Interview with Director Alissa Jung, Actors Luca Marinelli and Juli Grabenhenrich (Paternal Leave)

Alissa Jung’s Paternal Leave explores fatherhood through the fractured relationship between Paolo (Luca Marinelli) and his estranged daughter, Leo (Juli Grabenhenrich), who reunite in Italy after years apart. With standout performances and a bold screenplay, the film avoids straightforward answers. Instead, it asks what it really means to be a father – and whether there’s any single way to define one.

At a recent press conference at Berlinale, Tilda Swinton said at one of the press conferences, that in a post-COVID world, filmmakers need some sort of network, a chosen family, in order to survive in the industry. Has this been true for you, Alissa?

Alissa: I’ve always worked with friends. I started making short films a long time ago. We made one during COVID, and it was just family and friends – we couldn’t meet anyone else, so it felt natural. So yes, I built a community. But Paternal Leave was different. We shot in Italy instead of the German locations I am used to, so I had to build a whole new team. Luca [Marinelli] was the only person I knew before we started shooting, but now I feel like we have created a kind of family.

Your characters speak three different languages. How did that shape the experience on set?

Alissa: It was a challenge, absolutely. We were on an international set, with a German-Italian crew, and we should have been speaking English all the time so that everyone could understand – but not everyone spoke English well either. I speak German, Italian, and English, so I became the go-between. Sometimes I’d say something to Luca in Italian, then switch to German for Juli [Grabenhenrich] then try to translate for the Italian-Turkish team. It was like constant double-translation, plus dialects.

Luca, you’ve taken on a wide range of roles recently – including some particularly difficult and daunting figures, like Mussolini. How did you approach Paolo, and what were the biggest challenges in capturing his vulnerabilities?

Luca: For me, it always starts with falling in love with the script – and I really did. Thanks to Alissa and Juli, we had time to rehearse before the shoot, which helped a lot – to explore my character and get to know him better. I like to immerse myself in the character’s life, so I spent a lot of time alone in the city where we were shooting, and I did some fun things like skating and surfing. I tried to soak up Paolo’s world and let it guide me. I let myself be inspired by the director and all the other people around me. It’s all about teamwork and sharing your sensations.

What about you, Juli? How did you prepare for playing Leo?

Juli: I couldn’t really prepare that well, because I didn’t have any previous experience, so I think what helped me a lot was the sessions we did as a team where we read through the whole script and did things like mind map our characters. Then I started to see Leo as a real person, not just a role. That really helped me.

The chemistry between you two feels lived-in – like you are father and daughter. How did you build that connection?

Juli: I think Luca is very funny! That helped straight away. It’s the humor that connects us.

Luca: We spent a lot of time together. We were there [in Italy] one month before shooting, and we did a lot of exercises. We rehearsed every day. We explored the trust in ourselves. That foundation helped everything else feel natural.

Fatherhood is central to this film, whic keeps circling back to the question of what makes a ‘good father’. Alissa, do you think Paolo fits that label, despite his failings – or is he too flawed?

Alissa: I would go back to the question: what is a good father? I think we all have a monolithic idea shaped by our past, religion, and patriarchy. There are so many preconceptions. Maybe a good father is simply a father. Maybe just being there, just being, is enough. Because we’re all human. What I want to communicate with this film is that all this pressure to be a good parent doesn’t help that much. Perhaps Paolo would have been less afraid if he hadn’t felt that pressure so much. Maybe he would have stayed with Leo and her mum if he only needed to be a father. Not a good one, just a father.

Is there any hope for Leo to reconnect with her father after she returns to Germany at the end of the film?

Luca: I am really curious to see if they will get back together. I am hopeful that they will finally start their relationship in a way that they feel good about themselves, and loved. I’m speranzoso [Italian for ‘hopeful’].

Alissa: I think both characters are doing something very brave and important to change their relationship. On the one hand, Leo is beginning to accept that her hope of her father always being there is unrealistic, but now, in front of her, is a human being she’s genuinely curious about. On the other hand, it’s a journey of realising that his decision to leave wasn’t about her – his absence wasn’t her fault. This gives her a real chance to understand who he is, which would be a significant step forward for both of them. Will they reconnect? Maybe not tomorrow – but perhaps, eventually.