Sandra Hüller on Starring in Two Best Picture Oscar Nominees, Awards Recognition for Foreign-Language Films: “It Really Feels More Open”

German actress Sandra Hüller has a remarkable feat on her resume this year. She starred in not only one best picture Oscar-nominated film, but two: Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest both garnered the coveted nomination.

Notably, this is also the first time in which two international foreign-language movies have been nominated in the best picture category in the same year. And Hüller also nabbed a best actress nomination for her performance in Anatomy of a Fall.

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Hüller did not have much time off between shooting The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall. In fact, she shot another film in the midst of both.

“The Zone of Interest came first,” she explained on the morning of the Oscar nominations. “It was planned for 2020 and then the COVID crisis came and we started shooting in summer of 2021. I was on set for a whole month. I spent so much time there because I wanted to put it in the school holidays of my child so that I wouldn’t have to be away for a long time. Sometimes this works out, and I’m really, really happy… I don’t know if it would have been good for the family to be a part of it, and after that I shot a German film called Sisi and I where everybody went to Austria, Switzerland and Malta, and then I had I think a two month, three month break for preparation for Justine [Triet, director of Anatomy of a Fall]. So then the whole French work started … and we tried to polish the French part, and we started shooting in March of 2022.”

Shooting two such dramatic films seems taxing, but the actress says she didn’t do much decompressing after filming each project.

“When you have your everyday life with family and the things that you have to do, that is actually decompressing because it’s just what you do,” she said. “I don’t think it’s possible to have been away so long for work and then go away for relaxation. It would’ve been weird to me, but I’m still hoping maybe at the end of this year, that I will have a week or two weeks to be completely alone and do nothing.”

In terms of foreign films getting the recognition they did in the best picture category this year, Hüller says, “It really feels like the world is growing bigger. People see more things. It’s not just the Hollywood bubble, it really feels more open. Although I have to say I’m in no position to talk about the past years of the Academy, I’m not really an expert, but of course, it’s very surprising for all of us that it happened that way, and I hope it goes on this way.”

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