Noseland is a film built around the classical music festival „Julian Rachlin & Friends” – which is organised every year in Dubrovnik, Croatia – and it has a somewhat unusual cast of characters: from famous musicians, such as violinist Julian Rachlin, cellist Mischa Maisky or pianist Stefan Vladar, to actors John Malkovich and Sir Roger Moore. The mockumentary ("a docu-comedy-feature") was directed by another famous musician, Aleksey Igudesman, who was helped by the young filmmaker Sebastian Leitner, who is the director of photography and the editor of the film. Before the special screening at this year’s SoNoRo International Chamber Music Festival in Bucharest, Romania, we had a nice, long chat with Sebastian Leitner who, despite currently working on his diploma thesis in Applied Physics at the University of Vienna in conjunction with the University of Technology, remains very passionate about cinema and has been working in the movie business since 2004.
Noseland had its world premiere at the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) 2012. After that, you’ve taken the film to various countries, at numerous other festivals, including DOCmiami: International Documentary Film Festival, where, on December 8th, 2012, the film was the winner of Most Entertaining Documentary. How was the film received in Romania and how did audiences react around the globe?
TIFF was such a nice festival, with an interesting (and interested) audience. Indeed, we’ve been to different festivals – Karlovy Vary, in the Czech Republic, or festivals in Germany, Austria, Norway, Georgia, USA, Russia –, but I’m sure it’s never been as intense as in Romania. We were very happy to see there is such a keen interest from the press, as well as the general public.
By contrast, we’ve had our German premiere with only 15 people in the audience... And the way viewers perceive it