Diane Kruger On David Cronenberg And Romy Schneider Films

Inglourious Basterds and In The Fade star Diane Kruger was honored this week at the Red Sea Film Festival with a career award.

The German actress stopped by our studio to talk about her impressions of the event and what’s coming up for her, including new projects with David Cronenberg, Red Sea jury member Fatih Akin (who directed Kruger to acclaim in 2017 drama In The Fade) and a documentary about her “icon” Romy Schneider.

Kruger told us it was her first time in Saudi Arabia and that she has been “blown away by the size” of the Red Sea Film Festival.

The actress touched on the impact of the Hollywood strikes on projects she is working on but noted that she was lucky to have three films that were in post-production just as the SAG strike kicked off. One of her projects was delayed and is aiming to shoot early next year.

Among projects Kruger is working on is a documentary about her “icon”, the German actress Romy Schneider: “She is my icon, she’s the reason I wanted to become an actress, being german myself,” Kruger told us. “I followed her all my life, without knowing I’d become an actress. When I moved to France I discovered all her great films, her French work with Claude Sautet, that’s why I fell in love with French cinema, and went to drama school there.”

Produced by Canal+ Docs and directed by Marjory Déjardin, the film is part of a series called Elle Parle d’Elle (She Talks About Her), which centers on contemporary stars as they explore the lives of 20th century icons.

Also coming up for the actress, who is fluent in German, English and French, is a film about The Little Prince scribe Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, with Louis Garrel playing the French writer, and Vincent Cassel also starring. Kruger reveals that the film was shot entirely in studio.

Meanwhile, she is in post-production on David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, about an innovative businessman and grieving widower who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud.

The in-demand actress described the project as “probably David’s most personal film”: “It’s about David’s wife who passed away from cancer, but it has David’s particular twist. It deals with loss and grief and being in a couple for so long and what true love is. I play [the main character’s] wife, her sister and an avatar that [David] created in her memory”.

Film director and editor Carolyn Cronenberg passed away in 2017 aged 66. She had met David in 1979 while while working as a production assistant on one of his early films, Rabid.

As Kruger finally notes, the busy actress is also re-teaming with filmmaker Fatih Akin on project Marlene about iconic Germany singer Marlene Dietrich.