Premiering in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival, I Understand Your Displeasure, directed by Kilian Armando Friedrich, is a wonderful work. Known for his background in documentary cinema, including Nomades du Nucléaire, which debuted in Berlin and later won the German Short Film Award, Friedrich brings the same observational intimacy and ethical care to his first narrative feature.

Heike, a cleaning manager maneuvering through the relentless pressures of an industry built on contradiction: efficiency without humanity and responsibility without recognition. The film focuses on a personal, intimate view of exhaustion and the compromises people make to keep going.

That truth comes from Friedrich’s own experience. Before studying film, he spent months working in the cleaning sector, side by side with migrant workers and managers whose stories rarely reach the screen. One woman in particular – tough, sharp-witted, and carrying more than she let on – stayed with him for quite some time.

Two days after the world premiere, we sat down with Kilian and discussed the film in great detail.

View of the Arts: Everyone asks you about the inspiration, but I’d still love to return to it because the emotional core of the film feels so personal. You’ve mentioned that the story stems from your experience with a cleaning manager who had a profound impact on you. Watching the film, I found it incredibly moving – some moments really stayed with me. How did this story begin for you, and why did you feel compelled to tell this particular one?

Kilian Armando Friedrich: It really started after school, before university. I worked for about eight months in the cleaning industry. I helped out a cleaning manager because there was a staff shortage, and I ended up cleaning streets and different facilities with the team.

It was an intense time. The group was very international – mostly migrant workers – and everyone had their own story about how they ended up in that job. For many, it was a first step into the German labour market. They hoped to move on to something better later. So I got this very close, human insight into their daily reality.

After that, I went on to study, but I stayed loosely in contact with the cleaning manager. Years later, I looked her up again. I always found her fascinating — she was very tough, very direct, a bit rough around the edges, but incredibly strong. She inspired me a lot as a character.

When we reconnected, she told me she was still working in the same field, now as an object manager. But things had only gotten worse. The pressure had increased, and she was completely burned out. She had lost her partner. I realised that many women in these positions carried similar burdens — single, exhausted, responsible for everything.

We began talking more seriously about writing down her experiences, maybe turning them into a story one day. I wasn’t even sure it would become a film yet. I just felt that this world – and especially her – deserved to be seen.

Then, very suddenly, she took her own life. That shock stayed with me. I kept asking myself what role the constant moral conflicts of her job might have played in her mental health. The cleaning industry is structured around contradictions — low prices, maximum efficiency, and, at the same time, humane working conditions. These things simply don’t fit together. So the film became my way of trying to understand that system. Not to focus only on the industry itself, but on the emotional consequences — what it does to a person when they are constantly caught between responsibility, pressure, and guilt.

Heike was born from that. She carries many of those experiences inside her. 

I met her again later over Zoom, and we talked a lot about her work. But I don’t think I fully understood what she was going through – not professionally and not privately. And then, very suddenly, she took her life. She decided she couldn’t continue. At that moment, the whole project changed for me. It stopped being just a portrait of one person and became something more existential. I began asking myself: where do the moral conflicts of this job actually lead? What does it do to someone psychologically when they are constantly forced to compromise their values?

I wanted to explore how those pressures might contribute to mental illness. After a lot of research and many conversations with my co-writers, I decided to build a character who, in a similar situation, chooses differently — someone who doesn’t give up. Because if we only show people breaking, we risk turning them into victims without agency. That didn’t feel helpful or honest. Many people in this sector work incredibly hard and still carry on. I wanted to stay realistic, but also give space for reflection – to allow people to recognise themselves and maybe ask how things could change.

VOA: It really comes through. The film feels so human. We rarely see domestic workers portrayed this way – as complex people with inner lives and emotional struggles. Showing the psychological toll of this work felt incredibly moving. It’s a beautiful film. And I’m also curious about the casting process for Heike’s role, because the performances feel so natural and authentic, especially SabineThalau.

KAF: She was an incredibly strong person, or at least she appeared that way. Very tough, very bold, always joking. She had this roughness about her that I found fascinating. But I think that toughness was also a shield. Sometimes the people who seem the strongest, who laugh the most or make the most jokes, are actually the most fragile. Those behaviours become coping mechanisms. In her case, it was a way to survive the pressure and the emotional weight of the job.

Doing the research really changed me. I realised something uncomfortable: even though I thought I understood her, I actually didn’t. You can know someone, work closely with them, and still not fully see what they’re carrying inside. People have secrets, burdens, traumas that remain invisible. That realisation became especially important when I decided to work with non-professional actors. It’s a huge responsibility. You can’t approach it lightly or romantically – like, “Let’s just have fun and put real people in front of the camera.” There’s risk in that. You have to be careful not to exploit anyone or turn their experiences into something superficial.

For me, working with non-professionals only makes sense if they genuinely connect to what the film is trying to say – if they recognise themselves in the story and want to share something truthful, not just appear on screen. So the casting process was very intense. We did heavy research. We spoke with many cleaning workers and managers. I think we met almost ten different object managers alone, plus many members of the cleaning staff. It was important to find people whose lived experience could naturally bring authenticity to the film. With Sabine, I immediately felt something from the very first moment we met. She understood what I wanted to tell with this film. There was no long explanation needed – she just got it instinctively.

But casting her didn’t simplify things. It actually made the process more complex, because her spirit is so beautiful. She’s like sunshine. She really embraces the world with openness and warmth.

At the same time, she has lived through an extremely tough life. She speaks about it very openly, even here at the Berlinale. She lost her husband, she lost her child, she grew up in the care system without parents – so many difficult experiences accumulated over the years. But instead of becoming bitter, she made a conscious decision. She told me, “I didn’t survive all of this just to be unhappy.” She chooses to live with joy. So naturally, she smiles a lot. She has this brightness.

But Heike is different. Heike carries her suffering visibly. The exhaustion is always present. For the character, we needed that weight, that tension in the face all the time. So in a way, we had to take Sabine away from her natural smile and help her step into something much heavier. She really had to become an actress. And she was incredibly talented. The performance she gives is very different from her own personality.

I think she did a marvellous job. I’m very proud and very happy that she’s here with me now, able to share her story and her thoughts with audiences.

VOA: Your camera stays extremely close to Heike throughout the film. It’s often handheld, almost making the audience feel her exhaustion. Even in moments like when she’s crying in the car, everything feels so intimate and personal. Why was it important for you to maintain such a strong physical proximity to the character?

KAF: We wanted to find the right form for the story, because I believe every theme has its own form. I wouldn’t say this style works for everything – it’s just the form I personally like, and for this film it felt right.

It’s a very physical and close way of filming, always staying near the protagonist, being with her rather than looking at her. We wanted to avoid a voyeuristic view. The camera shouldn’t observe her from a distance – it should experience things alongside her. Cinema can convince you through trailers or publicity that you’re going to spend 90 minutes with someone. But when you really commit to those 90 minutes, abstract problems can become human. You’re no longer talking about numbers or labour market structures – you’re seeing a person who has doubts, who suffers, who is vulnerable, who is human like you.

Maybe when you leave the cinema, it becomes harder to ignore people like her. Maybe the next day you walk into a building and see a bag of cleaning materials and think, okay, someone like Heike had to carry that here. We wanted to create that directness and intensity through the closeness of the camera and the confined spaces.

VOA: And of course, this sense of directness and intensity really comes through in the close-ups. I also wanted to ask about working with non-professional actors. As a filmmaker, you know your story and what you want to achieve, but then you’re collaborating with people who aren’t trained actors. When you discussed scenes with them, how much came from improvisation and how much came from your direction?

KAF: It was an interesting task, and a big one, because I come from documentary film. For me, documentary filmmaking is closely connected to improvisation. As a documentary director, you don’t just observe. You say, “I’m interested in this or that, can you talk about it?” Then you witness people translating your ideas and themes into their own words. I’ve always worked like that, and I wanted to keep that process here.

I think the surprises that come out of improvisation are very interesting. It becomes a learning process for all of us. So we often had these chaotic moments of improvisation. Sometimes the scene, as written in the script, was already finished, but I would say, “Let’s stay. Don’t stop. Just continue and do whatever feels right.” I let them direct themselves at times. They would begin with the scripted scene but keep going beyond it. Sometimes they completely reshaped the moment, sometimes they just talked naturally, and some of the best sentences in the whole movie came from that. That’s what I love about improvisation. It brings surprise, and that’s also the magic of working this way.

VOA: I’m always fascinated by how filmmakers choose their titles. Yours feels very powerful in some ways. How does I Understand Your Displeasure reflect the moral and emotional landscape of the film?

KAF: The international title was actually quite hard for me, because I wasn’t sure how often you would say a sentence like “I understand your displeasure” in English. You could also say, “I understand your frustration” or “I understand your upset.” There are many ways to phrase it. But we chose “displeasure” because we wanted a very formal way to express empathy – something that sounds empathetic, but also distant and professional. It’s like a customer service language. In customer service, you use these kinds of phrases all the time. I searched for how managers in customer service express empathy to a difficult or upset client. I found examples that weren’t meant for filmmakers, just practical phrases for that environment. When I saw this sentence, it felt perfect.

At the same time, the word “pleasure” is still inside “displeasure.” I find that interesting, because pleasure can exist in anything – it depends on the circumstances and whether you’re able to find meaning or even joy in what you do. That contradiction somehow fits the film quite well.

VOA: To finish our interview, I want to ask about cinematography and editing. I don’t think those departments always get enough credit. When you work with a cinematographer and an editor, how do you collaborate to shape the narrative? Cinematographers often see the story differently – how do you have those conversations? And in the editing room, are you very precise and controlling, or do you give your editor freedom to interpret your vision? Because both the cinematography and the editing in this film are so strong.

KAF: Thank you, that’s very kind. For me, in all my films, it’s really important to work with people I truly trust – and to trust them in their convictions and in their reasons for wanting to make the film. It’s about sharing the same attitude and approach. I looked for collaborators who were interested in social realist cinema and who wanted to go deeply into the work behind the scenes. People often think handheld shooting is easy or documentary-like, but it’s not. It’s very precise. It’s a lot of directing – rehearsing rhythm, blocking, staging. It takes strength and intention.

I worked with two people where we could combine an ethical approach with a practical one. We wanted this intense shoulder-camera aesthetic, but we always prioritised giving the non-professional actors space and safety – so they could forget the camera and not perform for it. They shouldn’t feel like, “I have to stand here now and say this line at exactly this second.”

For us, the actors’ security was more important than aesthetics. The visual style evolved naturally from that. We weren’t acting with the camera – we were reacting to the acting. The camera followed them, not the other way around. The editing process was also really beautiful. I had a great co-editor, Leila Fatima Keita, who is incredibly smart. She’s a very systemic thinker and has deep thoughts about power, power shifts, and how to express that through cutting – knowing when something is over, when a moment repeats, when to interrupt. She helped construct this intense, documentary-like aesthetic with heavy jump cuts. We weren’t afraid if something might look like a “mistake.” Maybe for some people it looks rough, but for others it feels real. That rawness was important to us. And we actually edited the whole film in just three months, which is quite fast. 

VOA: Also, considering your documentary background and now this film, do you see yourself going back to documentary filmmaking? Or would you prefer to continue exploring social themes through narrative films?

KAF: I really love writing stories and finding conflicts within a narrative structure. That’s why I think I’ll continue making films where the story is always more important than the theme. For me, the power of dramaturgy and narration can go far beyond the importance of a specific topic or message. If the story works, it can carry everything else. Yes, I think I’ll continue working in this way — still collaborating with non-professional actors. Not making films about them, but giving them a stage where they can develop and express their own artistic voice. I think that’s something really beautiful.

Written and interviewed by Maggie Gogler

Featured image courtesy of WENNDANN FILM & Kilian Armando Friedrich:

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