True & real

Mr Souvignier, who are you and what drives you?

I’m a very curious person and have always read lots of magazines, books and articles because I’m interested in stories from all over the world. I’d also say that I love people. And I’m convinced that nothing just happens by chance, but only through hard work.

Before you became a film producer, you worked as a photographer – how did that come about?

It was a conscious decision. After finishing school, I went to Scandinavia for three months with my best friend Dirk. We sat there and asked ourselves: ‘What do we actually want to be?’ Dirk chose medicine and became a doctor. I said: ‘I’m going to be a photographer.’ I’m from Essen, where there was the Folkwang School and that fantastic Museum Folkwang, which was already collecting photographs back then – we’re talking about a time when photography as an art form was still frowned upon in Germany; people feared that the ability to reproduce images would lead to fraud. When I first visited New York in 1981, one in five galleries featured photography in their programme. That’s when I knew: this is my world.

You once said that, for you, photography is ‘drawing with light’. What exactly do you mean by that?

The word ‘photography’ literally means ‘drawing with light’. You use the light and the shadows like a pencil to capture a reality on paper that will never return in that form. It’s about the physics of the moment. The light is the storyteller. If the light isn’t right, the story lies or remains silent. I learnt this very early on, actually through a love story: my first great love, Andrea, was a photo lab technician. I was 17 and developing my first prints in the darkroom. That was when I saw for the first time how the light I’d captured outside came back to life on the paper. It never left me. Later, I lived in a shared flat in Dortmund, and there, ten of us photographers would take pictures during the day and enlarge them at night. We were obsessed with this alchemy. My great role model was Henri Cartier-Bresson and his subjective photography. That one sixtieth of a second – the decisive moment. Before and after that, the picture is worth nothing. I always walked around with two cameras slung round my neck, one with a 35-millimetre lens and one with an 85-millimetre lens. My masseur can still feel the deformities in my shoulder caused by the heavy cameras. I was a gunslinger and would literally lie in wait for situations. I even had a horn in my pocket. When the framing was perfect, I’d wait until people walked into the shot, blow the horn, and when they looked at me in confusion – bang, I’d press the shutter! That was my sport.

And how did you get into film?

For me, earning money was always just a means to an end – to put on exhibitions. I even gave blood so I could afford photographic paper. But I was always interested in reality. Never science fiction – always people and their stories. At some point I realised: a single image is a sentence, but I want to write the whole novel. So I became a cameraman, then a director and finally a producer. But my eye remains that of a photographer: I’m always looking for the moment that moves people.

You then founded a film production company in 1985, shortly after completing your studies.

That was also out of curiosity. Nothing in my life just happens because I was born with a certain destiny. I come from the world of art; money was never part of my path. But I wanted to create stories right from the start. I began with non-fiction – documentaries, current affairs programmes and shows. That amounted to over 600 productions. In the mid-1990s, we then produced a programme called ‘Klick’. We interviewed Bill Gates just as Microsoft was starting to make a name for itself. We produced it from a virtual studio – back then you needed three outside broadcast vans full of cables; today, a MacBook is enough. And then my wife and I had the crazy idea of making a feature film about the internet: “Die Mädchenfalle – Der Tod kommt online”. That was in 1998.

Let’s be honest: who wanted to watch a film about computers back then?

Nobody! People said: “Computers are ugly things and the internet won’t be around for long.” But we kept pestering RTL until they bought it. Alexandra Maria Lara played the lead role back then, with Thomas Kretschmann as the detective. It was a huge success. After that, as a thank-you, RTL commissioned me to make the big two-part drama ‘Pest – The Return’. In it, the plague broke out in Cologne and bridges were closed – just like in ‘Outbreak’ with Dustin Hoffman. Word got round that we were a young, brilliant production team. Shortly afterwards came “Das Wunder von Lengede”. 13 million viewers. Suddenly I was right in the thick of the big film business.

You discovered Uma Thurman, is that right?

Not me – it was my late wife. She was working in America at the time and saw more in Uma than just a fashion model. She was a lanky girl, as they say; nobody wanted to cast her – the studios didn’t recognise her potential. So she decided to simply give her a role. That’s how Uma Thurman landed her first film, called "Kiss Daddy Good Night". That actually sums up our way of working quite well: when everyone else says ‘That won’t work’ or ‘She doesn’t fit the mould’, that’s when we get started. You need that chutzpah; otherwise, you’ll get stuck in mediocrity.

You said earlier that you’ve always been interested in reality. Why is it more exciting than fiction?

Because it touches us more deeply. For me, a good story begins with the corkscrew effect. I want to draw the viewer in so tightly that they can’t let go. But you often don’t realise that at the start. You scratch the surface of a story and realise: there’s more to it. I see us storytellers as truffle pigs. We dig through our research until we find the emotional core.

One example of this is your film about the Contergan scandal.

It is perhaps the most important film of my career. I myself belong to the generation that was affected. As schoolchildren, we used to make those cruel jokes: ‘No arms, no biscuits.’ Later, I wondered what had actually happened there. We did our research and made the film in the face of massive opposition. It led to the pensions of those affected being increased sixfold. That is the most valuable reward a producer can achieve: when you’ve brought about political change.

How do you ensure you don’t exploit those affected just to boost viewing figures?

Trust. Everything in our business is based on trust. These people entrust their lives to me. My principle is: I am not the judge. I want to maintain journalistic neutrality. Even with criminals, I’m interested in the ‘why’. The viewer must form their own judgement. I simply depict the facts, just as in photography.

You once mentioned that AI is ‘the atomic bomb of the media’ – can you explain that?

Every invention is both a curse and a blessing. I’ve just had an operation on my knee, and the surgery was performed by a robot – it doesn’t shake, it didn’t have a drink the night before. That’s the blessing. But in communication, there’s a risk of it taking on a life of its own. We’re being manipulated without realising it.

What’s the solution?

Awareness. We’ve just made the film "Führer and Seducer". In it, we portray Goebbels – not as a historical monument, but as a blueprint for the present day. He used the cinema, the ‘Volksempfänger’ and the press to lie to a nation and drive it into the abyss. Today, it’s TikTok and social media. The mechanisms are identical. That is where the danger lies, and I am very afraid of it. ( … )

→ Read the full interview in the new rampstyle #38 ‘Just for the Plot’.

(Now available in German)