Cannes 2026: 'Everytime' Film Interview on Family Grief, Reality
'Everytime'
Courtesy of Charades
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The Cannes Film Festival‘s Un Certain Regard section prides itself on showcasing discoveries of non-traditional cinema. What a fit for rising Austrian writer-director Sandra Wollner, who is making her Cannes debut in this year’s program with her third feature, Everytime!
Her debut feature, The Impossible Picture, showed the everyday life of a Viennese family in the 1950s as documented on 8mm film by 13-year-old Johanna, until the camera suddenly turns on her. Her sophomore movie, The Trouble With Being Born, was a drama about a 10-year-old android and her “Daddy.”
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Now, Wollner is back with Everytime, which sees a tragic death bring a mother, her daughter, and a teenage boy, who everyone blames for the tragedy, together. The cinematic exploration of grief, blame and forgiveness takes the unlikely trio on a trip to Tenerife for “a family holiday that never happened,” as the auteur puts it. And under the glowing sun of the Spanish island, time, as well as reality and fiction, suddenly seem to start blurring.
If audiences, just like the writer of these lines, end up wondering “what the hell is going on!?,” Wollner is happy to hear it. “One experiences that feeling only rarely, and I really want to embrace that,” she tells THR. “I think it’s nice if you walk out of the cinema and you can’t completely grasp what you have just seen.”
Everytime, which features cinematography by Gregory Oke and editing courtesy of Hannes Bruun,
stars Birgit Minichmayr (The Blood Countess, The White Ribbon, My Wonderful Wanda), Lotte Shirin Keiling, Tristan Lopez, and Carla Hüttermann. Produced by Lixi Frank and David Bohun at Panama Film with Viktoria Stolpe at The Barricades, Charades is handling international sales.
Wollner talked to THR about the inspirations for the film, which premieres on May 18, and the themes it dives into, her creative process, the role of musical and video game aesthetics in Everytime, and how her documentary film studies play into her filmmaking.
What inspired Everytime?
“Why does the sun go on shining?” One would think that after a tragedy like the one that happens in the film, the world ought to have the decency to stop. A night out, two kids bursting with life, a wrong step, and a teenage girl dies. And life just goes on after that. The sun just keeps on hanging in the sky, shining with simple, oblivious innocence, as if nothing has changed, as if nothing has happened. The indifference of the universe, which doesn’t care about our pain – that’s what interested me.
The three protagonists of the film are based on people and constellations I have met at certain points in my life. But they are more “afterimages” of these people – they grew into themselves and took on a life of their own. I just had to follow them.
They form a bit of an unlikely trio. There is nothing they can say that will change what happened, nothing they can do that will overcome this immense loss. They are in an in-between state where they are not honest with each other. Everyone tries to do “the right thing,” like a decent person. But no one talks about their actual state of mind. The boy cannot say that he just wants forgiveness, and the mother cannot say that she cannot give it to him – because, actually, deep down, she does blame him somehow. It’s like in all complex scenarios – there are a variety of things that are true at the same time. And sometimes it’s hard to bear.
We follow this unlikely trio, and a lot is going on, but not in terms of big visible “action.”
They go on quite a journey in this film. But at first, we follow them through the stillness of everyday life, where everything feels suspended except for their grief, and the different ways they confront it, evade it, or find themselves unable to face it at all. That quiet tension is what ultimately propels them into a strange journey: a family holiday that never actually took place.
When everything is said and done, they have to face the fact that there is nothing they could do that would change what happened. Nothing can change the simple reality of death. Except in this film, reality itself is not such a simple thing.
Sandra Wollner
Courtesy of Robert Newald
It’s definitely not a classic hero’s journey, but I feel philosophica