Interview With Peter Brunner. Unseen on the fringes.

Peter Brunner is an integral artist: director, screenwriter, and musician. His unique vision in “To the Night” (2018) captivated me. The 2018 film, starring Caleb Landry Jones as Norman, portrays an artist dealing with a past trauma that marked his life. It’s dark and powerful, and highly experimental. The art world and art itself are palpable, it’s like another character and integral to the plot. In this interview, I speak with the director about the film, and then we discuss his most recent project, “Down the Arm of God,” which depicts a minister’s struggle to help homeless people in Texas. This project, which began during the pandemic, is finally expected to be released in 2026. (This is a translation of my introduction in my web Cinephilegirl.com I wanted to share with you this amazing interview in its original form)

To the night.

When I first watched this film I was blown away by the body of art work. The art world that surrounds Norman is truly believable and amazing: How did you come up with the different pieces for each moment of the film? What were your influences?

Fundamentally, the development of Norman’s work was inspired by work like From Marc Quinn’s self-portrait in blood to the collage-like palimpsests of Anselm Kiefer, in which chance and nature become integral parts of the work; from Francis Bacon’s search for order and traces within chaos to the Aktionism-based practices of Gottfried Helnwein and Günter Brus. Norman’s artistic exploration stands firmly within a tradition of action and reaction, of recreating memory and trauma until they crystallize into a poetic, socially interactive distillate that becomes alive only through the gaze of others.

The ice babies with which the film opens are emblematic of this process. As a survivor living with survivor’s guilt, having lived through the accident that claimed his parents, Norman transformed these complex emotions into an analogy for the trauma of premature birth and separation in an incubator. The baby seen through glass but unable to be touched: that was the reality in the 1980s, until a nurse in Israel began stroking the infants, and through that physical contact, more of them suddenly survived. Today it’s unthinkable not to touch and cuddle them.

The act of looking through glass, the inability to intervene, the melting beneath the heat lamps, drop by drop, the audience’s gaze becomes Norman’s gaze upon an essence of himself that, as elusive as maybe trauma itself, shifts between states of matter. These alchemical processes fascinated me deeply: like when David Lynch mounts a piece of flesh onto one of his paintings, leaves it out in the sun, and waits to see what nature and animals will do to it until it is transformed.

How much was on script? can you talk with us about how the experience was directing it?

In this case, almost all of it was already in the script, because Norman’s “work” had to feel like a living, breathing, believable body of work. From the light installation of his blind friend and his externalized senses, to the ice babies and the attempt to recreate the accident by lying inside a fish tank, like an incubator, everything became part of a deeper search: following someone on an odyssey through the creative process, where everything around them is absorbed into the reconstruction of memory. A search to go back in time, to find his parents, maybe even the idea of home, while gradually losing connection to what is right in front of him: the home he built with Penelope.

The deepest devotion to directing is always when you can share that journey with a collaborator willing to give everything, someone capable of genuinely searching for truth and guided by a philosophy of love, in the sense that it is always about the other person, always about the moment itself. Caleb gave me a sense of confidence and trust I had never experienced with any collaborator before. For the first time, I was no longer alone.

The installation ( I don’t want to call it installation, it’s more a performance I Believe) at the house of Norman Parents had some Marina Abramovic kind of influence. How did you approach the making of that final piece for the climax?

We tried to transform the heating lamps above the ice babies into the Tesla coil, which was fun cause on the day it didn’t work. We shot that scene the day after Donald Trump was elected for the first time. You cannot imagine how devastated a film crew, a group of friends, can look. There was nothing funny about it.

So I said: with Andie burning, with the stunt double engulfed in flames, this would become our image of setting this enemy of humanity on fire within our own minds.

The trauma on Norman’s character felt so real and raw how it was to work it with Caleb?

Caleb understands that if you never allow people to identify with the worst parts of themselves/a character, they never truly have the chance to walk out of a movie carrying that character, in this case, Norman, in their hearts. And that is the goal. How can genuine empathy emerge without confronting the awkward, fragile, or even ugly parts of a person?

To defend someone honestly, you have to be willing to reveal their darkest sides. At least, those are the kinds of experiences that interest me as a filmmaker. Caleb understands that acting is not something you simply master once and remain good at forever; it demands complete commitment every single time. He is always fully invested. I honestly don’t know how he does it. It remains a beautiful mystery to me, and I’m grateful that each of us carries our own mysteries, our own potentials.

Down the arm of God.

Now you are teaming with Caleb again, this time on a project that seems really interesting about the situation of homeless people in Texas and a minister trying to help them, can you tell us how it began and how it’s going?

We tried to collaborate again. Even on Luzifer we did, because Caleb was supposed to play that part, we even did a test shoot. But that’s another story.

We went on to explore other projects we both felt strongly about. Once we agreed on a storyline, Caleb came to Vienna, and we spent a month during covid-lockdown working on the script. After that, we kept refining it over the following months, testing it against reality in homeless camps.

That process led us to engage directly with homelessness encampments in Texas. We met people, did outreach, and collaborated with organizations working with and supporting the unhoused. The first draft of the script was shaped significantly by testimonies from unhoused firends. Early on, we also brought in advocates such as Mark Horvath of Invisible People, who does remarkable work bringing awareness and dignity to people living on the margins.

They are among the most vulnerable people in our societies, everywhere in the world. Perhaps only infants are more vulnerable, I don’t know, and it’s not really for me to judge. I’m just trying to do the next right thing, and that became something like a guiding principle through every step of this difficult production process.

It was not the typical “hire a crew, cast actors, build sets” kind of endeavor, not that any film is ever easy to make.

Are you working with real people who live on the street, how was it dealing with this kind of documentary part? but really it’s a work of fiction right?

I don’t know if there’s a real distinction between fiction and documentary, not for me. It really depends on the filmmaker’s stance, their outlook, their way of perceiving reality.

Even the earliest images, the Lumière brothers, like those workers leaving the factory, already contain a kind of staging. If you look again, people are wearing their Sunday clothes. They’ve dressed up. Some seem annoyed to be filmed, to be made part of it. All I’m saying is: it’s already constructed. It’s not a pure slice of reality captured by some Frederick Wiseman-style, neutral fly-on-the-wall “this is truth” approach.

I think documentary is, in a way, even harder to make, because people expect it to be reality in a different sense. The present is assumed to be unmediated, and the audience brings that expectation into it. But all of this is beautiful, because it becomes a kind of banquet of tools a filmmaker can choose from, to make films that are loyal to how they actually experience the world.

That’s really all you can do: be loyal to your feelings.

And I learned so much from the friends I met on the street. So many stories. Too many lives that go unseen and unheard.

I’ve heard that you have some trouble because they were not registered as actors, how did you sort it out?

It was really difficult, because what company, or anyone, really wants to take liability for someone who might be a felon, has no address, maybe a murder charge, no job, all the clichés that are clichés precisely because so much of it is, in some cases, true.

It’s like trying to give people a hand up: helping them get a birth certificate, an ID, a social security number, all those steps that sound simple, but aren’t at all simple if you don’t have an advocate supporting you, especially when others look down on you or you’re simply invisible to them.

So the way we made the film, defined the movie we made, through relationships. Through trust. Not by bringing food once and leaving trash behind, but by showing up every day, collecting the trash, and building continuity. And by finding partners who actually support people in their goals and needs within organizations like Transformation Park.

What James Ballard is doing is really an inspiration. So many advocates, so many good people. And yet there is still far too little funding for nonprofits and support structures like these, or health care professionals, social workers.. Meanwhile, states continue to criminalize homelessness, issuing fines for camping to people who cannot even afford to pay a fine in the first place.

It becomes an absurd, almost Kafkaesque cycle, one that traps people in a system that punishes the very condition it fails to resolve.

We know that it’s really hard to get finance for films, especially for this one with a great social theme on it, but how did you navigate all these issues?

Let’s say it took 5 years. Without Luc Besson we would have not been able to do it. He found the money.

I just wanted to tell you that I’m really invested in this project when I read what it was about. I have a dear friend who ended up living on the streets. We lost her and did not find her until it was very late. So helping to spread the word about homeless people and trying to help when you can is not always that easy. The focus on the film will be more narrative related to the community struggle kind of a clash of perspectives or more focussed on life on the streets?

I’m sorry to hear about your friend. There are so many stories, but also positive ones, like advocates helping families reunite after years of separation. So many people are trying to do good, pushing every day to support others and give them a hand up. We just don’t hear enough about them.

The film is inspired by true events. I don’t really want to say more at this point. But it will have its world premiere in 2026.

What is more challenging as an independent filmmaker these days? Do you have any final words for people who want to make films?

I’m just coming from a meeting about a film I’m going to do, and the producer was telling me how hard it is, they cut one out of four submissions a year. So even more people are fighting for the same limited funding. And this is just Austria. From what I hear, it’s getting tougher everywhere.

A friend of mine is trying to make a kind of spiritual story about a man who was part of Andy Warhol’s Factory and appears in a Lou Reed song, and even with names attached, it still seems incredibly difficult to raise money. Because it’s unique, different.

But we need different. I think it has always been extremely difficult when you make films that don’t adapt themselves to the tastes of commissions or funders, when you don’t try to “please” the expected standard. That tension has always been there.

and to close it up: Where or how did you see yourself and your art in the future? (This could be also as a musician if you like!)

Honestly, I’m trying to think about the social impact campaign for Down the Arm of God and how the film can create the strongest possible dialogue with an audience and, ideally, help unhoused people along the way. That’s my main focus.

On the horizon are a few other projects I’m developing. One in particular is very close to my heart. It’s again inspired by real people and their testimonies, another kind of care-focused film about people who remain unseen on the fringes.

I want to thanks to Peter Brunner for this Amazing Interview and wish him all the luck with his projects. Can’t wait to watch more of his films.