Casting LMT

How We Found Klara and Mike

When Stefanie brought me the script for Would You Still Love Me Then, I read it in one sitting and stayed quiet for a long time afterwards. Not because I didn't know what to say, but because I already knew everything. This story was alive from the very first line, from the very first stage direction, from the very first word of dialogue. It wasn't asking for permission. It simply existed, and the only thing left to do was give it a screen.

After a short conversation with Stefanie, we decided: we're making it. No deliberation, no long discussions, no spreadsheets with arguments for and against. Just, yes.

But any story, however alive it may be on the page, only truly comes to life when people step into it. And the next question arose immediately, quietly and inevitably: who are they, Klara and Mike?

A Hundred Strangers

We posted listings on Crew United, wrote in Berlin film community Facebook groups, put out a crew call on Instagram. Honestly, we weren't quite sure what to expect. Berlin is a big city, but film is a small world. The response surprised us in the best possible way, around a hundred applications for three roles.

Every evening we forwarded each other profiles and photos, sometimes with a comment, sometimes just with an emoji or a question mark. It was a strange and slightly magical process, scrolling through the faces of strangers and trying to feel something almost impossible to articulate: this one? Or her? Is there something in this person that lives inside our story?

The requirements were specific: age 30–45, flawless English. That immediately set a certain bar, a certain kind of person with a certain kind of history. But even with that filter, there were so many talented people that narrowing the list felt almost physically painful. In the end we settled on six, three women and three men. All six were extraordinary. Which, as you can imagine, only made the task harder.

The Day They Met

We booked a studio and invited all six on the same day at the same time. Deliberately. It was a conscious decision. We wanted to see not only how each person worked alone, but what happened between them simply by being in the same room, in the pauses, in the moments of waiting, in an accidental glance across the space. Was there air between them. Was there warmth, before a single scene had even begun.

We had no casting director. We ran everything ourselves. Looking back, I think that was right. No extra layer between us and what we were actually looking for.

The actors arrived having read the script in advance, and each had chosen the scene or dialogue they felt closest to, most confident in, most at home with. We started with individual readings, then moved to paired scenes, slowly and carefully rotating partners, watching who resonated with whom, where something emerged that was greater than a well-executed scene.

I wasn't only watching the acting. As a producer, strong acting is a given, it's the minimum. What mattered to me was something else entirely: was there something alive between these people from the very first moment? Were they truly looking at each other, or simply performing text? Could you feel that quiet, unnameable warmth between them, the kind you can't manufacture, the kind you either have or you don't.

The Look

We noticed Vanessa already during the video screening. Stefanie and I watched it together. She looked at me, I looked at her, and without a single word everything became clear. That's her. That's Klara.

Then, at the casting came the paired readings, and Denis stepped across from Vanessa. They began the scene. And all the questions simply dissolved, quietly and completely. It was them. Klara and Mike. Alive, warm, real, exactly as they had lived inside the script.

Stefanie and I rarely disagree on things like this. We seem to have the same eyes for what matters.

Before the Shoot

Stefanie held several rehearsals at home with the actors, giving them time to find their way into the material, to feel each other outside the pressure of a set, away from cameras and crew. I tried to attend one of them once, out of genuine curiosity and, honestly, out of a quiet desire to make sure everything was going well. Stefanie looked at me with a smile and closed me in the next room. Apparently there are things a producer is better off not interfering with.

The actors met the rest of the crew on set, in the living, breathing space of a working film day, surrounded by light and coffee and the gentle chaos of a first morning. And when we saw them there, in wardrobe, in the light, standing across from each other, Stefanie and I simply exchanged one more quiet look. We hadn't been wrong.