DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
The theme of interpersonal dependence has always fascinated me and this was one of the impulses to develop the main characters in FREE RADICALS. I consciously imagined various combinations of people from quite different worlds who appear to share the same traits: dependence on others and utter loneliness. All of them fight for something or someone, while none of them seem to understand exactly what it is they really need. Yet, there is a strong vitality about all of them, even when these characters are in the throes of depression.

We are all trapped in intricate relationships. To better depict these systems of relationships in a contemporary setting, I had to create a complex world with ambivalent characters.

When I was writing the script for FREE RADICALS, it became clear to me that in my previous films, people had often looked up to the sky. You could almost feel their need to yearn. In this film, we often shoot from the perspective of looking down which suggests imprisonment. Therefore, FREE RADICALS is more about finding happiness (or not) with what you already than it is about a longing to be somewhere else.

FREE RADICALS is also a film about death and fear of death, about the sudden loss resulting from the death of a person and the inevitable feelings it brings. I wanted to create a dark, eerie, and uncertain atmosphere in the movie, one sustained by fear of death and fearful thoughts about eternity and infinity.

Uncertainty is something we always carry with us, as well as the feeling that you can't come to terms with death. But what prevails is that somehow you cope with it after all. To me, the film offers a kind of reconciliation: when the little girl Yvonne is sitting on the ground looking into a puddle and it's raining, it all becomes very simple. It is a simple and peaceful image.