Real Fictions

Documentary maker Daniel Sager begins our conversation with a pause, apologises in the middle for his lengthy answers and concludes by urging us all to use our abilities to the full in the ever more complex and vulnerable world we find ourselves in.

Where do the stories you tell come from?

[Pause] … That’s not so easy to answer.

From a mix of curiosity and my desire to be a mediator between worlds. I’m deeply fascinated by telling stories about foreign places and outsiders – no doubt, that’s partly because I grew up in Moscow just as the Soviet Union was collapsing. I was four years old when my parents moved there, and we lived there until I was 12. So I obviously grew up with a different perspective on Germany and its conflicts. I’ve never really felt at home here and had already had a yearning for stories and other worlds from an early age. By the time I was 16, I knew I wanted to make films.

The documentary stories you tell in your films have an incredible power and force, I notice. My sense is that, rather than just showing and telling, the way you realise what you’re doing creates a kind of interference. Could it be that you notice places most of us overlook and project them straight into our field of view?

I’d like to think so, yes, although it’s difficult to know whether I follow a reality, so to speak, purely because I make documentaries. Documentaries have a completely subjective truth, just like movies. They tell stories from my perspective. But they tell the stories of real people, real emotions, real problems. They are true stories. And the fact that documentaries are rooted in reality lends them even greater authenticity. You mention the places and showplaces I go to, which are significant for global social problems. I find that, in places like these, the realities and problems of life come to the fore with so much more clarity. So, I manage to capture a deeper form of truth when I’m there than I can where we live. Here, when it comes to death, we look the other way and numb our senses with consumption, activities, movies and substances.

When you make your films, you pay a lot of attention to distance and to your personal role. With Hinter den Schlagzeilen (‘Behind the Headlines’, 2021), that became a point of criticism. I was hearing people comment that it would have been good to know more about you as a person. But I actually sense you quite strongly in your work.

We’re living in the information age, where we’re subjected to this constant deluge. In principle, I appreciate the desire to understand and know the truth. But for a lot of people, how true something actually is – whether it’s scientifically proven or just seems to ring true – seems to matter less and less. All the while, I’m noticing major doubt about our systems, including the media. And that’s why the kind of journalism I find so important and worth protecting is the type that, in the face of the mass of information, takes the time to provide filtered, quality content – and that’s exactly what I wanted to present. So, during the shoot, I saw myself more as a chronicler, as someone who observes and also offers the viewer a full view of their craft, in other words. That’s why it was only logical not to let myself and my own views take centre stage. The film is not about me – even though I do find it’s a very honest portrayal of my role and my attitude to the protagonists. So, that particular criticism of my role did leave me wondering slightly …

Full interview available in SLEEK #70 – Truth