Interview: Daniela Magnani Hüller
- Zekican Sarısoy
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
We interviewed director Daniela Magnani Hüller about her feature film, “Sometimes, I Imagine Them All at a Party,” which had its world premiere this year in the Forum section of the Berlin Film Festival.
*The film will have its first screening in Turkey on Sunday, May 17, 2026, at 14:00 at Sinematek/Sinema Evi as part of the Kino 2026 programme. Following the screening, the director will participate in a conversation with the audience.
Sometimes together sometimes not…
The autobiographical documentary revisits an attempted femicide the director survived 14 years ago, carried out by a former schoolmate who had previously harassed her. The filmmaker returns to the crime scene and re-narrates the process years later, looking at both the event and herself from an external perspective. She meets with a teacher, a school friend, a detective, and a prosecutor who were witnesses to that period, in large rooms and expansive rural spaces. She tries to understand why they acted -or did not act- the way they did, years after the events took place. In a sense, these encounters raise the question of taking responsibility or refusing it long after the fact, becoming like an anonymous letter from people who know us to people who do not.
The film does not proceed as a strictly perpetrator-centered narrative. Instead, it examines the environment, witnessing, negligence, and normalized silence. In doing so, it moves beyond a singular trauma story and becomes a space of collective memory. The director is not interested in constructing an isolated case study; she makes this clear from the outset. What people reveal is not themselves, but the systems they represent in that moment: the teacher, the prosecutor, the police officer, the school administration, the classmate. For this reason, the film becomes anonymized and shifting from a specific incident that happened somewhere in the world into something recognizable in many different places.
We generally see large and empty spaces throughout the documentary, and they become a defining element of the film’s language. What do you think about this approach? For you, do these spaces represent the gaps of memory, or rather an institutional distance?
It was important to me to film mainly in public places and to show a lot of the surrounding space in the wide shots. I wanted to open up the frame and make clear that these stories do not take place in a vacuum, but always within a specific environment. Rather than staging my story as an isolated case or individual fate, I wanted to consciously direct the viewers’ gaze toward the spaces in which we move.
For the memory sequences, the wide shots -often slightly elevated- create also a certain reflective distance. The viewers remain somewhat outside the situation, while at the same time being close enough to see clearly and to have the feeling that they could intervene.
There’s also an approach in the film that tries not to accuse the people you interview, but to understand them. After so many years, and as a survivor yourself, I imagine that must have been incredibly difficult to construct emotionally. Was it hard to establish that tone? How did you balance anger and distance? Were there moments where you found yourself holding back? I’m very curious about your method there.
From the beginning, it was clear to me that I did not want to make the film out of a desire for revenge. When I decided to return to the project, it was not about assigning blame to individual people, but rather about exposing structures that enable violence against women. At the same time, I wanted to show that, as individuals, we still always have possibilities to act.
It was also important to me to speak about specific moments that had deeply imprinted themselves on me -with the awareness that such seemingly small moments can leave a deep mark on many other people as well. In that sense, every small action, every single sentence, can either help or hurt.
And also Time definitely helped. I was very angry for many years, and of course there are still things I remain angry about. But that anger was not the impulse from which the film emerged. During the conversations, I did not feel that I had to hold back. On the contrary, I had great respect for the people who agreed to sit down with me and talk about that time -especially when they had not acted properly or adequately- I was very grateful to them.
It is much easier to avoid such a conversation or to say that one does not remember anything. That happened too: not everyone was willing to speak about that time again, even without a camera. Some of the refusals were very lacking in empathy. For me personally, those rejections were much harder than the conversations themselves.
Throughout the film, there’s no dramatic music, no heavy use of archives, no emotional crescendo. On the contrary, it feels like there’s a very conscious ethical position regarding how trauma is represented. At times, witnesses like the teacher, the police officer, or the doctor offer forms of self-criticism years later. What does a “belated awareness” mean for a survivor?
From the very beginning, it was clear to me that the film should not include any elements that sensationalize the act of violence or the trauma. In this context, I also find true-crime formats problematic, in which real-life stories are turned into consumable crime narratives. My focus wasn’t on suspense or a search for clues about the crime, but on a search for trust -in other people, in institutions, in one’s own memory and perception.
I don’t know if the people in the film truly experienced a “belated awareness.” That wasn’t necessarily my goal either. I was much more interested in what happens when you revisit these situations together: what is remembered and what isn’t, where responsibility becomes visible, and where gaps remain.
The film also made me think about how violence is not only the moment of the attack itself, but also the fact that the perpetrator continues to exist in everyday life. We are often forced to keep living alongside these people. In that sense, the documentary reveals not only an individual story, but also a systemic failure. Do you think anything has genuinely changed today in similar cases?
For me, much of what happened before and after the actual act was also very violent -regardless of the perpetrator- and in some cases almost worse. Because this violence did not come from a single person, but from people and institutions from whom one would normally expect help, protection, or at least a serious examination of the situation.
I do believe that violence against women and the associated injustice have become more visible in society. But in my experience, it still depends far too much on individual people as to what significance is attached to this violence and whether it is taken seriously. Unfortunately, I am certain that even today there are still many school administrators who would prefer to hush up such a case, or prosecutors who fail to recognize the gravity of the situation.
I also find it very striking that even social media messages were not considered sufficient “evidence.” It still seems to be an area where legal systems around the world remain blocked or inadequate. Institutions often appear to take violence seriously only once it becomes physically visible.
I completely agree. There are still far too many areas where perpetrators can act with very little risk of legal and criminal consequences, while victims have virtually no means of protecting themselves. Everything that happens online makes it very clear just how much work still needs to be done in this area -legally, institutionally, and socially.
You also refuse to give the audience a catharsis. From the very beginning, this doc. doesn’t condition the audience emotionally in that way. By the end, there’s a lingering feeling that remains unresolved, suspended. Formally, I also had the impression that you intentionally chose not to cut away from silences throughout the film. What does silence mean to you in this work? And finally thank you for your time Daniela.
That sense of uncertainty is something that’s always with you. Things just aren’t clear-cut, and I didn’t want to create some artificial form of clarity either.
After a screening, someone told me that silence often arises precisely where speaking up becomes uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable to point out someone’s wrongdoing. It’s uncomfortable to ask someone affected by violence how they’re doing, because you’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. But that’s exactly why it’s important to still have the courage to speak up -or at least to create a space where people can talk. In that sense, silence in this film means both: a space for listening, but also an indication of where speaking up is lacking and where it would be necessary.
*The film will have its first screening in Turkey on Sunday, May 17, 2026, at 14:00 at Sinematek/Sinema Evi as part of the Kino 2026 programme. Following the screening, the director will participate in a conversation with the audience.
This interview was published as Turkish on May 15, 2026 on artfulliving.com.
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