Vagenda Stories
- Italy Not Film Fest 2021 (Shooting Star Features)
- Russia Moscow International Film Festival 2021
- Albania Tirana IFF 2020 (Feature Competition)
- Turkey Flying Broom Women's IFF 2020 (Feature)
- Canada Victoria FF 2020 (Reveal. A Human Take)
- Puerto Rico European FF 2019
- Switzerland Solothurner Filmtage 2019 (Panorama Switzerland)
- Switzerland Locarno FF 2019 (Piazza Grande) World Premiere
A zany, contemporary comedy about the misfortunes of three thirtysomething girlfriends dealing with the social pressure that focuses on children, careers and relationships.
When Leila discovers at her sister Amanda's wedding that the latter is pregnant, she promptly reveals the carefully guarded secret. While the guests are happy, Amanda worries about her career and Leila about her fertility. Panic-stricken, Leila sets herself a goal: get pregnant! So together with her friend Sophie she throws herself into the nightlife. Sophie is more concerned with the search for babysitters and probably won't snatch a man from her.
Vagenda Stories is a zany, contemporary comedy about the misfortunes of three thirtysomething girlfriends dealing with the social pressure that focuses on children, careers and relationships.
«It all goes downhill after 30.» What sounds like panic turned out to be the scary, hurtful truth to me. On my 30th birthday, I threw a big party. All of my friends came and brought me some gifts, amongst other things: a table bomb. Shortly before midnight, we fired it. We stood together with about fifty guests and waited for the bang. Unfortunately, the cap of the table bomb hit a neon tube, which hung above the table.
That tube exploded in a thousand pieces, which flew around like bullets. It was a miracle that almost no one got hit except for me. In my knee, my thigh muscle and in my bones pieces of my 30th birthday were stuck. I couldn’t walk for a whole year and had some operations. Above all that I discovered my very first grey hair.
This incident might have been the trigger of why my friends started to tell me their “horror stories” about aging. Yet only a few were about table bombs. The majority was about family plans, career goals, relationship forms and as the matter of fact to be tight up in the life of over 30.
I figured that especially the women of my generation are stuck in a time full of crisis. The over 30 woman has to have/want/be able to do everything and at best already yesterday. Many people believe the pressure from outside, take it in and collapse from it.
At the very latest, when a man in a club just left after I told him that I'm already 32, I saw the comedically potential of this topic. I began to collect such anecdotes. That’s how I got the ideas for some of the sketchy scenes that build the foundation for this movie.
Cinematographicly I was inspired by Back to the Future, Amelie, Annie Hall, Hot Fuzz and Jalla Jalla. In all of these movies, you can feel the joy in making films and that reminded me of why I wanted to become a filmmaker in the first place.
My intention on Vagenda Stories was to create a playful comedy with a serious core. A movie where classic stereotypes get turned around: Women stay in the focal point while men get reduced to sex objects. Yes, some women don’t like their mother role, some women prefer One-night stands and some women do corruptively fight for their goals. This movie is my statement for equality.
