Hans Christoph Wermke is a director and film editor based in Germany and LA. His credits include a variety of feature films and documentaries which have competed in prestigious competitions such as the Deutscher Kamerapreis and Venice International Film Festival, along with shorts such as Oscar-nominated Three Songs for Benazir (2021) from Netflix.
In the following interview he discusses his journey into the film industry and working collaboratively on the edit for Three Songs where the team managed to put together this award-winning short that spans 6 years in just over 20 minutes of run time.
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In the following interview he discusses his journey into the film industry and working collaboratively on the edit for Three Songs where the team managed to put together this award-winning short that spans 6 years in just over 20 minutes of run time.
FF (Sebastien Tobler): What was your path to editing and was it what you initially set out to do or did you find your way to it through writing or directing?
CW (Hans Christoph Wermke): After high school I had to choose between joining the German army for a year or working in a social facility. With some luck, I ended up working in a theater, doing workshops with youth groups on the plays it was showing.
That was where I fell in love with the idea of becoming a director.
Wermke’s early years: the German Film and Television Academy Berlin
I applied, and on my second attempt was accepted to study directing at the prestigious German Film and Television Academy Berlin (alumni: Wolfgang Petersen, Christian Petzold).
From early on, I involved myself in the editing of my films. A friend asked me to edit his fictional diploma film, which took about 6 months and didn’t pay. I was paid in a more “symbolic” way. The film did very well and even got me nominated for best editing at the Deutscher Kamerapreis, a major honor for any editor.
By then I had started editing for almost anyone who would hire me as a way to pay my bills. When I was not editing, I worked on my own projects. In 2017, I got to edit my second feature KRIEG, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
Oscar-nominated short Three Songs for Benazir
Three Songs For Benazir came into my life through the great German editor, Anne Fabini (editor of Of Fathers And Sons (2017) and supervising editor of Writing with Fire (2021), which were Oscar-nominated in 2019 and 2022). She introduced me to the directors Elizabeth Mirzaei and Gulistan Mirzaei.
FF: As an editor, story aside, what do you look for prior to taking on a project?
CW: I need to be interested in some aspects of the project, whether it be the topic or the style of previous works of the director or writer.
If it’s not a match, I would rather work on my own projects. I like it when the director has a vision and is interested in my angle on that vision for the editing process.
FF: How did you and Mel Annan get involved in Three Songs for Benazir? Were you there from start to finish or did you jump on once all of the footage was captured?
CW: Most of the material was shot before I got involved. I got to help the directors to structure that material, find the arc.
We initially built a film that ended when Shaista and Benazir left for the poppy harvest. Then the directors got a chance to shoot again and add another chapter to the story. That is when all the material in the addiction clinic was shot.
When we met afterward to talk about the new scenes, it became clear that this new material would influence earlier parts in the film and that the film would take more time to finish than I had left, before I had to go back to Europe.
Working with Mel Annan, Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei
I could tell the directors were excited about this, so I encouraged them to bring on another editor. Having seen how Elizabeth and Gulistan work, I was confident that it wouldn’t be just anyone.
I got to know Mel Annan through her work on Three Songs. Elizabeth showed me a longer version of the film that she had built with Mel, and I thought it was great. From that point, Elizabeth, Mel and I worked on cutting it down together until we had the finished film.
All of this last chapter happened remotely, so I’m still looking forward to actually meeting Mel.
FF: Did you work off a script or did you shape the story with Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei based on a general outline?
CW: There wasn’t a clear script, but I knew the story Elizabeth and Gulistan wanted to tell, and I wanted to stay true to that. As I understood from my conversations with them, they were always interested in the tender love story between the couple and their dreams, living in a place that does not allow one to have dreams. We needed to arrange the material in a way that would tell that story.
I like to work with stills taken from each of the film’s scenes in the rough material. I even do that for fictional projects that come with a clear script. I move those stills around to help find an arc for the film.
For Three Songs we repeatedly rearranged, let things go and brought additional moments in to build that structure. In between, we build the edit with the actual material and further shaped inside each scene.
Covering 6 years in 22 minutes
FF: Given the timespan of the piece, was there an overwhelming amount of footage and what was the process of organizing it all?
CW: There was a lot more material, and I saw everything they had shot. But we based our work on a one-hour assembly Elizabeth and Gulistan had done in consultation with Anne Fabini. What amazes me looking at the film now is that we tell 6 years in the life of Shaista and Benazir in 22 minutes! Of course we had to let some beautiful scenes go for that.
FF: Was there a moment when you found the emotional heart of the film visually or was that already captured and identified by Elizabeth and Gulistan?
CW: Elizabeth had captured a lot of beautiful moments and observations, but I feel like the last shots of the film always symbolized what Elizabeth and Gulistan were looking for emotionally.
FF: There are such large themes which the film touches on from the American occupation, Taliban presence, opium addiction and general struggle of life in Afghanistan at the time. How, as a team, did you stay true to the intimacy of this story? I would imagine that it was tempting to stray from it at times.
CW: For me the film has both those intimate and political aspects, and in my view, it’s both together that make the film.
A tender human story in war-torn Afghanistan
The tenderness between Shaista and Benazir was exciting to watch from the first moments in the raw material. That’s the film’s gravitation point.
The surveillance balloons, the advertisement for the army, the poppy-fields—we get to see them through Shaista and Benazir’s eyes. We are in the poppy field with Shaista. We only catch them talking about those things in the midst of their daily lives, when we see their very different but somehow familiar ways of getting through the day (earning a living, sweeping their backyard, making dinner…)
And whenever Shaista and Benazir talk, the joy between them just sparks, so these larger topics were always directly attached to their lives and their relationship.
For me, the idea of Afghanistan not told from a Humvee point of view or through interviews with leading Taliban, but through a love story in between those antipodes, was a major reason to involve myself in this project. Through Shaista and Benazir, we get to see an angle on all these themes in Afghanistan that is different from what I had seen before.
FF: What does this project mean to you now given the outcome in Afghanistan today with the Taliban’s return to power?
CW: I imagine all this happening with Shaista and Benazir in the middle of it, and I fear for them. They never made a lot of money, and right now, a horrible number of Afghans have been left to starve. I’m worried for Shaista, but even more for Benazir and the kids.
FF: Congratulations on all of the accolades, it is well deserved. Going into this project did you ever dare dream that Three Songs would get shortlisted for an Academy nomination?
CW: No. But being a witness of Elizabeth and Gulistan Mirzaei’s passionate work on this project and knowing the film, I wish for Three Songs For Benazir to be seen by as many people as possible.
FF: If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice that would change your creative trajectory for the better, either about filmmaking as a whole or editing specifically, what would it be?
CW: Read, read, read. We are only updating stories that have been told for centuries. It’s good to know those original stories.
Credits
Intro/Title/Editor & Artwork/Banner (Film Forums): Richard Williams
Images courtesy of Netflix/Lumos PR
Sebastien Tobler
Multicultural writer-director currently in LA. Perpetual expat. Fascinated by time and human connections on screen.
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