German director Julian Radlmeier diverges, gently but deliberately, from the caustic irony and overt political discourse that characterized his earlier work, such as Bloodsuckers and Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog, in his latest film in Phantoms of July.
The film marks a tonal shift, embracing a more lyrical, digressive mode while retaining Radlmeier’s idiosyncratic formal language and sly sense of humor. Set in the obscure town of Sangerhausen, in the former East Germany, the film weaves together elements of absurd realism, provincial melancholy, and surrealist comedy, constructing a narrative as strange and elusive as the location itself.
At once a meditation on longing, migration, and the quiet violence of everyday conservatism, Phantoms of July avoids the didacticism that so often plagues political filmmaking. Instead, it draws its strength from implication and juxtaposition, finding resonance in landscapes, monuments, and eccentric local traditions, from nudist hikers to imperial statues. This is psychogeography by way of Brecht and Novalis, filtered through Radlmeier’s unique cine-poetic vision.
In the conversation with Screen Anarchy, the Berlin-based filmmaker speaks candidly about his evolving approach to satire, the subtle recalibration of his political voice, and the accidental origins of a film that began with a photograph and ended up becoming his most expansive and sensuous work to date.
Screen Anarchy: PHANTOMS OF JULY feels a little different from your previous films, it’s less ironic. Is this part of your artistic development, or did you simply want to go in a different direction?
Julian Radlmeier: Well, you know, I had the feeling I was at a point where I could just keep cultivating my style forever, until I became a caricature of myself. Or I could try to discover other things, elements that were already present in my earlier films, but not so much in the foreground. I’ve always had a tendency toward digressions, toward smaller romantic strands, but in the past, the satirical elements were maybe keeping them down.
So I thought: let’s explore this other side of what interests me, without losing a certain sense of humor, irony, and a political layer. I think all of that is still in the film, but maybe the balance has shifted.
But you also toned down the political aspect.
Yes, I think so. Or rather, I reduced the reflexive side of it, the explicit discourse. I’ve never believed that a political film has to talk about politics explicitly. There are many films I consider political that don’t talk about politics at all. In my case, I kept talking about politics in my films because I’m interested in political theory.
But at some point, I thought: enough. What if the politics are still present, but not center stage? That might actually be a strategy to make it stronger, saying the same things in a subtler way. It can create fewer barriers for viewers who might otherwise feel, “Oh no, someone wants to lecture me.” I hope I was never preachy in my previous films, but you know what I mean. So yes, the politics are there, just less explicitly formulated.
I see, but those nuances might not translate to foreign audiences. Some viewers might not catch the German references. You set the film in Sangerhausen which seems like really a random place.
I understand. I think there’s still something universal about it. You can understand that it’s a small, provincial town, a bit forgotten, contrasted with people coming from the big city. It’s about the conflicts between Germans and immigrants, and the kind of slightly racist discourse you hear from certain politicians on the radio.
That’s happening in Germany now, but it’s also happening all over the world. So I hope there are enough universal political connections. And maybe, compared to my earlier films, you don’t need to know Marx to get it. You can connect it more to everyday political experiences, working people having jobs, working a lot just to survive.
It’s also a conservative small town, right? You mentioned in another interview that it’s right-wing. But that side of it isn’t really pushed very strongly in the film.
Yes, the right-wing extremism or polarization of society is more subtle here, because it’s a small town. So it doesn’t come across as “punchy” in the same way.
And then you insert some historical references, like that monument, which seems to connect with nationalism.
This is where you might need a bit of German context, it’s a very nationalist monument to some German emperors. But I think you can recognize a nationalist monument without knowing the full history. All nationalist monuments in the world tend to look a bit the same. There’s this strange tendency toward an over-gigantic style.
And in terms of your signature style, you’re still combining idiosyncratic elements with nationalist moment, Schlager music and then the nudist hikers which probably has to do something with the FKK culture.
Well, actually, most of the elements in the film are things I discovered there. I just condensed them, exaggerated them a little, or combined them in a way that would make them clearer to read.
For example, the one you mentioned, yes, there’s the German FKK culture, but there’s also literally a naked hiking trail in that region. I was researching the area and saw it online, and I thought: Okay, great, I need naked hikers in the film.
Then there’s this pyramid-shaped mountain, actually a spoil tip, a heap of excavated earth piled up. I thought it looked like an Egyptian pyramid, so I googled camels. It turned out there was really a camel farm nearby. So everything was already there, I just had to give it a form that made sense in the film.
Did you go location scouting before writing the script?
Exactly. This was the first time I worked that way. In my previous films, I always had a plot in my head first, with no real geographical reference. This time, I discovered the place first, spent time there, got impressions, and then began building a story around it, starting with basic character constellations and filling in details I’d found on location.
Did you already know you wanted to make a film in that city, or was it a coincidence?
Pure coincidence. I saw a photo of the city, with that mountain in the background, and found it hypnotic. I didn’t know the town, but it looked interesting. It wasn’t far from Berlin, so I went there for a weekend as a tourist. It felt like a small film studio already, around every corner there was something: an interesting street, a strange stone face in a wall, some caves.
I learned that the poet Novalis was born there. The place seemed full of ready-made narrative material. I hadn’t planned to find a location and build a film around it, it just happened, and the ideas started flowing immediately.
Was it a spontaneous project? You wanted to change scenery a bit after BLOODSUCKERS?
Not exactly. After Bloodsuckers, I didn’t know what to do. I had another project I no longer wanted to make, or needed to rewrite, so I was looking for something to do in between. My idea was to make something short and light. But when I found this place, the project grew bigger. It became less short and light, and eventually turned into a real film.
What about the episodic structure, the period prologue, then the main story that moves between different characters, almost like a rotating collective?
The first idea came when I went to a café in the town. There were waitresses and waiters, and nearby a music school, so music was always playing. There was also an amphitheatre. It reminded me of Miloš Forman’s The Loves of a Blonde, the story of a musician coming to a small town, a girl falling in love with him, and him not really being interested. That could have been one interesting story.
But I was also curious about the migrants living in the city, and about its history. Sometimes I start with one story, but instead of digging deep into every detail, I’m more interested in contrasting it with something else, creating a film that lives from the juxtaposition of elements rather than from following one plot thread to its end.
At one point, I was even thinking: should I make this film or that film? Then I decided to combine them, and later added the idea of a prologue. So the three-part structure emerged during the writing process.
My writing process is a bit like automatic writing, I empty my head, and ideas appear. For example, I might think: This character could have had a great-grandmother, who could she have been? Then I remembered Novalis, who wrote about longing, which is also a theme of the film. So maybe Ursula’s great-great-great-grandmother could have known him. At first, it’s an unclear labyrinth of ideas. As I work through it, I find a structure that lets all these elements coexist.
There’s a literary term for this,“psychogeography”, when you take a place and pull together different stories from its history and present, all tied to specific locations. Was that in your mind?
I didn’t know the term, but it sounds exactly like what I was doing. Some elements I knew I wanted to integrate, Novalis, for example. Or there are these stones, and I read about a strange 18th-century profession in which a man would walk around swallowing stones for the amusement of the public. I thought, Oh, this is interesting, how can I put it in the film? Or the stone face, how can I use that? So the space itself had narrative potential, and I just looked for ways to bring it into the story.
You mentioned earlier a bit of exaggeration. How much of what we see is caricature, and how much is tied directly to the real place?
I think the exaggeration often comes from combining different elements. There really are camels there, but no one walks in medieval costume next to the pyramid. Still, there are people who walk around in medieval costumes, because there’s a local group of medieval enthusiasts who camp together and drive medieval-style cars. So you take these separate things, and when you put them together, a humorous effect is created. That’s something I like.
It’s the same with the naked hikers. In the script, I wanted naked hikers as a way of showing this kind of toxic masculinity directed at Ursula. The actor playing that part happened to play the accordion, and I thought it would be interesting if he could use that in the film. Then I wondered: what could he play? I found out that Schubert had composed a song version of Novalis’ poems. I asked him if he could perform it, and luckily he was a good enough singer and musician to do it.
For me, this is connected to surrealism as well as humor. Bringing elements together can create something entirely new, it’s a way of thinking in itself. Everything is already there in reality, but combining it differently changes its meaning.
Did you involve local people as actors?
Yes, it’s a mix. The main actors came through a normal casting process. There’s also a Korean man who’s been in all my films, he’s the father of a friend of mine. He’s not an actor, but I like his presence. His real grandson also appears in the film.
In my earlier films, many of the small roles were played by my friends from Berlin. But now they all have jobs, and we couldn’t afford to bring them in. This time, that limitation was actually a gift, because it meant working more closely with local people, hearing their stories, and building another kind of attachment to the place.
Many minor roles are played by people we met there. For example, there’s a poodle in the film. We used to go to a certain bakery for cakes, and the woman who works there has two poodles with eccentric haircuts. Her late husband was a dog hairdresser, and I thought, These dogs look like 18th-century wigs, they have to be in the film.
And the locals didn’t mind you portraying their town in this way?
No, they all read the script, and no one complained. The first reaction from many was: “Why are you here? The town is not interesting.” But during the process, I felt they actually knew a lot about the place, they just didn’t think it would interest outsiders. For me, it was very interesting, and I hope that for them, the experience was a chance to see their own town through new eyes.
Cover image courtesy of Locarno Film Festival.