Jean-Jacques Annaud

Some journalists have been critical of the fact that you shot the film in English, and that the main players, with the exception of Ed Harris, are British and have British accents. What's your response to that criticism?

Half of the market is an English-speaking market! If you give them actors who cannot speak English, it just doesn't play. And as a Frenchman, I can only direct in French or English; I cannot direct in Russian. There's no way you can do this movie in the Russian or German. You have to go with the original version in English. After that, you've got the choice of British, American or maybe Australian actors. I remind people that movies are made in the language of their audience. When Shakespeare did "Romeo and Juliet," he didn't do it in Italian, or even using English speakers with Italian accents. This applies as well to "Dr. Zhivago," which was set in Russia, but had English actors. It takes about five or 10 minutes to accept it, but once you're in the story, you forget that those people are English or American.

You shot most of this film in eastern Germany. Why not in Russia, in Volgograd even?

Russia today is an incredible mess. It's rackets, it's mafia -- not one, but a thousand. So if you make a deal with the mafia of the river, you have a problem with the mafia of the docks. It's endless. When you get a taxi in Moscow, he charges you $50 to go a few miles. You get in the cab and in 10 minutes he drops you in a suburb, and says, "I'll drive you if you give me $200." It's like that to the level of the whole nation. Everything is impossible -- it's an abomination. On top of that, I could not redestroy the city of Stalingrad. So, after scouting for locations, I ended up shooting this anti-German movie in Germany.

Has the film been shown in Russia?

Not yet. We're not in a rush to open there because we're going to be pirated. So we'll wait as long as we can. There's no state anymore in Russia. And if you have a movie like that, the second it gets on Russian soil, it's duplicated and sold. Maybe it already is, I don't know. But officially we're going to wait until July or something like that.

Why did the film open the Berlin International Film Festival? Was that a way of taking on the toughest audience first?

In a way, yes. We had to confront the situation of Germany. It used to be, some years ago, when you reminded the Germans of their horrible recent past, they would say, "Yes, we know, mea culpa, mea culpa." Now when you remind them of that past, they say, "Yes, we know. Fuck off." That's a real change.

Doing a movie like this, I cannot please the Germans. And I have no intention of trying. I was in Hamburg before coming here, and one journalist said to me about Ed Harris' character, "I had hoped that the German could win." He asked, "Would you have made the movie if the German had won?" I said, "Of course not. Because for me as a Frenchman it was not good news that Hitler started the war." Then I said, "I guess in a secret, hidden part of you, you would have preferred that Hitler won. But I'm sure that another part of you knows, as a democrat, that it was better that he did not." He agreed.

Of course, the new generation is not guilty of anything. But I'm rereading "Mein Kampf" because I found an old copy I had bought for research, and there is hate on every page. It's incredible that a nation like Germany could listen to this without reaction and by basically approving it. So the embarrassment is eternal for Germany. They can't get rid of it.

Isn't it ironic that you're in hot water with the Germans over this film, but that you had problems over your last film, "Seven Years in Tibet," because Brad Pitt's character, Heinrich Harrer, was revealed to have been a member of Hitler's SS?

They began to discover Harrer's past in Germany through the German press, basically because of hatred of what Brad represents -- Hollywood. So that started as a punishment of a Hollywood movie. But after that, you're right to say that there was a big shift. The controversy ended up in a very favorable way for the movie in Germany. This time, of course, it's going to be quite different. They cannot stand the fact that the Wehrmacht did not always behave nicely.

I would guess that the fact that you're French doesn't endear you to the Germans, either. Do they believe you have it in for them because of your nationality?

That's definitely part of it. It is true that I have great difficulty looking back into those times and believing that the Germans behaved nicely. My family went through all kinds of nightmares, and I'm not a Jew. They were just regular French people, neither collaborators nor resisters. Yet in my childhood, there was not one lunch or dinner without many descriptions of the German behavior in my country. And they behaved well in France compared to what they did in Russia. At the same time, I know the new Germany well, and I like the new Germany. I was astonished to discover how fresh that wound was.

You started out directing commercials and were very successful at it. What did you learn from directing commercials that helped you film something as grand as "Enemy at the Gates"?

I learned I was only happy directing things that came from my heart. Even when it was good, if it was selling something that was not reflecting my convictions, I was ashamed. So basically, by being a prostitute, I learned to be someone with integrity.

My first film, "Black and White in Color," was an absolute flop in France. But even though it was a disaster, I was happy. It was my movie, and it was OK if it wasn't perfect. What I couldn't stand was to be rich and famous for doing something I didn't like. Of course, that film went on to win an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, but that was only after it had failed in France.

It's too bad more directors aren't trying to make art instead of two-hour commercials.

It has to come from us, the screenwriters and directors. The screenwriters create crap for the executives, who think it is crap, and directors accept doing crap because the executives ask them to do crap. What is this? At least try once in a while to do something personal. Sure, if you fail with something personal, it's tragic. But if you fail with something that's not personal, that's terrible! I mean, if you want to write a bestseller and it doesn't sell, it's a catastrophe. It's better to go with your heart, I think.

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