Ulrike Ottinger said she shortened her Isabelle Huppert vampire film “The Blood Countess” against her wishes, removing between 15 and 20 minutes before rebuilding its rhythm. The veteran German filmmaker discussed the changes at the Tokyo International Film Festival, where a retrospective is celebrating her work.
The film, also titled “Die Blutgräfin,” stars Huppert as a vampire countess who reappears in contemporary Vienna, alongside Lars Eidinger and Burgtheater actor Birgit Minichmayr. It had its world premiere at the Berlinale in February. Speaking at an evening devoted to German cinema, Ottinger said pressure to reduce the running time disrupted the pacing of her preferred version and required a broader recut. She nevertheless expressed satisfaction with the finished result: “From my point of view, it’s perfect now, but it was a big job to rework it again.”
Ottinger described the production as the most expensive of her career. She had sought 40 shooting days but received 30, with a crew numbering more than 100. Her preference, she said, would have been to work more closely with roughly half as many people and use the savings to extend the shoot. She attributed much of the expense to extensive safety requirements, acknowledging that some were important while criticizing others as excessive and bureaucratic.
When she handled production herself, Ottinger said, she could deliver high-quality films for €2.5 million to €3 million, or $2.9 million to $3.5 million. She put the minimum budget needed to meet current requirements at €7 million to €8 million, or $8 million to $9.2 million, and cited those demands as the reason she no longer produces her own work.
The director chose all the principal performers. Huppert remained attached to the project for 20 years, Ottinger said, while Eidinger was eager to participate. Vienna helped shape both the story and its genre, with inspiration drawn from the Narrenturm, an underground lake, Habsburg burial sites and the dynasty’s triple-burial practice. Nihon University professor Shibuya Tetsuya, who introduced the German cinema event, noted that the film includes a vegetarian vampire.
Ottinger, whose background is in visual art, characterized her image-led filmmaking as outside Germany’s tradition of psychological drama. Tokyo’s retrospective also features “Ticket of No Return,” which opens her Berlin Trilogy, and “Under Snow” from 2011, filmed in Niigata’s snow country and on Sado Island.
Later at the event, Barbara Wurm, the Austrian head of the Berlinale’s Forum section, questioned changes to German film support. Since Jan. 1, 2025, production funding from the federal film board, the FFA, has been awarded automatically according to admissions and festival performance, replacing its jury selection process. Wurm said producers must demonstrate qualifying results from an earlier film and provide audience projections, a structure she argued favors fewer productions receiving larger sums while disadvantaging smaller films and documentaries.
Forum is absent from the FFA’s qualifying festival list, although several other Berlinale sections and selected programs in Cannes and Venice are included. Wurm advocated supporting a wider range of films. Meanwhile, culture minister Wolfram Weimer nearly doubled federal economic film funding to €250 million, or $288 million, for 2026, an allocation already exhausted. The draft 2027 budget proposes about €200 million, or $230 million, pending parliamentary approval. Jury-based cultural funding remains available alongside the automatic system.
