10 · 17 · 11 Schlöndorff Medal Share with twitter Share with facebook Share with mail Copy to clipboard Administrador FICM Director Daniela Michel underscored the importance of Schlöndorff’s work. The director, who is known to be a great lover of Mexican culture, is this year’s guest of honor. Voyager debuted in Mexico in 1991, Michel said. She thanked UNAM’s Film Archive, Ingmar Bergman Chair and the Goethe Institute for their support, which made it possible to bring Schlöndorff to Mexico and finance the retrospective of his work. She turned the stage over to the director. “I love coming to Mexico,” he said. “I’d swim here if it weren’t for the existence of airplanes!” The public loved that last line and applauded profusely. The Confession of the Night The story of how he came to make the movie Voyager was a personal one. Visibly emotional, Schlöndorff said that he visited Mexico for the first time 50 years ago as an assistant director. He fell in love with a Mexican woman, whom he brought back with him to Germany. To this day, he confessed, he still doesn’t understand why the relationship didn’t work. And whenever he returns to Mexico, he returns yearning for his lost love. He went on to explain that he didn’t know how to handle the success that came to him after the 1979 debut of his movie The Tin Drum. Seven years later, he was living in New York depressed, divorced and still unhappily in love. Schlöndorff recalled walking 11th Avenue and realizing that he had lost control of his life and his career. He started seeing a psychiatrist. One day, he recounted, he got on the subway and saw people who were unhappier than him and he burst into tears. That moment led to an epiphany. Schlöndorff remembered a novel he had read 20 years before: Voyager by Max Frisch, a story about a man who believes he has control of his life. The man’s journey happens to begin in Mexico. Guadalupe Ferrer, who heads up the UNAM Film Archive, gave a medal to Schlöndorff inscribed with the archive’s name. She noted that the recognition was for a venerable director who has known how to read, recreate and exhibit the essence of universal literature. “Thank you, Master Schlöndorff,” Ferrer said.
