from?” I instantly learned that people, especially young people, in Israel love Berlin. So, so many young Israeli people love to travel to Berlin.

I can’t believe that it’s only for the party scene, only the electronic music, and the clubbing — it is probably also overcoming something, overcoming, rewriting, reliving, revisiting places, and putting another [layer of] paint on it. Being active in it. How did you feel as a Jew coming to Berlin for the first time?

W&H: I was really nervous the first time I went because I have so much family legacy involved. I love the presence of acknowledgment. In this country, we don’t acknowledge what happened with slavery. When I would walk down the street in Berlin and see something and read something, or I would go to the museum, I felt present. Whereas here in the United States, imagine if we actually — when walking down the street in New York City — saw a plaque like I see in Berlin all the time, of what happened, where. It would give you pause. It’s about acknowledging the history, versus whitewashing it, for lack of a better word, and not acknowledging that it even exists. I feel that’s why I am drawn constantly to Berlin, and to the people there. I do feel it every time I go.

MS: Of course, it’s loaded with history. You feel it every day, if you have senses for it, if you’re a Jew, or if you’re not a Jew. Since I’ve lived here for such a long time, you of course see the different shades and the different faces of Berlin, and whenever I hear something like what you’re reporting or I hear that people say that it’s welcoming and it’s friendly, and there is a consciousness about history, I’m actually very happy about this.

Of course it also has dark sides like every big city, various faces, and it was a very conscious decision to portray this positive, inviting, and lighter side of Berlin.

https://youtu.be/-zVhRId0BTw