Anja Salomonowitz director of "It Happened Just Before"

What was the starting point for your film ? I wanted to talk about the restrictive laws relating to immigrants and find a way to show the women’s stories without it being pathetic. The issue of trafficking women has been treated often, but normally in a scandalising way. I wanted to avoid these pictures or rather not show any… to separate the stories from the women and expose their structure. These women don’t need compassion, but rights or a change of legal status.

How did you work with the women and the non-professional actors ? I did research for one and a half years, cooperating with the NGO Lefö (Latin-American Emigrated Women Austria). The stories are based on interviews undertaken by workers from Lefö, but they are mixed up since I had agreed that the women shouldn’t be recognisable. I didn’t want to present their stories as the fate of an individual. On the contrary, these fates happen because of certain structures and circumstances. One appeal was to find people who would act in the film - a diplomat and a toll-keeper for instance. Over months I followed their daily lives with a camera and wrote the interesting details that happened into the script. Before we started shooting they got the script to learn by heart and practice.

How would you describe the style of your film ? I wanted the film to have a sleek look, that’s why I worked with a cinematographer for advertisements, Jo Molitoris. People always had to be on one side of the picture, and the frames mostly empty. Whilst shooting and editing it was necessary to find the right rhythm in order to distinguish the women’s stories from the pictures. The viewers should feel that they see two films at the same time. One is the people’s daily lives. The other is the main film, the story of the women, which is happening some metres in front of the screen. The actual film I made is the one that is created in the viewer’s minds.

Zsuzsanna Kiràly