'No Mercy' Courtesy of Viennale Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment "Women make the harsher films." Kira Muratova, the pioneering Soviet, and later Ukrainian, filmmaker made that comment when German director Isa Willinger (Hi, AI. Love Stories From the Future; Plastic Fantastic) just started her career and visited her in Odesa towards the end of Muratova's career. But the thought stuck with Willinger, the author of a monograph on Muratova. And she dives deep to explore it in her third feature documentary No Mercy, which recently premiered at Filmfest Hamburg and screens at Austria's Viennale this week, Thursday and Friday, before traveling to DOC NYC for its North American premiere on Nov. 13 and following screenings. Related Stories Movies Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe Wrap Up Star-Spangled London Film Festival With '100 Nights of Hero' Business Netflix Earnings Preview: Wall Street Bullish Despite Questions Over AI Threat "What does 'harshness' mean, both in cinema and in reality? What defines female filmmaking?" asks a synopsis on the Viennale's festival website. "Do women see the world differently? And what about the much-debated (and misused) 'female gaze'?" Willinger's film essay, which she narrates herself, features interviews with more than a dozen directors, including Virginie Despentes, Céline Sciamma, Catherine Breillat, Alice Diop, Joey Soloway, Monika Treut, Ana Lily Amirpour, Apolline Traoré, and Nina Menkes. "No Mercy weaves together a tapestry of personal narratives, including accounts of real-life violence, which intertwine with professional reflections on power structures and how women carve out spaces to establish distinct cinematic languages or whole new qualities of harshness," concludes the synopsis. Willinger talked to THR's global business editor Georg Szalai about her cinematic deep dive, the lineup of filmmakers she managed to talk to, and what's next for her. You mention early on in No Mercy that comment from Kira Muratova to you about female filmmakers having a harsher approach. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and how much this comment made you think right away or how you returned to it later in your career as a key question? Definitely, the question about perspectives in cinema and how some films by certain women directors touched me in a particular and more complete way, or touched spaces in me that hadn't been really spoken to before, was an experience I had when I was a university student. When I discovered the films of Kira Muratova at the beginning of my 20s, I realized that they were so different. There is a woman talking to me somehow, even though her films are not overtly feminist. But yet, there was a different sort of perspective, a different way she treated female characters, even though I couldn't really put my finger on what exactly it was. Later, I interviewed Muratova, and when she made this statement about women's cinema, I thought it was funny, because toughness or harshness in films by women as their main trait was unexpected to me. She caught me by surprise, I think, but I also had many more questions about her film language, and so I didn't inquire further. But, yeah, it kind of stuck with me. And so, years later, when I was thinking we are missing a documentary on women directors, I thought, what could the angle be? I remembered: "Didn't Muratova say something about women's cinema that was provocative and interesting? And I went back to look for it in the interview, because I couldn't quite remember the way she said it exactly. And I found it and then proposed it to my commissioning editor. And you got the green light right away? I was sure she would decline. First of all, Kira Muratova is not a household name. Second of all, this observation of hers, or hypothesis, seemed so far out that I thought they would never do that. But the opposite happened. The commissioning editor, Anne-Kathrin Brinkmann, loved it, and her colleagues loved it. And then, it became this film. So, was No Mercy commissioned for TV or a streamer? In Germany and most European countries, theatrical or feature documentaries are usually co-produced and co-financed with television. Isa Willinger Courtesy of Andreas Müller The lineup of filmmakers you talked to for No Mercy is impressive. How easy or difficult was it to get all these names in front of the camera? It was actually not easy to get these women. First of all, film directors love to be in control of movies, and they know what it means to not be in control. So, some declined because they did not want to be in front of a camera. I think it's even more so with women. I think with men, it probably would have been a bit easier, because men tend to like to hear themselves talk. Dammit, I recognize myself in that... And that's not a bad thing. Women ofte