The fifth to eighth graders of the Hohenbrunn Montessori School want to turn their school into the Cannes film festival location: they come in evening gowns and high heels across a red carpet to the premiere of their film “Smombies”. It is the school’s drama class that produced a film instead of a school theater performance. And that under the honorary direction of Stefan Holtz, who is known as the director and screenwriter of Kluftinger thrillers, Donna Leon episodes and the Munich crime scene “KI”. The film will have its premiere this Wednesday at 7 p.m. in the gym of the Montessori school.
Because the play “Smombies” by Volker Zill, which was being practiced for 2020, had to be canceled due to Corona, the idea for a film was born. Justus Holtz, the director’s son, took part in the theater class as a sixth grader. His father had already made a film of his son’s idea in the Montessori school. So theater class leader Ute Meier called the director. With success! “Stefan Holtz came with enormous equipment,” Meier recalls. It was almost like being in the TV studio. They would have filmed with a drone, had a camera slider that you can use to make short tracking shots, and a boom pole that students could use to hold the microphone over the actors optimally without showing it in the film.
Holtz also insisted that someone take care of script continuity and help avoid continuity errors during filming. For example, he had to ensure that the actors were always equipped in the same way for scenes that were close together, or that they started with the right gesture on the following shoot. For example, during the nine days of shooting between Pentecost and summer 2021, a schoolgirl had to think of a bandage that she wore in an earlier scene, reports Meier.
Filming was exhausting, but downright funny at times
The film is about the smartphone generation. A topic that causes plenty of explosives in families and schools. A week of withdrawal in “Haus Offline”, a therapy facility for media-addicted minors, is supposed to cure seven students. But even briefly putting down the cell phone for an exercise raises objections among the smartphone zombies. In the film, the blue-haired patient Lucy Marie motivates herself and the others with the sentence “You can do it!”. The saying is adopted by others and used as a running gag. Will it be possible to heal everyone? There are some arguments during therapy days that are anything but boring. The students supplemented and modified Volker Zill’s template.
Those who weren’t in front of the camera got involved in the technology, in conversions or in the many other film tasks. Some even cooked while shooting on Sunday. The 14-year-old actress Leilani Enders is certain: “I will still remember this shooting in 30 years.” And Amelie Wagenbrenner, 15, says: “The shooting was a lot of fun and it was always funny,” for example when cameraman Justus climbed a tree because the drone had failed. As he hung in the tree like a little monkey with the camera in his arm and cried out in despair: “That’s not possible, Dad!” Stefan Holtz only asked: “Why?” The laughter was great.
“Some scenes were also exhausting,” Amelie admits, but was happy to do something with her classmates again after homeschooling. The theater class awarded its director Holtz a golden camera, also to thank him for the time-consuming editing of the film.
The film “Smombies” will be shown this Wednesday, July 27, from 7 p.m on shown in the Montessori School Hohenbrunn, Otto-Hahn-Straße 36, in Riemerling.