Aichholzer Film & Tarantula
presents

CHULPAN KHAMATOVA   MIKI MANOJLOVIC

in

THE WHORE’S SON

a film by Michael Sturminger

based on the novel by
GABRIEL LOIDOLT

Austria 2003, 86 min, german, 35 mm, color, Dolby SRD, 1:1,85

produced by
Aichholzer Filmproduction
Mariahilferstrasse 58/3, 1070 Wien
T: +43 1 523 40 81, F: +43 1 526 34 58
mail: office@aifilm.at
www.aifilm.com

co-produced with Tarantula
www.tarantula.lu

www.hurensohn.at

CAST

Silvija						CHULPAN KHAMATOVA
Uncle Ante					MIKI MANOJLOVIC
Ozren						STANISLAV LISNIC
Aunt Ljiljana					INA GOGÁLOVÁ
Pepi						GEORG FRIEDRICH
Tamara						MARIA HOFSTÄTTER
Ozren aged 3 					GABRIEL USEIN
Ozren aged 8 					EMANUEL USEIN
Joschi						STEFAN SIDLO
Primary school teacher				TAMARA METELKA
Ozren’s father					ROBERT RITTER
Snezana					SUSAN SÖZÜBEK
Cherie						NATALIA BARANOVA
Madame					POLA CLARICINI
Refuse truck driver				HELMUT HAFNER
Taxi driver					KLAUS ORTNER
Carmen						DESSISLAVA URUMOVA
Waitress					IVA CAMPESTRINI
Shop assistent					GERTI DRASSL
etc.

CREW

screenplay/director				MICHAEL STURMINGER
based on the novel by				GABRIEL LOIDOLT
screenplay in collaboration with			MICHAEL GLAWOGGER
producer					JOSEF AICHHOLZER
co-producers					DONATO ROTUNNO
						EDDY GÉRADON-LUYCKX
production management				MONIKA MARUSCHKO
production management (Luxembourg)		FELIX SORGER
cinematographer					JÜRGEN JÜRGES (BVK)
editing						KARINA RESSLER
sound						HEINZ EBNER
set design					RENATE MARTIN
						ANDREAS DONHAUSER
costume design					TANJA HAUSER
make-up					MARTIN GEISLER
casting						MARKUS SCHLEINZER
music						ADRIAN VONWILLER

SYNOPSIS
At the age of three, Ozren only has to watch his mother while she‘s sleeping to know that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. A queen. 

At the age of nine, he doesn’t understand why people swear at him on the street, calling him a whore’s son, a sonofabitch: his mother works as a waitress and that’s the only reason she’s hardly ever at home in the evening. 

At the age of 16 Ozren knows. He’s learnt a lot. About money from his mother, about God from his Auntie Ljiljana, about the world from his Uncle Ante and about whores from Pepi.

Now he’s determined to clear up the mystery surrounding his mother. And that’s what ultimately leads to tragedy.

STORY
Ozren’s mother has come to Vienna from ex-Yugoslavia. With the driver of a Mercedes. Now she’s alone with her child, in a tiny flat with an outside toilet. 

Ozren grows up in a strangely sheltered world, in which everyone only wants the best for him but no one’s prepared to tell the truth. 

In the evenings, when Silvija has to work, Auntie Ljilana or Uncle Ante look after Ozren. Both of them love the little boy more than anything else. Her deep faith in God and his liberal pragmatism are the cornerstones of the mystery surrounding Ozren’s mother.

Ozren’s not like other children. And he knows that better than most. One day a new girl joins his class. A girl from Bosnia, where a terrible war is raging. She doesn’t say a word. She’s also got a secret. Ozren falls in love. 

When Ozren turns 16, Silvija decides to move out of the flat they share. It’s too cramped for both of them, she says, but the truth is that it’s too cramped for the three of them – son, mother and whore.

Silvija says she’ll visit Ozren regularly. She’ll give him the money he needs for his daily life. If he has a problem he can ring Auntie Ljilana or Uncle Ante. She doesn’t give him her new address.

To begin with, Ozren copes quite well with his new life. He helps Pepi, who works in the Mercedes Bar downstairs as a general factotum, with his daily duties. 

Ozren cleans and polishes, and looks and listens, getting to know the whores’ world better and better. But his mother isn’t just a whore any more. "She does it in secret", says Pepi. "What’s the difference when it’s secret?" - "The price."

In secret. This becomes an obsession. Ozren decides to look for his mother. A telephone number leads to her address. A confrontation is unavoidable, the ensuing catastrophe inevitable. 

”I’ve killed my mother, my darling mother!”

”BASICALLY IT’S AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE STORY”

Peter Krobath: You happened to read Gabriel Loidolt’s novel Hurensohn (The Whore’s Son) and knew straightaway that it was the material for a film...

Michael Sturminger: I think Hurensohn’s really wonderful material, because the book’s written in wholly unsentimental, extremely artistic language, and because it operates from the perspective of one person but at the same time depicts a whole group of people, each of whom has his or her own life and dignity.
Working on this screenplay was like being a composer setting a libretto to music. You have to find the core, the substance of the story and then try to develop a completely new language in an entirely different medium.

Where does the core, the substance of this story lie?

Michael Sturminger: Basically it’s an impossible love story, a love story between mother and son. But it’s not an erotic love affair, I mean it’s not about incest or other things like that, but about the impossibility of a relationship. There are several protagonists in this film, who all act according to what they’ve learnt from life, living around a child who has to try to put together all the different impressions and influences to make a functioning picture of the world.

It’s interesting that The Whore’s Son is set in the red-light milieu without being a milieu film as such ... 

Michael Sturminger: It’s set somewhere on the periphery of that milieu, it creeps up on the red-light milieu from behind as it were. For example, the brothel is only shown when it’s being cleaned and never when it’s in operation. You see the mother getting dressed up and made up for her job, especially at the beginning, when she’s still working under adverse conditions, how she goes off to work and comes back home. It’s not prostitution itself that’s the subject of this film but life with prostitution. 

Does The Whore’s Son have to be set in Austria, or could this story take place anywhere?

Michael Sturminger: Austria’s only important to the extent that it’s a foreign country for the protagonists who are living there. But in principle the story could also be set among the Portuguese community in Belgium or the Puertoricans in New York. It’s about people who migrate from a weak economic region to a stronger one and have to struggle along as best they can, each in his or her own way. 

”I’M ACTING A Problem”

Peter Krobath: What sort of woman is Silvija?

Chulpan Khamatova: She’s a completely normal woman.

Is she a good mother?

Chulpan Khamatova: She tries to be a good mother. That’s what she wants to be more than anything else.

What does she want from life?

Chulpan Khamatova: She wants to have a completely normal family. She dreams of a small, perfect world with her son. She’s a whore, and for her that works like anything else under a capitalist system: someone sells, someone else buys. But society refuses to see her profession as normal. Everybody tells her son that she must be a bad mother because she’s a whore. That’s the whole problem – and it’s that problem I’m acting. 

”WE’RE all MORE OR LESS ALONE IN THIS WORLD”

Peter Krobath: What kind of person is Uncle Ante? Can you describe this character to me?

Miki Manojlovic: He’s child of the 1960s. He’s had a very good general education – at that time we had excellent schools in the wild ”Wild East”. Uncle Ante has been around a lot in his life; he was a globetrotter, he’s seen the world. Now he works for the municipal refuse collection department in Vienna; in his eyes it’s a completely normal job. For me Uncle Ante’s someone who’s almost too good for this world.

Do you think he typifies a particular generation from ex-Yugoslavia, a generation which had to leave its home country to find work abroad?

Miki Manojlovic: There’s a vast number of people, millions in fact, who’ve left this part of the Balkans since the end of the Second World War. And Uncle Ante is one of them. That’s probably the price we have to pay for our history. Perhaps we were trying to transform ourselves too quickly into a modern society, after all the years of darkness, maybe that’s the reason why so many peole left. 

What’s the message of The Whore’s Son? What is this film trying to tell us?

Miki Manojlovic: Difficult question. One message could be: we’re all more or less alone in this world. And each individual only has one life on whose experiences he can draw.  

MICHAEL STURMINGER

Director/screenplay

Michael Sturminger studied directing, screenwriting and dramaturgy at the Vienna Film Academy and has worked as a freelance author and director since 1990. He lives with his partner, the set designer Renate Martin, and their three children in Vienna. The main focus of Michael Sturminger’s work is in music theatre productions. The directing of an episode in the documentary film Zur Lage marked his return to screenwork. The Whore’s Son is his debut feature film.

Filmography:

2003		THE WHORE´S SON (screenplay, Director)
2002		ZUR LAGE (director of one episode)
1997		HARTER STOFF (screenplay)
1995		SUZIE WASHINGTON (screenplay in collaboration)
1993		TREIBHOLZ (screenplay)
1992		HALBE WELT (screenplay in collaboration)
		VOM FAHRENDEN ZUG (screenplay)
1991		HUND UND KATZ (director )
1990		HIMMEL ODER WIENERSTADT (director)
1989		BRIGITTENAU (director)

JÜRGEN JÜRGES

Cinematographer
Born 1940, lives in Berlin.

Main productions:
Angst essen Seele auf ‑ Effi Briest ‑ Die letzten Jahre der Kindheit ‑ Eisenhans ‑ White Star ‑Deutschland, bleiche Mutter ‑ Die flambierte Frau ‑ Eisenerde‑Kupferhimmel ‑ Die Venusfalle ‑ John Glückstadt ‑ Mossane ‑ Robert's movie ‑ In weiter Ferne - so nah ‑ Die ungewisse Lage des Paradieses ‑ Das letzte Siegel ‑ Love is colder than death ‑ Skladanowsky ‑ Sin Querer ‑ Sawdust Tales ‑ Das 10. Jahr ‑ Funny Games ‑ Jäger – Yara.........

Awards:
Bundesfilmpreis 1980 für “Die letzten Jahre der Kindheit” und “Die Kinder aus Nr. 67”
Deutscher Camera Award 1986 für den Fernsehfilm “Die Wupper”
Deutscher Camera Award 1988 für den Kinofilm “Eisenerde-Kupferhimmel”
Bayerischer Filmpreis 1988
Bundesfilmpreis 1994 für “In weiter Ferne - so nah” 
CAMERIMAGE 94, Filmakademie Lodz, Student's award for “In weiter Ferne - nah” 
Antalya Film Festival Camera Award for “Love is colder than death”
Ankara Film Festival for "Saw Dust Tales" (1998)

ACTORS

CHULPAN KHAMATOVA as ‘Silvija’

A rising star of Russian cinema, Chulpan Khamatova became well known from playing leading roles in films such as The Dance of Time and The Dead Land. In recent years she has also made a name for herself in European cinema with films such as Luna Papa or Good-bye Lenin. In The Whore’s Son, Chulpan Khamatova gives a complex and nuanced interpretation of her character’s role as mother and whore.

Born 1975 in Moscow.

Filmography (Selection – Main Characters)

2003			HURENSOHN
			72 meter unter dem wasser (Dir: Vladimir Hotimjmko)
2001			GOOD BYE, LENIN! (Dir: Wolfgang Becker)
			operation of the condemned (Dir: Alexander Muratov)
2000			viktor vogel- commercial man (Dir: Lars Kraume)
1999			england (Dir: Achim von Borries)
			weihnachtsabenteuer (Dir: Andrei Fetning)
1998			LUNA PAPA (Dir: Bakhijr Khudoinasarov)
			tuvalu (Dir: Veit Helmer)
1997			das alte lied (Dir: Vasili Picschul)
			land of the deaf (Dir: Valery Todorowsky)
1996			die tür (Dir: Max Senator)
			der tanz der zeit (Dir: Vadim Abdraschitov)

Awards:
Best Actress in a leading Role: LUNA PAPA - Festival du Cinema – russe a honfleur 2000
Best Actress in a leading Role: TUVALU – Filmfestival Nantes 2000

MIKI MANOJLOVIC (as Uncle Ante)
Miki Manojlovich hails from Belgrade and can look back on an acting career spanning over 80 films. He achieved international fame with his work for Emir Kusturica, for example in the film Underground. In the meantime he has matured into one of the great actors of European cinema. In The Whore’s Son Miki Manojlovich imbues the character of kind, wise Uncle Ante with a strong presence.

Filmography: (Selection)

2004			UNE VIE À T'ATTENDRE (dir: Thierry Klifa)
2003 			MATHILDE (dir: Nina Mimica)
			GATE TO HEAVEN (dir: Veit Helmer)
			PRAVDA , SMRT I NADA (dir: Milos Radovic)
			Les Marins perdus (dir: Claire Devers)
2000			MARRY ME (dir: Harriet Marin)
			MORTEL TRANSFERT (dir: Jean-Jacques Beineix)
			EMPORTE-MOI (dir: Léa Pool)
1999			Criminal Lovers (dir: Francois Ozon)
1998			BLACK CAT WHITE CAT (dir: Emir Kusturica)
1997			Gypsy Magic (dir: Stole Popov)
ARTEMISIA (dir: Agnès Merlet)
1996			PORTRAITS chinois (dir: Martine Dugowson)
Someone Else's America (dir: Goran Pasklajevic)
1995			UNDErground (dir: Emir Kusturica)