[press conference for
Gentle Monster (2026) at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival] I read a newspaper article about a big ring of paedophiles in Germany which was being discovered and then prosecuted, and it was a very explicit article and very hard to read - I read it over two days - and when I finished it, I was at a public pool with my daughter and my stepdaughters and I walked through the area and I couldn't look at the families the same way I had looked at them the day before. I obviously knew about sexual violence towards children, but I was not so aware......I do not only know victims - I must know perpetrators as well. And this is really where it started. I just felt helpless after reading it and I felt that the only thing that I could do, as a filmmaker, as a storyteller, is make a film about it.
