Nora Fingscheidt • Director of The Outrun
“Making a film about the life of a real person becomes a huge responsibility.”
– The German director touched on the process of adapting the film and her work with actress Saoirse Ronan.
(© Sundance Institute/Philip Leitert)
We women are not perfect, just like we are not perfect as people. But the saving grace of our imperfections is the compassion we have for other people and ourselves. Outran (+see also:
interview: Nora Fingscheidt
movie profile)director Nora Fingscheidtand adapted from Amy LiptrotThis is evidenced by the memoirs of the same name. We follow Rona, who is played by Saoirse Ronan, aged 30, while healing from her troubled past in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. We had the opportunity to speak with the director about her latest film, as well as her collaboration with Ronan, who is making his first appearance as both an actor and producer. The film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, in the Premieres section.
Cinema Femme: Can you talk about the adaptation process and working with Amy (Liptrot) and Saoirse (Ronan)?
Nora Fingscheidt: We worked very closely together throughout the entire process, from start to finish. I told them my vision for the film after I read the book, because the book is quite difficult to adapt; it’s very internal. It’s the equivalent of keeping a diary. It’s like she’s in her head and remembering what happened. You are also in her head, observing, processing and reconnecting with the place she once wanted to escape from. Now she returns and finds healing there. I thought we needed to add a layer to the narrative called “nerd”—a layer that represents Amy’s inner life, which is so rich and full of amazing connections and poetry.
I really like this approach and asked if we could find a new name for the character to create a healthy distance for each of us for different reasons. Before we started the onboarding process, we had a Zoom call and Amy suggested the name Rhona, which is a Scottish island. Saoirse and I responded to that because Rhona is also related to Ronan, which means “little seal,” and seals play a pretty important role in the film. And then it’s kind of an anagram of the word “Nora”.
So we found the name through Amy, and then we started working on the book alone for a few weeks. I flipped through the book and colored in different aspects: her childhood, teenage years, London, sound levels, sound observations, nature observations, Orkney folklore. When I was done, I went through it again and color coded it. I wrote down the moments that I thought should have been in the film. So I had different piles, cards and colors. Then I spent a couple of days putting them in an order that I thought would make a movie. Based on this, I wrote an appeal and sent it to Amy and Saoirse. And then we started working on it together. I wrote, but they read and sent reviews.
Amy and I spent hours watching it on Zoom because back then we had to make things up and dramatize things and leave things out. I wanted Amy to be a part of it as much as possible. Making a film about the life of a real person becomes a huge responsibility.
Can you talk about the sound in the film? I read that you tried to give the film an acoustic feel. I’d love to hear more about this process and your experiences working with composers John Gurtler and Jan Miserre.
John and Ian were the sound team as well as our composers. We all went to film school together. We have been collaborating on various projects for many years. And the big advantage, besides trusting each other, is that we all understand the importance of a great sound and musical concept. So we usually start from scratch: once I write the script and they read the first version, we scale it up and create a sound concept together. Because film is image and sound: 50/50. If you want to create immersive sound, there is no other way. So we took inspiration from the sounds of nature and made them combine with the sounds of the city. We wanted to combine them from time to time and transform them in accordance with Rona’s inner state. So when it’s really dirty, it sounds really dirty. It’s as if the sound is interrupted or distorted. Your perceptions when you’re drunk cause you to see reality very differently. Your brain mixes it all up, so the dialogue gets confused. The sounds of nature are so intense when you are on the rock and hear the killer whales. Storms are so all-encompassing. The music also uses sounds from nature. We’ve done a lot of work with ancient Orkney instruments and put it all together. So our music and sound design came together.
What do you hope people see in your film?
I hope they are as inspired by Amy’s journey as I am. It’s a journey and it’s hard to watch. It’s brutal, and she’s been to terrible places. She turned to extremes not only because of her addiction, but also because of the extreme situation in which she grew up. Her father’s bipolar episodes shaped the way she grew up, as did her experience of her mother’s extreme religiosity. She took it all and turned it into something constructive. And now she makes art, she has a family, she lives her life, and I find her story amazing and inspiring. I hope that people will be left without hope and support, but I also hope that they will have more empathy for people in recovery because recovery is a difficult process. This happens day after day for many years. Sometimes it’s very easy to point the finger and say, “Yeah, you’re sober now. Enjoy life, move on; “do you have this”. But it’s not that easy, and I hope this film gets people’s attention.
Read the full interview here.
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