Lena Stahl: My Son – Behind the Scenes of a Roadmovie

German director Lena Stahl is a multi-talent: she not only wrote the screenplay and directed her feature film My Son but also documented the production with a Leica M10. We will be presenting a good 40 of these shots at the Leica Galerie Wetzlar from 31 March to 24 September.

During the filming in 2019, which took place shortly before the first Corona wave, the director used a Leica M10 to document moments of the film in black and white. And atmospherically dense pictures were also taken during the breaks in filming, which the Leica Galerie Wetzlar is now showing in an impressive selection.

Hannah Herzsprung and Jonas Dassler during a break in filming © Lena

At the centre of this now multi-award-winning film drama is a mother-son relationship that has to reinvent itself after a serious accident involving the almost adult, rather daredevil son. A Swiss rehabilitation clinic is supposed to help the son, and, during a long road trip, Marlene and Jason (congenially played by Anke Engelke and Jonas Dassler) get to know each other all over again. Closeness and distance, care, and desire for freedom collide, leading to disappointed expectations but also to new insights on both sides. Other roles are played by Hannah Herzsprung, Karsten Antonio Mielke and Max Hopp.

Lena Stahl, born in Berlin in 1979, began taking pictures in her youth and is now not only a successful photographer but also a director and screenwriter. She began her career in Denmark, where she studied at the European Film College and established herself at the same time as a freelance photographer. She worked in the film and TV industry in Sweden, Denmark and Germany before beginning her studies in directing and screenwriting at the Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film in Munich in 2005, graduating in 2012 with the film Alle Tage meines Lebens. My Son (2021) is her feature film debut as a director and has already won several awards. She has been a member of the German Film Academy since 2022. Lena Stahl lives with her family in Berlin.