“People thought that it was a lesbian film, which was not the case. I responded at that time that if I wanted to make a film with lesbian characters, I would have had lesbian characters. I think what actually caused the scandal was the possibility of a transformative relationship between two women. And when they are together, they are not competing over a man but talking about art… The two female characters lived in a dimension that the male critics weren’t used to seeing.”

Read the entire exclusive interview with Margarethe von Trotta on our website.