Daniel Bruhl is a refined actor, he could be defined a classic player. He shifts smoothly from auteur cinema to blockbusters, from comedy to drama. Great authors love him for his versatility and he is one of the few German actors who can boast a solid international career. He experienced success thanks to a small movie that became an instant cult, Goodbye, Lenin, then he worked with Quentin Tarantino and was recruited in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he is also the protagonist of a much loved TV series, The Alienist. He was thinking about directing since a while. He took the step with Next Door, that is in competition at the 67th Taormina Film Festival, a curious autobiographical and cathartic thriller.
Daniel, the one from Next Door, is a successful actor working in major international productions and is leaving Berlin for London, where an audition for a role in a superhero film awaits him. He stops at the bar behind the corner, where he meets his neighbor, Bruno, a former East German who has lost more than earning after reunification. The meeting seems casual, but it is not. Bruno was waiting for this moment to come…
Daniel Bruhl explains that «it was important for my directorial debut to choose something small and very personal, a story that I could tell because connected to me, entertaining but not only. Next Door is the story of a man who could be me, but he is not me ».
But he looks a lot like him, just like many details of his on-screen antagonist Bruno, played by Peter Kurth, have to do with Bruhl’s real life.
Bruhl is a Berliner, Barcelona is his second home, he’s from Brazilian father and Spanish mother, he speaks six languages and all these things combined are at the same time fascinating and alienating, in this gentrified world it’s easy to feel stateless. Just like Bruno does, once the wall has fallen.
Next Door merges genres, but above all it is the meeting of two human beings looking for themselves.
