She feels complicit because she is in a car. It is part of a convoy driving through dusty black African hinterland. Men with machine guns escort the limousine. Wearing a white blouse and blue pleated trousers, the EU representative, who, with the help of a local interpreter, is supposed to get an idea of the situation of the villagers after an act of terrorism, is dressed according to her job. This blouse makes you look a bit whiter in the African environment. And then the tragedy happened.
Victoria Mayer plays this emissary from Europe, cool at first, then full of emotions. She is Susanne in the film “Adisa”. The character wearing this film. Victoria Mayer’s blue eyes, which in one scene overflow like a rainy season lake, become unforgettable after seeing this film. It lasts almost 30 minutes, a medium-length short film that was created as a thesis at the Munich University of Film and Television. The film was shown at festivals in Germany and abroad and its impact reached as far as Hollywood: director Simon Denda received the so-called student Oscar for it in October. Just a few days ago, “Adisa” was awarded best foreign film at the “Indie Shorts Awards” in Cannes.
Victoria Mayer manages to make figures appear precise, yet very natural. Here is a scene from “Adisa”.
(Photo: Walking Ghost Film)
Does the success lie with Victoria Mayer? A provocative question for an Oscar-winning director, who answers diplomatically: “A film is always a team effort.” And yet he admits that “that Victoria was willing to get involved with this character and fill her with such humaneness, of course that was her credit”. In doing so, she has already made a significant contribution to the awards. He says a lot of people said to him, “Simon, you don’t have an acting freak in this movie.” He personally takes credit for the fact that everyone works so well.
Victoria Mayer, born in Münster in 1976, grew up near Bremen and in Marburg, studied acting at the Bavarian Theater Academy in Munich. She is a professional with a lot of experience on stages and in front of cameras. She has acted in a number of Tatort episodes, three years in the TV series “Kommissar Stolberg”, in films such as “Wunschkinder” based on the novel by Marion Gaedicke or “Days of the Last Snow” by Lars-Gunnar Lotz. In autumn she was on ARD in the comedy “Servus, mother-in-law!” to see.
She has been busy as an actress for many years. Nevertheless, her face is not part of the constantly recurring inventory of German film. Victoria Mayer has these curious looking open eyes, succinct brows and clear features that can express hardness just as well as sympathy, joy and liveliness. What distinguishes her visually from many German colleagues is her short hairstyle. In older pictures she still wears an undecided chin length. Then in 2014 came the cut, which wasn’t a spontaneous decision. Mayer explains that she has dealt with the expectations in her job, in which it is important to be seen and evaluated and whether one has to meet these expectations. Then she followed her impulse, supported by her family and her agency. “With the hairstyle, something has become visible that suits me much more,” says Mayer.
What that might be can be interpreted from the way she treats people and talks about others. At her home, you sit at the dining table with a pot of tea. She lives with her husband Jan Messutat, whom she met at the Kulturmobil in Lower Bavaria, and their two children at Ammersee. When the photographer wants to take pictures of her, she brushes a dark brown strand of hair from her forehead and sits relaxed in the armchair in front of the bookshelf. She is uncomplicated with her appearance – and also with questions that are asked of her.
Is age an issue? Victoria Mayer laughs out loud. “Well, sure. There are a lot more roles for 20-year-olds than for 40-year-olds and a lot more roles for men than for women.” At drama school, she and her colleagues were told: “You have to make a career as quickly as possible, because it’s over at 40.”
When she was 40 herself, says Mayer, she was good in business and thought: “Now things are really getting started.” In 2016 she was in three major productions, the following year in four. “But it does something to you to be counted like that from the beginning,” she says.
But not acting, not being part of a production, she would miss that. She already realized that in the school theater groups with which she was on stage. After graduating from high school, Mayer worked as an assistant director at the Hessian State Theater in Marburg. When she was allowed to stand in for an ailing actress in Horvarth’s “Jugend ohne Gott”, there was a bouquet of flowers from the director and the certainty: it’s better to stand in the light and not next to it.
But what does this being counted do to her? However, she never wanted to have a permanent commitment at the theater with compulsory attendance. Freedom was more important to her than the security of a steady income. She would love to be back on stage, she says. Corona has made a lot of things vague at the moment. “It’s quite normal for a freelancer not to rush from one job to the next.” You have to be able to endure it and be diverse.
Director Simon Denda would shoot with Victoria Mayer again in a heartbeat. “She’s incredibly good at craftsmanship.”
(Photo: dpa)
Writing herself has become an issue in her life. Together with three authors, Victoria Mayer is currently developing a series idea about a Munich family in different eras. They were particularly interested in the characters of the women. There is a lot going on in this regard, she senses the interest, says Mayer. She sees that there are increasingly good materials for the “advanced age group”. So it doesn’t have to be true what was drummed into her in acting school.
“To experience what connects you and that it’s actually much more than what separates you, that’s very nice.”
That morning at her home, Victoria Mayer also said: “We live in a time when many things are being readjusted.” Filming in Kenya with Simon Denda was completed just in time exactly two years ago. The post-production fell into the Corona period. The Oscars were virtual. Has your view of Africa changed after working in Kenya? “Yes!” This Eurocentric view, with which one grows up here, one is very quick with this structural racism, says Mayer. She wasn’t aware of that before. She is still in contact with Jackline Wanjiku, who plays the interpreter. “To experience what connects you and that it’s actually much more than what separates you, that’s very nice.”
Simon Denda would immediately start working again with Victoria Mayer. “She’s incredibly good at hand. She manages to make figures appear precise, but still very natural.” He doesn’t understand why she hasn’t played much bigger roles for a long time.