{"id":99408,"date":"2025-08-21T13:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/99408\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T13:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:28:14","slug":"our-time-will-come-film-director-interview-on-interracial-love-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/99408\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Our Time Will Come’ Film Director Interview on Interracial Love Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBerlin-based Austrian filmmaker Ivette L\u00f6cker<\/a> (Night Shifts, Ties That Bind) likes to go deep on human relationships and connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy previous films have very often dealt with relationships, different kinds of relationships,\u201d she tells THR on the sidelines of the\u00a031st edition<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Sarajevo Film Festival<\/a>, where her latest documentary, Our Time Will Come (Unsere Zeit wird kommen), screens in the feature documentary competition program. \u201cAnd I was very much interested in this kind of interracial relationship, because I think it\u2019s getting more and more common. As members of the white majority, we have to get used to and get to know more about these kinds of relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

The synopsis on the Sarajevo festival website sums up the movie\u2019s focus this way: \u201cAfter years of uncertainty and involuntary exile, Siaka from Gambia and his wife Victoria have returned to their adopted \u2018homeland\u2019 of Austria to build a stable existence and start a family. Both invest a large part of their energy in achieving their shared utopia, but cultural differences remain significant, social structures remain immobile, and their own history and traditions are just as hard to shake off.\u201d<\/p>\n

The website of the Berlin Film Festival, where the movie world premiered, described it as \u201cthe portrait of a love between cultures that\u00a0endures despite all difficulties in an Austria increasingly moving towards authoritarianism\u201d amid the rise of a populist right-wing party. \u201cRacism is a sickness,\u201d Siaka says in letting off steam in one scene of the doc.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The film mixes observational filming with interviews with Victoria, Siaka and the couple together. And it takes viewers from Vienna to Gambia.\u00a0L\u00f6cker doesn\u2019t use any label for her cinematic style, but highlights that in addition to fly-on-the-wall scenes and conversations with the couple, she also typically likes to \u201cpursue a quiet, rather poetic style of visuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me,\u00a0it\u2019s a [story] of modern love, because it\u2019s so common to not live in your home country anymore,\u201d L\u00f6cker explains.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIvette Lo\u0308cker<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Diagonale\/Ju\u0308rgen Keiper<\/p>\n

\n\tThe genesis of the film is very unusual. \u201cI was approached by this couple, which was very new for me,\u201d the director recalls. \u201cThey asked if their story could be an interesting topic for a documentary film. I was thrilled to get to know them.\u201d The back story is that L\u00f6cker had met Victoria at an Austrian film festival, Diagonale in Graz, in 2017, that screened \u201cher short experimental film before my feature film,\u201d namely Victoria\u2019s short film Kanten (Grenzen) before L\u00f6cker\u2019s Ties That Bind.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met at the festival, and then that same year, she met her now-husband, and we just stayed in contact,\u201d L\u00f6cker explains. Years later, Victoria wrote to her to share that the couple was now married and that her husband had an interesting immigrant story. And she asked if L\u00f6cker or someone she knew may be interested in documenting his, and their, story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we had research interviews via Zoom, because it was still during the pandemic, I realized that it is very fascinating how they, as a couple, deal with each other, how they communicate, how they try to bridge cultural differences. I wanted to tell [a film] about these challenges, so I asked them if they could imagine giving us insight into an interracial couple. I am very happy that they agreed to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filmmaker followed the couple for a year after Siaka had received his residency and work permits. \u201cFor me, it was interesting to portray them in a year when these kinds of questions and struggles were already more or less behind them, because my premise was: How do they deal with everyday life?\u201d
While L\u00f6cker initially expected a focus on the couple, that theme expanded to a focus on family. \u201cAfter all, especially Siaka was longing for a child and family. So, this topic or theme was getting more and more important for the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

L\u00f6cker also wanted to tell a more global story.\u00a0\u201cOur goal was to make a film that has, of course, the specific story with their specific problems, but that also shows more so that people can relate from wherever they may be or be from, whether they have migrant stories or not. I think people can relate to these kinds of challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next for the filmmaker? \u201cI have a new project, and we will try to start the financing process on it in September,\u201d L\u00f6cker tells THR and teases some details about the project. \u201cIt will be about female friendship. This time, I will work with more protagonists, which is something rather new for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berlin-based Austrian filmmaker Ivette L\u00f6cker (Night Shifts, Ties That Bind) likes to go deep on human relationships and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[88,2091,206,48402],"class_list":["post-99408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-international","tag-movies","tag-sarajevo-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}