Director Marc Forster: “I would like to film something in Switzerland”

You were born in Germany, moved to Switzerland as a child, went to boarding school there, and emigrated to the US in your early twenties. What does home mean to you? Where do you feel at home?
Mark Boswachter: My original home was Davos. I went to primary school there, I fell in love with the mountains and nature there, growing up there was a dream. After high school I emigrated to the US, first in New York and then in Los Angeles. I love California a lot, but I wouldn’t call it my home. After all, while I’m making movies, I’m usually somewhere else in the world and only here for two or three months. In that respect, I still see Switzerland as my home in my heart

How are you seen as a Hollywood star in humble Switzerland when you come home to ski during the holidays, as you did recently?
In Switzerland you don’t even notice the celebrities. The Swiss are all so incredibly respectful and kind. Even if people recognize you here, they don’t stare at you, everything is very discreet. Here, Roger Federer can walk down Zurich’s Bahnhofsstrasse with his family and not cause a stir.

Los Angeles is different…
However. Many tourists come especially to spot stars.

How much do you remember about Switzerland politically when you are abroad?
I am also a US citizen and unfortunately not very involved in the daily news in Switzerland. I only get a few superficial updates when I’m here. It is important for me to have a global understanding: what is happening between the continents, between Russia and Ukraine, between the European states… I am interested in many things, but I cannot consume everything, I can only read on certain things. Since the streaming services there is also an incredible amount of content, movies, documentaries, you can’t watch everything.

Would you like to work for a streaming provider?
It depends what kind of project it would be. If the right thing came up, why not? I see myself as a storyteller. Certain stories lend themselves perfectly to the cinema format. I can also imagine others for a streamer.

What is your impression of Swiss filmmaking when you look outside?
What I regret about Switzerland: in a country like New Zealand, for example, which has roughly the same proportions as Switzerland, there are so-called tax reductions for film productions. I believe that if Switzerland offered the same number of tax credits for international films as New Zealand, Australia or England, many international productions would come here. Purely from the locations it is great fun to photograph. Such an introduction would also give a huge boost to local film production. If you look at what ‘The Lord of the Rings’ alone has brought to New Zealand for tourism, what would have happened if these three films had been shot in Switzerland? There is so much talent in Switzerland, but it would be nice if there were more opportunities and bigger budgets for it.

Would that be a reason for you to come back to Switzerland and make films here?
I mainly make international films, but I would like to shoot something in Switzerland. But yes, it is difficult, as long as these tax credits, which can save you a lot of money, do not exist, then everything is much more expensive.

Her path to becoming an in-demand Hollywood director has been more difficult than one might think. What was your greatest high and what was your worst low in the past thirty years?
Yes, especially in the beginning after film school in New York, the road was indeed long and rocky. Then came «Monster’s Ball», my second feature film. That was in 2001, a few weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks. All kinds of people have said, “Nobody’s going to watch this movie! That’s not what people want right now.” And eventually “Monster’s Ball” became a hit. That was the turning point for me, after that it went very, very well. But after “Machine Gun Preacher” (2011) and “World War Z” (2013), a difficult time came.

Why?
I’ve been in America for a while and you wonder, what do I want to do now, what really interests me right now? I made all the movies before that out of passion – I always do what moves my heart. But suddenly there came a point where I realized that it takes a lot of energy to make movies, it’s incredibly exhausting. But actually I’m a fighter. In the end, it’s always about solving problems and finding a way that makes you happy, but also the people around you.

Do you value criticism and accolades, or is audience success more important to you?
Financial success is important to me because it gives me the opportunity to work more freely, find investors more easily and thus be able to make more films in the first place. Prices are less important to me. It’s nice to be honored, to win a festival or an Oscar, but I don’t think it will change my life in the end.

Daniel Craig’s James Bond era came to an end last year. How do you look back on your own contribution to the series 15 years after “A Quantum of Solace”?
We shot the movie right after “Casino Royale” and the big problem was that the screenwriters were on strike at the time. We had no script, everything was very difficult. At the time, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson wanted me to do the next part after “Quantum”, but a Bond film like this takes a lot of energy. These days people come up to me and say, “The movie is way better than I thought! He has aged well and is really knowledgeable about his subject, the water supply. » I think the movie has received a lot of positive reviews from a lot of people over the past two or three years.

With some Bond movies it’s the other way around, they look old now…
When I look back myself, of course I see things I wish I had done differently. This is partly due to the script. We had to work so fast, in different places in the world at once, we didn’t have time and we didn’t have writers and I thought if we’d slowed down a bit or delayed the movie for a year, the script would have been better. But it probably would have just been different, not so spontaneous. Can a Bond movie be spontaneous at all? (laughs)

You’ve dabbled in many genres and filmed original material, such as “Stranger Than Fiction”. Why did you decide to remake a successful movie based on a successful book for your new movie “A Man Called Otto”?
I first read the book and also really liked the Swedish movie “A Man Called Ove” by Hannes Holm. I think there’s something global about this character, he’s almost a Shakespearean figure. You could also do Otto in Switzerland, as Bünzli, or in Germany or in Spain, we all know this archetype. And how the neighborhood comes together and gives this person hope again – I see that as a very important message in our time.

Have you met such a Bünzli in Switzerland?
(laughs) There was someone in our neighborhood who looked a bit like it, but he wasn’t like Otto.

Otto seems like an almost extinct remnant in today’s society of outrage: on the one hand he is grumpy and ultra-pedant, but on the other hand surprisingly tolerant. So he doesn’t quite live up to the “old white man” cliché…
That’s the beauty of it: Otto is a man who has his principles and lives by them, but at the same time he’s not a racist. He’s not like Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino. Otto sees everyone the same.

Tom Hanks very often plays the unlimited popular figure in Hollywood. Why did you want to cast him for this part in particular, against the image?
I felt like if you took someone else it could quickly become impossible to connect with the character at all. It would be too negative. What fascinates me about Tom Hanks is that he has an image of being the nicest guy in Hollywood – and he really is. I’ve worked with so many people and it’s amazing how great this man is. If you have Tom Hanks, he can be grumpy and you still like him. (aargauerzeitung.ch)