Overview
- The sold-out Special Gala at Berlin’s Zoo-Palast drew strong star turnout, including Huppert, Lars Eidinger, Birgit Minichmayr and Tom Neuwirth.
- Early festival reviews admire the film’s opulent, baroque visuals but describe the overall effect as museum-like and short on sustained wit.
- Huppert said she enjoyed playing a vampire, and Ottinger recalled the actor asking to deliver at least one proper bite.
- Eidinger appears as therapist Theobald Tandem and noted he first expected to play a vampire before signing on to work with Ottinger.
- Ottinger shaped the project’s dialogues with Elfriede Jelinek, drawing on the Elisabeth Báthory legend and an idea she has pursued since 1998.