Since 2016, a hologram for the king was no longer present on the big screen. Instead, together with Achim von Borries and Henk, he handled the most ambitious German series project in recent TV history: Berlin Babylon. At some point, however, the urge to cinema was so big again that Tykwer initiated a new film project.
The light celebrated its premiere at the Berlinale in February and at the same time acted as an opening film of the festival. The Berlin-Odyssey with Tala al-Deen, Nicolette Krebitz and Lars Eidinger in the leading roles is a 160-minute epic that makes one unexpected decision after another and in the meantime even turns into a fantasy musical to the sounds of Bohemian Rhapsody.
But how do you secure the rights to a legendary queen song? Why is Berlin constantly haunted by such an end -time rain? And what contradictions do you meet as a filmmaker in working with a film studio? Tom Tykwer spoke to us about the light on the occasion of today’s cinema. You can read the interview below.
Moviepilot: What I heard from your descriptions of the light sounds like there is a lot of you personally in the film. Where as a filmmaker you pull the border between the private and the professional?
Tom Tykwer: Private is actually always stupid. You don’t want to look into the bedroom or read diaries from other people. You can be intimate as a filmmaker, but if it is private, then it is a particular. And that is very difficult to bring back to the universal. You have to find some way that you know what you are talking about, but the figures tell in a way that they are not images of some people with whom you have something to do, or of yourself.
Nevertheless, there are overlaps, for example at Lars Eidinger’s figure. In the broadest sense, she also has something to do with me as a filmmaker. Tim is a progressive, left-wing intellectual that develops concepts for a tech group how to connect the critical population and turn the unmatched masses into consumers. He lives in a field of opposition that I enter the same way when I want to make a large bank -critical film like The International with Sony. I know that’s paradoxical. But otherwise I could never have done the film because it was very expensive and nobody else gave me the money. You enter a pact with the devil to accuse the devil. This is a contradiction that I cannot dissolve.
What were the contradictions you came across in the light?
If you make a very committed, demanding, passionate and popular film, there are always voices that say that it is not possible. You have to say continuously from the belief that people would like to watch films who have nothing conventional about themselves that are not standardized. At the same time, you have to keep the balance between the longing for originality that we all have when we go to the cinema and a certain familiarity so that you can find your way around.
This balance between innovation and tradition is what makes a great film often. We want to be driven on, but we also go to the cinema because of the familiar beauty of cinematic story. If music, sound and picture go together so well, then the world does not have to be reinvented every time. Nevertheless, we are looking for and long for an experience that we never had.
Is there a moment in the light that particularly expresses this longing for you? First of all, I think of the dance above the water. It was a scene where I was sitting in the cinema and couldn’t believe that the film is going – as if it were literally lifting off.
In any case, that was very great to shoot. I hope there are many such sequences. I tried to make the film so rich that you can find 20, 30 sequences in which something you have not expected. Something that is beautiful and throws you off the track – in the most interesting way. This also includes the fact that it rains all the time in the film. It was a very complex decision that caused many resistance. Rain must always be made. He is never there when you turn, and when he’s there you don’t see him because he is too thin. You have to let the quantity come down ten times so that the water reflects in the light. And people are always wet.
And probably cold.
Yes, exactly, you really have to pay attention to that.
Why was rain so important to you? Could you have made the film in the sunshine?
No, that was out of the question. This is one of these things in which you have to remain stubborn in an idiotic way. If you have the instinct that this is insanely important for the atmosphere of the film, you have to go through it.
It has something really apocalyptic.
Exactly, this creates a thousand different feelings. It also creates a strange intimacy. You are closer to the people in a situation that would otherwise be public. That helped the scenes scary. The figures are isolated by the rain and that also fits the rest of the film because they fight for their freedom and seek contact. That alone is difficult and the rain also makes it difficult. And then the water is of course the central motif of the whole film and plays at the end, which I don’t want to reveal now, the all decisive role. The rain prepares us for the final all the time.
At the Berlinale, you said that Berlin looks like an unfinished city with all its construction sites. The rain was also a tool for you to beautify this Berlin because everything suddenly looks more atmospheric.
That was not my primary argument for the rain, but of course it looks nice. You get all the reflections. At the end of the day, it remains elaborate and super complicated, especially if you want to put larger street escapes in fog. That is madness. You have to hang all these huge showers everywhere and you shouldn’t actually be in the picture. Sometimes we left her in because there was no other way. Like a headlight that is simply in the picture. Fortunately, you don’t even notice.
Another united element in the film is Bohemian Rhapsody. Did you realize from the start that the song would be the basic structure of the film? Or did you also think about other songs?
Bohemian Rhapsody was in the script from the start. This has to do with the fact that my son likes to sing, especially when conflicts are announced, for example between me and my wife. Suddenly he begins to sing that, and it is completely crazy how much he sank in it. He can memorize the whole piece and sings it with such a kind of performative urge. It is as great how children can get into this world completely. Then they are as deep as we always want to experience it in the cinema. That you are completely swallowed by a film.
A song was assigned to all main characters in the film. I liked the idea that the youngest of all people took an oldie. This seemed very fitting, because the young generation is such a quote machine that absorbs everything immediately that it is suddenly its whole world. When a six -year -old sees Star Wars for the first time, it is somewhere in some galaxy for two days and no longer knows where the reality is. Children can make this imagination out of themselves, and I also wanted to capture something in my film.
Just like Star Wars as a film, Bohemian Rhapsody is a song in which you can immerse yourself again and again and get lost in different worlds.
That’s the great thing about the play. It is a musical all -round. Hard rock, opera, ballad – a wide variety of genres are conclusive. At the same time, the song is an intimate confession or commitment from Freddie Mercury. So a very personal song, even though he goes into the broad history of music. At some point I realized that Bohemian Rhapsody is just like the film I want to make. The comparison may be measured, but that was exactly my thought. And then unfortunately it wasn’t that easy to get the song.
How did you do it?
First of all, this seemed to be completely impossible, because the record company canceled over a very long period of time. But then I actually wrote a letter to Queen, more precisely to Brian May, a really handwritten letter. I sent it as a fax and the answer then came back: “Okay, do it.” Actually very simple, but it was still a long way until then.
What would you have done if it hadn’t worked?
I can’t imagine that. I was determined that it must be the song. There was no other option for me.
Would you have canceled the film if you hadn’t got it?
I don’t know that. It is more the other way around. You then say to yourself: “I won’t think that now.” Instead, you force the desired reality.
Where we are with music: Together with Johnny Klimek, you also wrote film music and don’t do it for the first time. How do you compose music as a director and screenwriter for your own film?
It started very early for me because I couldn’t afford a composer and didn’t even know how such a collaboration was going. I quickly realized that I actually had the music in my head when I was writing, and luckily I was able to play a little piano myself. At that time there were the first digital multi -path units that could have a lot. I just started it and never stopped again. I suddenly found the idea that I give someone my film and which makes the music to do it. Exactly because I always felt the music.
The most important trick is to compose the music before making the film. Then all topics are already finished and the rest is adjusted in the tailoring room. So we don’t have to use tempus music, which is the case with 90 percent of all filmmakers. They take the film music from other films or their favorite songs and put them under the scenes. Then they say to a poor composer: “Can you do it in a similar way, but without having to pay for the rights?
On the other hand, I already know exactly how the music will take into account when filming and would say that this is an aspect that makes my films look like. Too often it says: “We just put music over it, then it will be, even if a scene has not become so good now.” I don’t know that. For me, the music is not on top, but in it.
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The light has been running in German cinemas since March 20, 2025.