STOPPED ON

TRACKHALT AUF FREIER STRECKE

DIRECTED BY ANDREAS DRESEN

The doctor told the truth. The days are numbered.Why me and why now?A man leaves wife and children behind, parents, friends, neighbours and yesterday’s lover, the people in his life.Day by day a little farewell.Words are getting rare, longer the silence.In front of the window the year changes its colours.Dying is a final work to do.Not being alone while you are left behind alone, maybe that’s a good thing.

Text written for the film by Wolfgang Kohlhaase

Forty-year-old healthy Frank has been diag-nosed with an inoperable brain tumor andsuddenly condemned to only a few monthsto live. It’s a shock to a life seemingly ontrack with a steady job and a new house inthe suburbs. But together Frank and his fa-mily push through with their daily life ofwork and school. Frank tries to cope withthe difficulty of accepting the inevitable: in-creasing symptoms of the illness and medi-cal treatment. He uses his iPhone as a kindof emotional diary. The decision to homecare Frank puts an immense strain on lo-ving Simone and ends up distancing the fa-mily members as much as it keeps themtogether.

A story about death that celebrates life.

ANDREAS DRESENAndreas Dresen is one of Germany’s most ad-mired directors with diverse and award-winningfeatures such as Whiskey with Vodka, Cloud9, Summer in Berlin, Grill Point and NightShapes. Andreas’ feature, Whiskey withVodka was awarded for BEST DIRECTOR at theInternational Filmfestival Karlovy Vary and nomi-nated for GERMAN FILM AWARD for BESTACTOR and BEST SCRIPT. Cloud 9 premiered atthe Cannes Film Festival in 2008 where it wonthe COUP DE COEUR AWARD in the Un CertainRegard section. The film was nominated for theEUROPEAN FILM AWARD for BEST ACTRESSand BEST DIRECTOR and was awarded the BA-VARIA FILM PRIZE for BEST ACTRESS and BESTCINEMATOGRAPHER, BEST FILM in Triest 2009and won the GERMAN FILM AWARD 2009 forBEST ACTRESS, BEST DIRECTOR and BESTFILM (bronze). Summer in Berlin, was awar-ded BEST SCREENPLAY at the San SebastianFilm Festival and BEST ACTRESS at the ChicagoFestival. Grill Point won the SILVER BEAR –GRAND JURY PRIZE at the Berlin Film Festival,as well as BEST DIRECTOR and BEST ENSEM-BLE at the Chicago Festival and BEST DI-RECTOR at the Ghent Festival. Night Shapeswon BEST ACTOR at the Berlin Film Festivaland the BEST NEW DIRECTOR award at Vallo-dolid. Andreas Dresen was born in 1963 inGera, Germany. In the early 80s, he began wor-king in theater and making short films. He stu-died directing at the HFF “Konrad Wolf ”Potsdam-Babelsberg. Since 1992, he has beenworking as a writer and director for film, TV andtheater.

2011 Stopped on Track (Halt auf freier Strecke)2009 Whiskey with Vodka (Whisky mit Wodka)2008 Cloud 9 (Wolke 9) 2005 Summer in Berlin (Sommer vorm Balkon) 2004 Willenbrock2002 Herr Wichmann von der CDU

(documentary) 2001 Grill Point (Halbe Treppe) 2000 The Police Woman (Die Polizistin) – TV 1998 Night Shapes (Nachtgestalten) 1997 Changing Skins (Raus aus der Haut) – TV 1992 Silent country (Stilles Land)

STEFFI KÜHNERTSteffi Kühnert, born 1963 in East Berlin, gra-duated from the Academy of Dramatic Arts„Ernst Busch“, Berlin and since then worked atleading theaters in the German-speaking coun-tries, including the Vienna Burgtheater, theSchaubühne in Berlin, the Deutsches Theater inBerlin, the Berliner Ensemble, SchauspielhausBochum and the Residenz Theater Munich. Sheworked with directors such as Leander Hauss-mann, Falk Richter, Benno Besson and Luc Per-ceval. In 1993, Steffi Kühnert was awarded theFederal Cross of Merit for her outstanding per-formances.Before STOPPED ON TRACK she has played inAndreas Dresen’s GRILLPOINT and CLOUD 9.She also played in successful high-quality pro-ductions such as Christian Schwochow’s NO-VEMBER CHILD, Leander Haussmann’s BERLINBLUES, Andreas Arnstedt’s THE DISPENSABLESand Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON.

MILAN PESCHELMilan Peschel was born in 1968 in East Berlin.After graduading from the Academy of DramaticArts „Ernst Busch“, Berlin he worked at theNeue Bühne Senftenberg and at the Hans OttoTheater in Potsdam. From 1997 to 2008 hewas a member of the Ensemble of the Volks-bühne Berlin. This was followed by guest ap-pearances on other German and Austriantheaters like the Thalia Theater in Hamburg andat the Salzburg Festival. He has worked with di-rectors such as Dimiter Gotscheff, Armin Petrasand Frank Castorf. In addition, Milan Peschelappeared in numerous film and TV productions.For his starring role in Robert Thalheim’s debutNETTO Milan Peschel was nominated for BestActor for the German Film Prize. He also seenplayed in Thomas Imbach’s LENZ, in the episo-dic comedy BLACK SHEEP, as well as in PepePlanitzer’s Berlinale entry ALL GONE and Sebas-tian Schipper’s love story SOMETIME IN AU-GUST. Since 2007, Peschel staged as adirector at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlinand the Theater an der Parkaue.

COMMENTS FROM ANDREAS DRESEN

ORIGIN OF THEPROJECTThe past year has not been very easy for meand some of my closest friends. It has been atime of breakups, separations and distress. Thisvery personal feeling created the key tone ofthe film, if you will. Moreover, some of myfriends were confronted with death, and by lis-tening to these stories I somehow shared theexperience. In this context I was amazed byhow little our society reflects on this issue. Be-cause one thing we can surely say: it concernsall of us and can affect our lives anytime. Butwe prefer to push that aside and go on with oureveryday life. The same applies for the cinema:there are abundant and fast deaths, but withoutshowing what death means for the people in-volved. Or death hides behind melodramaticdramaturgical constructions, like the famouslast trip to the ocean or the like, which drawsattention away from the essential. For us it wasvery important to stick to the everyday experi-ence and to show the process, take a look intothe abyss but also at the lighter moments.What does it really mean for a man, his familyand friends, when death gets in the way of allhis life plans. The title of the film is simply ametaphor describing the situation Frank and hisfamily find themselves in. Suddenly all move-ment stops and you have to find your way onunfamiliar, open terrain.

THE DIAGNOSIS It’s amazing, but actually I didn’t want to shootthe opening scene at all. We know that situa-tion well enough from numerous other films:the doctor shows the x-ray and gives his devas-tating diagnosis. This usually only takes two

minutes. But then I thought it could be helpfulfor me and the actors to expose ourselves tothis moment as realistically as possible. Thedoctor in STOPPED ON TRACK is a real-life doc-tor and he has to give such diagnoses 2-3times a week, in that exact room, at that sametable. The actors met him for the first time infront of the camera. The conversation lasted 40minutes and I was deeply shattered. The actorshad a similar feeling. Doctor Träger is very clearyet full of empathy. The long moments he keptsilent were overwhelming. The silence allows afeeling of helplessness and leaves room to real-ize what’s going on and to ask questions. Thephone call is part of reality. He received it ex-actly at that moment. There are a lot of pa-tients in a hospital, a lot of urgent cases. Aneurosurgeon has to be available anytime.

COMPLETELY IMPROVISEDSTOPPED ON TRACK didn’t have a script in theclassic sense. The dialogues were completelyimprovised by the actors. In the preparatorystage, Cooky Ziesche and I researched for acouple of months. For example, interviewingsupporters of the hospice movement and alsodoctors and the bereaved of people that haddied of a serious disease. We recorded each in-terview, compiling a database which we dis-cussed with the actors and later on with thewhole team. That’s how we created the charac-ters and developed a schedule of scenes, out-lining the situations in the film. That was thebasis for the work on the set, when we devel-oped the actual scenes while shooting. It was avery small team of only seven people alto-gether. Sometimes there were only three on theset, which creates a very familial environmentwhere you can open up, just give it a go withoutthe fear of embarassment.

THE CHILDRENThe children are excellent. How did you go aboutworking with them? How much I’m very happywith the performances of the children, too. Theywere really relaxed and were on par with the adultactors. Since the character of daughter Lilly wasto be a diver, I looked at all the athletes of thatage group in Berlin, which were only four girls.Lilly impressed me the most. She was so preciseyet full of imagination. Maybe her clearness andmaturity have something to do with the fact thatshe has had a similar experience in her own fam-ily. The final line in the film comes from her. Wefound Mika, the young son, with the help of acasting agency. I noticed immediately how openlyand also physically he acted with his partners. Ofcourse the children knew what our story wasabout, but we always only talked about the re-spective situation. Since we shot mostly chrono-logically they could very well put themselves inthe postion of their characters. Like their adultpartners, they invented their text depending onthe situation and responded spontanously.

AUTHENTIC MEDICAL STAFFYour film presents to us a very frank, realistic, yetvery emotional view on the Fortunately, the storyis not drawn from my personal experience, al-though 10 years ago my own father died of abrain tumour. But in his case everything wascompletely different from what happens in thefilm. Our work on the film is based on the de-scriptions of the people we met during the re-sarch and the personal experiences of the teammembers. And of course the tone that the „reallife“ players added to it. All medical staff in ourfilm are authentic, there are no actors. The doc-tors and (male) nurses have introduced theirown experiences into the story. And they werethe touchstone if our depiction matches the pro-cedures in real life. For the actors, as well as forme, that was a big challange and a big help.

HOMECAREWe had researached various cases in whichfamilies had decided to keep the sick person athome and not send him to a hospital or hos-pice to have him die there. Of course there arealways both options, but the homecare systemin Germany, especially in Berlin is very well de-veloped. There are doctors specialized on thesupport of people in such a constellation, as weshow in STOPPED ON TRACK. To say good-byeamong the members of your family in an inti-mate environment is a great blessing and, bythe way, a tradition developed over centuries.Only the often industrialized handling of illnessand death caused great alienation. This alsocontributes to the fact that we don’t see deathas a natural part of our lives.

SOLIDARITY ANDDIGNITYElisabeth Kübler-Ross described 5 stages ofdying: isolation, anger, bargaining, depressionand acceptance. Our story is also located inthat area of conflict, even though the bordersbetween the different stages are not estab-lished that sharply. In such a dramatic constel-lation, people go through all kinds of emotionalstates, which is reflected in the respective situ-ations. Tenderness meets despair, gallows hu-mour meets grief, helplessness meets empathy.During the shoot I became more and moreaware of how precious a family is, how powerfula family’s solidarity is. Despite all tragedy, Franknever is alone. Together with his family, hefaces his destiny. It’s all about solidarity anddignity in a desperate situation.

STEFFI KÜHNERTMILAN PESCHELTALISA LILLI LEMKEMIKA NILSON SEIDEL

URSULA WERNERMARIE ROSA TIETJENOTTO MELLIESCHRISTINE SCHORNBERNHARD SCHÜTZTHORSTEN MERTENINKA FRIEDRICH

ANDREAS DRESENPETER ROMMELPETER HARTWIGMICHAEL HAMMON BVKJÖRG HAUSCHILDSUSANNE HOPFSABINE GREUNIGPETER SCHMIDTRALF KRAUSEANDREAS DRESENCOOKY ZIESCHE

ROSEMARIE WINTGENDAGMAR MIELKEANDREAS SCHREITMÜLLER

A production ofROMMEL FILM

In co-production withRUNDFUNK BERLIN-BRANDENBURG

In collaboration withARTE

ISKREMAS FILMPRODUKTION

With support fromMEDIENBOARD BERLIN-BRANDENBURG

FILMFÖRDERUNGSANSTALTDEUTSCHER FILMFÖRDERFONDS

SimoneFrankLilli

Mika

Simone’s MotherSimone’s SisterFranks’s FatherFranks Mothers

StefanTumor Ina

DirectorProducer

Production ManagerCinematography

EditorProduction DesignerCostume Designer

SoundSound Mix

Story Development

Commissioning Editors

INTERNATIONAL PRESSRICHARD LORMANDFilm | Press | Pluswww.filmpressplus.comE-mail: intlpress@aol.com

IN CANNES, 11-22 MAY 2011: Tel: +33 (0)9 70 44 98 65

TECHNICAL DATAFormat: DCP / 1:1.85 / Color / Digital Cinema 5.1Length: 110 min. / Language: German

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