Currently visiting the Festival for the first time, where she’s forming part of the Official Jury, the internationally acclaimed German actress Nastassja Kinski says that she’s really enjoying the experience of judging films. She describes it as being really intense. “Everyone on the jury says the same thing: it’s a great honour , but you have so much responsibility voting.” What she has found to be really positive is that despite the fact that all her colleagues are from different cultures with very different characters, they all seem to agree on some basic elements in the films that touch them all. Nonetheless, as she has such catholic tastes in cinema, she finds it really hard comparing films and says she just has to rely on what moves her most.

Working with Wim Wenders

Asked about which of the many prestigious directors she has collaborated with she most enjoyed working with, she mentions Wim Wenders and Roman Polanski. The former was the first filmmaker she worked with, (back in 1975 on her screen debut, The Wrong move) and out of the three films they made together she has especially fond memories of shooting Paris, Texas. She recalls that the timing of that film was personally very special for her , because she was expecting her first child while they were making it, and she found it a real delight to be around Hunter Carson, the little boy who played her son, “out in the middle of nowhere, with no distractions”.

Shooting Tess

As the director of Tess, the film that made her an international star and won her a Golden Globe, Polanski also has a special place in her heart. She stresses how extraordinary the whole experience was: “going from being a teenager to being an adult was beautiful; it was really shedding my past, so to speak.” She felt a lot of pressure as the project obviously meant a lot to Polanski, given that he had always wanted to make it with his late wife, Sharon Tate, who had felt really related to Hardy’s doomed heroine. On top of that it was a very long shoot and one of the conditions for playing the role was that she had to acquire a West Country accent, which involved spending months in the countryside with the locals as well as studying at the London National Theatre.

She later took time out of her career to spend more time with her children and claims that nowadays she feels much freer to do what she wants, such as the documentary project about inspirational sports figures that she currently has on the boil. “When you do something new, it takes a while to convince people, and for things to take off. But I’m sure that you should always follow what you really dream of doing.”

Looking back on her career, she reflects on how she sometimes used to wish she had made different choices in life, but now that she can take a step back and look at what she’s done, she’s convinced that, “it’s all part of my life. I’m very proud of the opportunities that I’ve had and very grateful that it brought me to where I am today.”

ALLAN OWEN