The Lives of Otherswas your first film.
He interviewed me for several hours to see if I was up to directing my own script!
How much I knew about all the details of the GDR [German Democratic Republic].
I said to him, I dont think you act it at all.
And then he said, Okay, Ill do it.
Were going to make this work.
That really gave me a lot of faith.
Muhes character is so central to your film, yet his speaking lines are completely minimal.
It was something just to show me, Im watching you.
After a while he just completely stopped doing that and started trusting me.
The movies about the leading artists in the GDR around 1984, and thats exactly what he was.
He had been under surveillance from the moment he left high school.
NEXT PAGE: Sometimes Id ask him, Why does all your anxiety always express itself in illness?
He lost half his stomach that was the origin of the ailment that killed him 35 years later.
And he said, I tend not to be outward going that much.
All my emotions go back in.
He felt that here, through his performance, he really touched peoples hearts.
Not many people knew that he had stomach cancer.
Your film really made Muhe internationally well-known.
