‘Everytime’ Director Sandra Wollner on the Emotional Resonance of Her Un Certain Regard Winning Film: ‘We Carry Our Experiences Within Us’

Sandra Wollner’s “Everytime” lands in Toronto this week for its North American premiere, kicking off a run that includes both the New York and Vancouver film festivals, and aiming to amplify the buzz that began with a standing ovation and Un Certain Regard Prize win at Cannes.

The Berlin-based filmmaker’s third feature, which also won the Grand Prize in Sarajevo and has been selected as Germany’s official Oscar submission, explores how a grieving mother (Birgit Minichmayr, “The Blood Countess”), her late daughter’s boyfriend (Tristan Lopez), and her younger daughter (Lotte Shirin Keiling) move through blame and forgiveness after a tragic accident on the eve of a family vacation.

“I’m interested in memory, identity, and imagination and how close they are,” Wollner tells Variety. “We carry our experiences within us and there is a thin line between remembering something or imagining something.”

Wollner, who grew up in a small town in the Austrian countryside, made one documentary before moving into fiction, a creative space where she has more room to play with characters. “It sounds like a cliche, but people fascinate me,” she says. “I like to observe and draw from what I see when I’m walking down the street.”

She carried the three main “Everytime” characters in her imagination for years, as the events of her life and people she met influenced their development. “With the mother, younger daughter, and boyfriend, who are kind of survivors, I was most interested in exploring what happens directly after the tragic accident,” she says.

“I wanted to create a story that felt very grounded and realistic, where everyday conversations and banal moments have the same importance as these really huge feelings and memories that are in our minds at the same time.”

During the writing process, Wollner was also developing the visual ideas to convey both epic emotions and “small tender things” between characters. Cinematographer Gregory Oke (“Aftersun”) captures the panoramic calm and ground level intensity of both Berlin and Tenerife (the vacation destination), while the teen daughter’s Minecraft-style video game provides the eerily smooth visual space where nothing happens.

“I like to play with the idea of who is the observer in the film, and sometime will leave the audience in an unstable moment, where things feel a bit fragile,” she says.

“This might sound experimental, but I feel when people watch it, they understand that our brains work that way, too.”

Wollner is discovering these ideas are connecting in powerful ways with audiences. While the unique experience of Cannes premiere applause brought overwhelming emotion and tears to her eyes, the reaction of “ordinary people” has been most gratifying.

“At Cannes, many people I didn’t know came up to say they felt emotionally touched by the film,” she says. “You’re always hoping that will happen, but you never know if you’re gonna hit that.

“And after that happened, at every screening, at least one person will come up to tell me their story. You feel the perspective of the person, and you learn something about their experience of the film. ”

Eksystent Filmverleih Kijas released “Everytime” in German cinemas in August, while Charades has sold the title to more than 30 territories worldwide. 1-2 Special is handling distribution in North America, with a theatrical release planned for early 2027.