58 Minutes

Some encounters have a dynamic that makes you take a deep breath occasionally to remind yourself that this acquaintance is still in its very early stages. The words ‘instinct’ and ‘fundamental trust’ come to mind. It’s a totally free space of innate trust, because curiosity about the first conversation and the experience itself creates so much anticipation. In that first moment something happens deep inside us, enabling us to choose how we want to conduct the conversation. Svenja Jung’s expression as she looks at me is wide-eyed, and when I notice that nothing about her body language is keeping me at arm’s length and that she’s simply giving me her time, we slip into our conversation. My pre-prepared questions go out of my head, but instinctively I know that I can simply take a chance on getting to know her. Getting to know each other involves the very beginnings of trust. In getting to know each other, we decide whether it will be a one-off event or whether something will suddenly happen that makes us prepared to take things further. Here is the story of how we got to know each other.

Manche Begegnungen haben eine Dynamik, in der man zwischendurch tief einatmet, um sich zu erinnern, dass dieses Kennenlernen noch ganz frisch ist. Die Wörter Instinkt und Urvertrauen fallen mir ein. Eine vollkommen freie Zone eines natürlichen Vertrauens, weil die Neugier auf den ersten Austausch und das Erfahren so viel Vorfreude bereitet. In diesem ersten Augenblick findet etwas tief in uns statt und er versetzt uns in die Lage zu entscheiden, wie wir ein Gespräch führen wollen. Svenja Jung schaut mich mit wachen Augen an und als ich bemerke, dass nichts an ihrer Körpersprache auf Distanz geht und sie mir einfach ihre Zeit anbietet, gleiten wir in unser Gespräch hinein. Es gibt keine vorformulierten Fragen mehr im Kopf, sondern mein Instinkt versteht, dass ich es einfach auf ein Kennenlernen ankommen lassen kann. Im Kennenlernen stecken Anfang und Keim des Vertrauens. Im Kennenlernen entscheiden wir, ob es eine einmalige Angelegenheit wird oder ob etwas aufblitzt, das uns bereit macht, mehr zu erfahren. Hier unser Protokoll eines Kennenlernens.

Svenia Jung (b. 1993) Since 2014, Svenja Jung has been drawing attention to herself as an actress. She has become known to an ever larger audience thanks to films such as Fucking Berlin, Die Mitte der Welt and series such as Dark, Deutschland, Beat, Der Palast and currently SPY/Master. With her latest role in SAM (Disneyplus), she impressively shows how much curiosity she has for stories.

SLEEK

Svenja, should I imagine you sitting by the sea and watching the waves or are you surfing? SVENJA JUNG

Both [laughs]. I can just watch for hours, but yes, I’ve actually started surfing too. It’s still about respect and fear to a great extent, because of course there are a lot of tricky moments. You’re in the water with the others, but they’re all much more advanced, and you’re on your own. I still lack a lot of experience and I can’t yet judge the distance between waves. Of course, the others have already checked it out, because they understood the wave in a matter of minutes. Then I’m in the wrong position on my board, for example, the wave breaks over me, you’re thrown up in the air, and then the next one arrives. And you just think, I’m going to die because it doesn’t stop. That does something to you. I panic regularly, but I think you have to get through it somehow if you want to learn. And that’s what I really want.

S Those are the challenges, risks and freedoms that we want to face up to. And something very pure in oneself. It seems to me, when it comes to your work and profession as an actress, that there’s a line separating a character in a story and you yourself. Isn’t the art of acting at its most intense and powerful when you don’t have to explain this separation any more?

SJ We actors use that argument so often in order to protect ourselves. The film role then becomes the subject you can talk about and so it’s a safe area. I think perhaps it’s sometimes just a kind of fear of criticism. It takes a certain amount of stamina to get into the position where you can even decide which role you want to do and which script you say ‘yes’ to. Especially when I was starting out, I took roles just in order to act, to get into the business and to learn. I’ll admit that in every role I’ve played and am still playing, a part of me is strongly involved. Often I only realise afterwards that a part of me had gone into the role that I hadn’t seen before. Everything is always linked to me, and then you add something to the role in the way of gestures, costumes or a manner of speaking, and it all comes together to create one character. And I’m not disconnected from this character. It’s still always my body, my heart, my soul and my permeability that are involved. If I get emotional, I act using these emotions; if I’m having doubts, I use this consciously to revisit a nuance in my acting. In my job, I can only ever fall back on what has happened to me personally but at a distance, and then I bestow that upon the character I’m embodying at the moment. Of course I try to protect my private self because it’s my protected space. But for me there’s a real difference between maintaining this protected space and still making aspects of my person visible via my work.

S Absolutely. Of course everyone protects their own private space and wouldn’t even think of revealing what you yourself wouldn’t want to reveal. Just because your art is public doesn’t change that fact. I’ve been thinking about the films and roles that set off a powerful surge of ideas and emotions in me, and I suspected that they could only leave those traces because there was a certain bluntness about the characters or the story itself. That broke the dam…

SJ That’s how it is for me. I want to be able to act and discover myself at the same time. When you work in art, and acting is art to a very great extent, you use the space you have chosen to challenge the emotions of the viewers through your own. I only evoke feelings in people when something is triggered. What I then extract from my life and put into an emotion or scenes in a film connects me with the viewer.

S And that’s the connection between our professions. We both have no idea about the people who see your films or read what I write, their faces or their lives. But what you know from your own experience is that the plot of a film or a written text can give another person a kind of truth or solidarity. We suddenly find something in a story that makes us less alone. And then someone is sitting somewhere on a bench or in a cinema and for a moment they find peace, strength and a tender kind of courage. What an impact and what potential, don’t you think?

SJ Stories are unifying, and I consider myself fortunate to be able to work as an actress right now at this time. Systems are breaking down, and I can make an impact through what I do. Today we have opportunities to tell stories because structures are shifting. As far as I can, I speak up, and if I have the feeling that sexist behaviour or abuse of power is taking place, I call it out immediately. We all have to stand up and fight for change, no matter where. I question myself and my work as well, whether the image I’m projecting is OK.

I feel lucky that as an actress I am part of the feminist impetus in the film industry that’s creating more leading roles for women. It inspires me that women in their forties or fifties are

increasingly being celebrated in this way as women and for their stories. This is still happening more abroad than in Germany, but I can help in what’s happening here. And recently I met a woman colleague on the train and we had such an intense conversation. Encounters with such women or people make me braver and feel empowered to say something myself.

S If I remember such moments when a conversation, a chance encounter or an aside suddenly resonates with us, it also triggers a kind of trust in the opportunities we’ve not yet discovered.

SJ Totally. I’ve been thinking so much about that conversation on the train. How I behave today, in my late twenties, what I dare to do and how much support all my experiences give me, I only ever grasp this in the moments when I pause or someone I meet triggers something. Today I have a completely different kind of courage to stand up for my needs and values and say something. That certainly is connected with such encounters.

S For me there’s hope in knowing that encounters like this can happen again and again. Hope is a word that I can personally take on board happily, because in my life it has very seldom been the case that I have given up hope. What does hope mean to you?

SJ Hope feels alive to me. Hope drives us forward, hope should persist – it’s like a motor. In every role and in every scene, I try to show hope because otherwise you give up. There’s something within us, an energy, a drive, an opportunity that confronts hopelessness. I want to think, feel and face life that way – and in my roles too. ●