An after-midnight flirtation on the streets of Berlin gets thrillingly side-tracked by another chase entirely. Filmed in a single real-time take, it’s an edit-free pièce de résistance of acting, directing and mobile camerawork.
Sebastian Schipper takes us on an exciting journey through 140 minutes filmed in one breathtaking sequence. It is as poignant as it is astounding.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2015
Victoria 2015
A hot romantic thriller filmed in a single mobile shot, Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria aces a dazzling experiment in narrative filmmaking. Catalan star Laia Costa plays the eponymous heroine, a young Spanish exile looking for excitement in Berlin. Amused by a band of dodgy buddies she sees being turned away from the club she’s leaving, she’s persuaded to tag along by the flirtatious Sonne (Frederick Lau), a handsome lunk with a soulful gaze. Intimacy beckons, but Sonne’s posse are determined to haul the action out of the Before Sunrise zone and into something more like Pulp Fiction. Encompassing over two hours of seamless real time, Victoria’s single shot presses hard on its increasingly outlaw protagonists, while taking in a tantalising array of Berlin funk.
“If you’re going to pull a stunt like this, you’d damn well better dream up, construct and hone a project that warrants the gimmick. And Schipper, with his co-writers Olivia Neergaard- Holm and Eike Schulz, most certainly have. Victoria is an exhilarating experience, its tension setting in early before mounting to a nearly unbearable pitch, then subsiding and cranking up all over again.” — David Hudson, Fandor
“On April 27th, 2014, we started the camera a little after 4.30 am in a club we’d built ourselves (in order to keep locations close to each other), and after two hours and 14 minutes – after we’d run, walked, strolled and climbed through 22 locations, had more than 150 extras handled by six assistant directors and seven actors followed in succession by three sound crews – we were done – at 6.54 am.” — Sebastian Schipper