2023-08-18 08:27:04
Although “Operation White Christmas” is his debut film, Flo Lackner has been on the Carinthian film scene for a long time. The 40-year-old from Klagenfurt made his first attempts at film at the age of seven. As a teenager, he bought his first camcorder for a lot of money. But that also led to a turning point, because at the age of 13 he sank the camera into a self-made, but not waterproof container in the indoor pool. “After a few thousand shillings succumbed to a kind of burial at sea, my parents said that there would be no new camera in the near future,” said Lackner with a smile in the interview. Thank God there was a major family event that was to be preserved on film for posterity. The grandparents donated a camera so that Flo Lackner might continue shooting.
In the 2000s, the Carinthian shot longer and more complex action films with his friends. He got inspiration for this from video stores, among other places, which he still considers to be a hotbed of film culture. He doesn’t get much out of streaming services, it’s regarding the social interaction with other film fans that takes place in video stores. Also: “My cousin has one of the last video stores in Austria.” So it is not surprising that the video store also plays an important role in his Christmas film.
In 2013, Lackner graduated from the Vienna Film School with his indie film Planet USA. The satire on US politics at the time was also a homage to US filmmaker Michael Bay (including “Armageddon”, “Transformers”). The tagline was “The Greatest Action Movie Ever – The Smallest Action Budget Ever”. There were tanks, Blackhawk helicopters, the Cobra’s task force in action and even a landing on the moon. In order to give the film the final touches of action, he was able to win over well-known German voice actors such as Charles Rettinghaus (Jamie Foxx, Jean-Claude Van Damme), Wolfgang Bahro (Steve Buscemi) or Santiago Ziesmer (Spongebob Squarepants), whose distinctive voices were mostly amateur actors to borrow. But despite all the efforts, “Planet USA” was not a lasting success. At that time, however, Lackner was already fully engaged in professional life as a cutter and commissioned director.
Towards the end of 2015, the first ideas for “Operation White Christmas” came together. Flo Lackner comes out as a big fan of Christmas. It was already like that in childhood, said the father of two. While his friends went swimming in the summer, he was already listening to Christmas music cassettes to keep building the anticipation for the festival.
The plot in which a Turk, a hacker of Asian origin and a neo-Nazi together save a white Christmas by preventing a state visit to Klagenfurt developed very slowly. “The basic idea was simply that quite strong opposites have to work together. That was also one of the difficulties: How do you bring them together and resolve the fact that someone like a neo-Nazi should never be a hero? It’s a fine line to walk.” With the material, Lackner then went to Mona film production, for whom he repeatedly worked on other projects.
“Operation White Christmas” then ran as a workshop project. Such films are intended to encourage young people and have a low budget, in the case of Lackner’s Christmas action film just around 1.4 million euros. For the project, the Carinthian was able to win back numerous people from “Planet USA” times, such as Tim Seyfi (“Kebab mit Alles!”), Charles Rettinghaus and also Santiago Ziesmer. Newcomers were Rauand Taleb (“4 Blocks”) as a Turkish video store owner and Yvonne Yung Hee Borman as a Korean hacker.
“I actually did the casting – and Mona Film agreed to everything. But at some point there was a point when they said: ‘But now there are almost only Germans in the film. We need a few Austrians now.’” And that’s how Andreas Vitasek, Petra Morzé and Roland Düringer came along.
Düringer was supposed to play a psychopathic “problem solver” from the dark web in the film. “He got the script on Sunday – and on Monday came the only condition that he didn’t want to play it in High German. And then I said: ‘Amen and thank you very much!’” says Lackner. In conclusion, he raved regarding the cabaret artist: “I also think that you’ve never seen Roland like he is in this film. I think he really enjoyed that too.”
But the production was not under a good star. The shoot fell into the corona lockdown. “We have been tested regularly,” Lackner sighed. “Fortunately we didn’t have a single case of corona, although at the end of the day we were up to 500 people on the set.”
Surprisingly, the lockdown situation had something good following all. “You were able to do things in Klagenfurt that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” said the director. “The city was like a studio situation, it was empty.” And although there was no Christmas market due to the lockdown, the city built 14 extra huts for the shoot. “I was the only one at the time who had Christmas market pictures.”
But the lockdown wasn’t the only obstacle. The war in Ukraine also caused delays. A fictitious Russian president was originally supposed to visit Klagenfurt in the film. With the start of the Russian invasion, that had to change. “I had to look for countries where Russian is also spoken. And when it came to Kazakhstan, I thought it might sound really funny.” So the scenes in which Russian was spoken didn’t have to be reshot. Nevertheless, he still had to go to the dubbing studio with actors to change the word “Russian” to “Kazakh” in German text passages.
Now that the movie is finally out, however, Flo Lackner can’t sit back and relax. In addition to the documentary films mentioned, he is currently also working on an image film for the Cobra task force. He would also like to create an extensive making-of for “Operation White Christmas”. What comes following that is still uncertain. “Maybe horror,” says Lackner. But unlike his previous parodies, this time it might be a serious horror film.
(The conversation was led by Rodja Pavlik/APA)
1692347838
#Operation #White #Christmas #film #shooting #obstacles
