Shownotes Transcript
In this episode of Life Matters, Brian Johnston conducts an interview with Laura Lehmus, a Finnish director, currently residing in Germany.
This interview is part of a series, exploring the Life Fest Film Festival. Life Fest is that unique film festival, dedicated to honoring those films which underscore the significance of an innocent human life, and in particular the seemingly insignificant life.
For 12 years, Life Fest has been conducted from Hollywood, California. It has drawn filmmakers from throughout the world, with productions from experienced hands but also brand new students of film. Its purpose is to give a vision, excitement, and definitive purpose to these aspiring filmmakers to continue on in this important theme, the actual theme of western civilization - the dignity of each and every life.
This year’s Life Fest film festival is now available online and can be viewed at www.lifefilmfest.com) or accessed through the California Pro-Life Council webpage.
Laura's is one of several films submitted in the foreign language category. “Sweet Disaster” is in German with English subtitles. It’s a very unique film dealing with a young woman who struggles as an immigrant in Berlin, facing an out of wedlock pregnancy. Her suitor rejects her and she is very much alone in a big, strange, and seemingly heartless world.
She is over 40 and her rather low paying job fires her for not telling them of her pregnancy. Working with the developmentally disabled, she is an individual who is full of compassion and yet, appears to be abandoned by all others.
In a simultaneously deep discussion of the storyline itself, weaved with an over arching view of the filmmaker’s challenges, they explore the seemingly tragic yet, simultaneously humorous storyline.
It is Laura’s first feature film but she had some tremendous opportunities with a powerful leading cast, excellent cinematography, and one of the better known script writers of German cinema helping her.
In this interview Brian and Laura explore the story and Laura explains some of her motivation in telling this particular tale. She was deeply honored to be chosen by Life Fest as we are a film festival that understood precisely her vision and purpose.
This is just one film available in this year’s Life Fest catalog. More than thirty films from throughout the world -from first time teenage filmmakers to more mature and seasoned directors, each film aims to tell the uniqueness of a human life, a human life that others might view as ‘problematic’ and be all too ready to dismiss.